Careers

Career Mobility

If I stayed with Federal Tax from day one, I would have been there, and doing traditional Federal Tax compliance and provision review throughout all those years. However, in the last year or so, I personally wanted to do more cross-border transactions. I decided to transfer from the practice I started with, which is Federal Tax, to a specialty tax group called International Corporate Tax.

By talking to performance managers, and talking to various professionals in the firm, KPMG made it happen for me.

I now manage multi-national company engagements…doing the things I wanted to do, and developing a completely different skill set.

And I've seen many of my colleagues going through somewhat similar transitions. And sometimes they transition to a different discipline, sometimes they transfer to a different office, or internationally. Sometimes they go to a national office, to do more technical work. So the opportunities are tremendous. And as long as you put your work into it, and as long as you express your interest in it, I think you will eventually get the work you wanted to do.

Interning

My first milestone, was to be hired by KPMG, for an internship. I met some great professionals back then…which interested me to pursue a career in Tax. I got to work with a various number of people in different practices. I did some tax compliance work, a cross border merger and got to work with the international tax group. So I got to do a little bit of everything during a short, two and a half month period in that summer.

Mentoring

We do have a very formal program - the performance management program. You're assigned a particular mentor that has been with the firm for many years. Typically, for managers, you have a partner as mentor. That helps you to guide your career. And sometimes you have difficult decisions or choices to make. Or even sometimes just want to vent a little bit. These are the people to go to. I personally have many informal mentors that are now formally designated as my mentors. However, they have been greatly helping me throughout my career, and made me manager. And make me go after the experiences I wanted to. And these are the true heroes that have helped me out in my career path.

Community Involvement

TaxAide is a voluntary tax preparation program, aimed to help out the low income individuals in San Francisco. It's been a great experience, because KPMG has devoted a lot of effort. And we have a partner that's in charge of the program. We have been using our community connections to gather more tax return preparers, some ex-KPMG or some clients, will gather them to help us out, to prepare and review the return for these individuals. And you will receive great results, because all of them really appreciate the free services provided to them. And every time, despite it being long day helping out so many people, it's always very rewarding.

Global opportunities

I'm passionate about Shanghai, because I was born and raised in a city not that far from Shanghai. I came to the US about 11 years ago for college, and since then been with KPMG. I'm bilingual, and bi- cultural in certain ways and KPMG has a huge China practice. I had the opportunity in the effort to develop the US China practice, to visit the Shanghai office a couple of times now. What I witnessed in the Shanghai office is that it almost makes me feel that I'm visiting a United Nations, because you see people from all around the world. They do a rotation in that particular office. I've seen people from Finland, from Australia, from Canada, from almost anywhere you can think about to work in Shanghai. And because the firm is a global firm, we have a global structure. We have the channels to facilitate the rotation across border.

In the Shanghai office, in the last I don't know how many years, they have been greatly needing people, and they have been using a lot of talents from overseas. So it is great to see a firm so accommodating and providing so many multi cultural experiences for those who, wanted to do things like that, and get to travel, and even live there, and work there. It's part of the greatest experience you can ever find.