The sky is the limit

PwC will always be close to Margarita’s heart, because it’s the place where she got to fulfil her purpose. But her purpose actually started long before that – it just took her a while to figure out what it was.

After completing a degree in accounting, Margarita started her career working in audit. On the surface, it looked like she was thriving, as she was earning promotions and gaining recognition for her excellent work. But deep down, for her own professional and personal objectives, she realised that she wanted to do something different to make a greater positive contribution to society and the planet through her work.

This realisation led Margarita to go back to university and complete a second degree, this time in organisations, social responsibility and development. Afterwards, she found out that PwC Colombia was looking for someone with her exact rare combination of skills: financial expertise and a deep awareness of social issues. While today the convergence of finance and sustainability is a reality, back in 2011 that combination was quite rare. From her first interactions with PwC Colombia, it was clear that she had come to the right place. After applying for the job, Margarita was interviewed by three leaders, and she remembers the words shared by one of them (a female partner) to this day “Here, the sky is the limit”. After 13 years at PwC Colombia Margarita still believes that to be true.

So began Margarita’s journey working in sustainability, climate change and international development, at a time when these topics garnered much less interest than they do now. Immediately, she felt the difference in herself and she felt fulfilled.

Margarita is particularly interested in the interconnectivity between diverse issues in sustainable development. For instance, she often works with services clients to understand the risks, impacts and opportunities associated with climate change and other sustainability challenges. But she’s also excited to connect that work to addressing multidimensional poverty, via a new alliance that PwC Colombia has formed with Wise Responder, and to public health, via the work she leads for an international financing and partnership organisation that aims to end the epidemics of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. Both poverty and public health are closely related to climate change, because rising temperatures cause migration, which increases the risk of people becoming infected with various diseases spread through vectors. Those are some of the ways in which Margarita embodies PwC’s purpose of solving the world’s most important problems.

As PwC Colombia’s sustainability practice has grown from six people to 30, Margarita took PwC’s Inclusive Mindset (PDF)Opens in a new window (file size: 0.72 MB) training to help her better understand her potential unconscious biases, and make sure they don’t influence her hiring decisions. She’s also been careful to continue to foster an environment where women and men are given the same promotion and development opportunities and is proud that across the teams she leads there is roughly equal gender representation at all levels of seniority.

There are two main reasons why Margarita feels it’s important that sustainability initiatives are run by women as well as men. First, Margarita feels that women are more impacted by climate change than men. Second, Margarita feels that women with financial and decision-making power effectively gather communities together and help prepare their families to face the challenges caused by global warming.

Margarita is also a keen advocate for Inclusion & Diversity (I&D), a passion that was further strengthened during the two years she spent living in London and working in PwC’s Global Sustainability Team. As a major international hub, London offered her a chance to taste real diversity first-hand, in a far more explicit way than she’d ever experienced before. She loved working in a global team with people from many different countries and backgrounds. And she was inspired by how Louise Scott – the team’s COO – leads the team, cares deeply about her people and positively impacts both her colleagues and the business.

Margarita recalls reading a book some 20 years ago which highlighted that many successful women have suffered from a lack of confidence. This resonated with her and she has seen first-hand that talented women often lack the confidence to take leadership positions, apply for promotions and speak up. That’s why she’s made it her personal mission to help junior women at PwC gain the confidence and exposure to thrive in their careers. She wants to provide the same excellent support that she received from other women throughout her career.

Another strong female role model who’s influenced Margarita is her eldest aunt, who managed to graduate high school and get a scholarship to study abroad. This was an extraordinary feat for a woman from a small town in Colombia 70 years ago. Her aunt’s experience showed Margarita that a whole world of opportunity awaited her if she could muster the confidence to take it.

Outside work, Margarita enjoys spending time with her husband, Nelson, friends and her adorable dog Turrón. She also loves reading and travelling. She particularly enjoyed a recent trip to South East Asia, where she was fascinated to see the differences in cultural, religious and social norms between their society and her own. She believes that travel is a valuable gift that can change a person’s perspective of the world.

From your experience, how do you sum up inclusion & Diversity at PwC

Opportunities for anyone and everyone to have a fulfilling professional experience

What should others know about PwC’s commitment to Inclusion and Diversity?

We are focused on driving I&D change both within and beyond PwC