by Elizabeth Harrin (London)

“I’ve had a back to front life,” says Anne Fergusson, a Director in PricewaterhouseCoopers Advisory Business and Head of the PwC Panel Network. She hands me a cup of tea. “Life is full of surprises.”

Anne talks as if she is surprised at the way her career has turned out, but listening to her it is clear that she made good choices, and has actively managed her route to the top at PwC.

She started salaried work at the age of 40, when she separated from her first husband. “I made a decision to earn my own living,” she says. It was a decision taken by necessity: living in the west of Scotland, outside Glasgow, she had three children to support. She had qualified as a chartered accountant when she was younger and took a full-time lectureship at the University of Strathclyde teaching financial and management accounting and tax practice.

She met and married her second husband, who was studying at the time. He read her professional journals, which she admits to ignoring, and pointed out a job he thought she should go for. “I didn’t think I had anywhere else to go, and I enjoyed academia,” she says. However, she rang the Director of Education at the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland and he invited her to an interview.

“I ended up teaching to demanding audiences and made some great friends,” Anne says. Her work with the Institute saw her working in London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Russia, Poland and Romania. “I was responsible for my own material, the hours were long and family life was very restricted.”

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By Liz O’Donnell (Boston)

Christine Komola spent a recent Thursday morning at the dentist with her daughter. “But I missed her last appointment,” she says. Komola, Senior Vice President of Corporate Finance for Staples, says you need to be “very, very organized” to manage work/life balance. “I like to be spontaneous” she says, “but I learned I have to be deliberate in what I do. I am very scheduled and I pre-plan. Scheduling was a learned behavior for me.” Komola considers herself to be lucky. She enjoys what she does and who she works with and she counts on her business associates and even her clients to help her manage the demands of work and life. In fact, she credits flexible bosses and a strong team with her ability to navigate the demands of work and life. “The world is so virtual, it’s unbelievable,” she says referring to the non-stop demands of working for an international organization. “The computer, the Blackberry and the cell phone are always on.”

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by Anna T. Collins, Esquire (Portland, Maine)

Tay C. Via, partner at Coblentz, Patch, Duffy & Bass LLP in San Francisco, entered the legal profession in part due to advice from one of her professors at the University of California, Berkeley, where she received her undergraduate degree in Political Science and Economics in 1987. Peter T. Jones, a lawyer who specialized in international trade, encouraged her to pursue graduate education “in anything,” regardless of whether she was clear on her ultimate career path. Professor Jones was not the first mentor to emphasize the importance of higher education to Via. Her grandfather, a blue collar worker, also believed that higher education was vital to success. He taught her to not be “in awe of anyone,” since anyone can succeed with education and hard work.

Via followed the advice of these two mentors, gaining not only a higher education, but an impressive work ethic. After receiving her law degree from University of California, Boalt Hall School of Law in 1991, Via got her start at Morrison & Foerster, where she gained expertise in real estate development and land use law while working on the San Francisco International Airport Expansion Project. Over time, Via aimed to focus on large public/private projects in and around San Francisco, which led her to Coblentz, Patch, Duffy & Bass LLP in 1994.

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by Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)

Annie Morris, Managing Director of Linedata‘s business in North America, graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a joint degree in business and humanities, confident that her skills learned would translate into skills usable in the business world.

“By the time the recession [of the 90s] hit, the only people getting jobs out of school were accountants and engineers, but the skills that I picked up taking those humanities classes have paid off ten-fold. In the humanities program, all the exams were face-to-face with your professor, so even though we were pretty young, we had to be able to clearly express our thoughts and positions in order to get a better grade. Again, that skill is something that can be used and transferred into any role.” She added that the writing requirement of many humanities programs “is not to be underestimated. It is so important to be able to write succinctly to be able to make your point.”

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by Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)

With a background in IT and project management, it may surprise some that Cleo Thompson, the head of PwC’s Gender Advisory Council, is the company’s global go-to person for gender diversity. But her personal philosophy may explain it:

“Don’t pigeonhole yourself. Don’t think you are restricted by what you studied. If you are flexible, there are lots of ways to use your skills to make a sideways move, especially within a large organization like PwC.” She added, “I’ve never yet had a job in PwC that someone has done before –I’ve either applied for a newly-created role or I’ve convinced management to craft the position for me.” She advised that she prefers to “drag myself up and bring someone along with me – many of the people I have recruited and trained within PwC have been promoted and gone onto great things.”

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