Voice of Experience: Candace Ewell, Principal, PwC US

“Be open to a career that isn’t exactly what you thought it would be. I don’t know that anyone can predict the opportunities and challenges they will face when they are only 18 and in college,” says PwC’s Candace Ewell.

And that is particularly sage advice coming from a current PwC principal, who spent the first seven years of her career as a nurse. Ewell thought that the healthcare industry would be her career path, but when she decided to go to law school with the goal of studying health law or health policy, a core tax class piqued her interest. “I had a lot of fun in tax; I really enjoyed my professor and the content. It was the first law school class that I really connected with,” she says.

When she returned for the third year, her professor offered her guidance on finding other tax courses and she ended up continuing straight through to complete her Master’s of Law (LLM), in part, she says to prove how serious she was about tax.

After graduate school, Ewell took a position at the IRS Associate Chief Counsel corporate division. While she appreciated the foundation it gave her in understanding the IRS and how regulations and guidance were promulgated, she also felt she was missing the bigger picture on how taxpayers work to be compliant, so she decided to move on.

Ewell’s next stop was in the Office of Advocacy at the Small Business Administration, where she was involved in new ways of thinking about compliance for smaller businesses. While there, she learned all she could from that perspective, but felt the isolation of being the only tax person and decided she wanted to be in a larger community of professionals. She found her home at PwC in mid-2007. “It was a challenging environment to get lots of experience quickly at a faster pace and higher level. It really was a lot of fun.”

In July 2013, she was named principal, which she considers the professional achievement she is most proud of. “I didn’t come to the firm thinking it was an option; I was just looking for an interesting community and challenging work, so being able to achieve this honor is very gratifying.”

Right now she is thrilled to be at the forefront of a new wave of information reporting, a broad subject that has developed over the past years to become more global. She has watched foreign governments embrace information reporting to help improve global compliance. “I get to talk about what I do every day to people and governments that never considered they could ask for so much information. Here in the United States, we have a culture where tax compliance is expected, but it’s not that way everywhere.”

She sees the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) as having a big impact worldwide. Other new regulations, including basis reporting which follows the sale of securities, that will continue to dominate her work are also of significant impact. Of particular interest to her are the information reporting requirements for payments made on the Internet. “It is fascinating to learn how Internet commerce works and how they engage with their customers and clients.”

“Merging Gracefully”

Ewell learned an important career lesson from her first start in the nursing field, the art of “merging gracefully.” In other words, she says she would often approach a new challenge with the belief that she could bring a new perspective and that she knew as much as other, more established professionals. “That got me in trouble when I assumed I knew more than the people whom I reported to. Through this journey, I’ve learned that when you’re starting a career, you’re excited and focused and yearn to make a big impact. But it’s a matter of picking your spot — you have to see that you will have the opportunity to bring perspective, but you can’t start with the ‘bull in the china shop’ mentality.”

Her other advice to those beginning their careers is to have patience and let your career develop. “We let go of some of our goals and desires because we ‘quit early,’ putting them to the side before we get started. You have to be open for how opportunities will present themselves.”

Ewell says that one of the reasons it was an easy decision to come to PwC was its mentoring program, which includes both a coach and relationship partner. “In addition to the fact that this was a community of high-achieving people, I knew that it would be useful to have designated points of contact to call on and help me get to the next stage of my career.” She says that since she is a bit of an introvert, she finds one-on-one coaching to be the most valuable, among the many other programs PwC offers for women in the workplace.

And she says that she takes seriously the charge to now give back to both women and men and facilitate the opportunities for them to meet their goals. “I try to be as candid as possible about how the firm works and the types of experiences people need to meet their goals. I was lucky enough to have people do that for me and I want to do it for others.”

Carving out Time for Renewal

And, as careers mature, she said it’s key to remember that this is high-pace, high-demand work, and it’s vital to carve out time to renew and take care of yourself, something she thinks all women struggle with.

For Ewell, that renewal comes when she carves out time for her family. Married for 20 years, she has an 11-year-old son who is a swimmer, so they spend lots of family time at the pool. Another favorite family activity is delivering food to seniors together because as she knows, anything you do together becomes family time.

By Cathie Ericson