Editors’ Note

As Deloitte’s New York Managing Partner, Roger Arrieux leads Deloitte’s largest office and oversees more than 6,500 professionals. He currently serves as the Chairperson of the Harlem YMCA Board of Directors, Chairperson of the Black Achievers in Industry Steering Committee, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the A Better Chance organization. In addition, he participates in leadership activities with various other charitable organizations. Arrieux earned a BBA degree from Baruch College and an MBA from Columbia Business School.

Firm Brief

Deloitte (deloitte.com) provides industry-leading audit, consulting, tax and advisory services to many of the world’s most admired brands, including nearly 90 percent of the Fortune 500® and more than 7,000 private companies. Deloitte’s people come together for the greater good and work across the industry sectors that drive and shape today’s marketplace, delivering measurable and lasting results that help reinforce public trust in the capital markets, inspire clients to see challenges as opportunities to transform and thrive, and help lead the way toward a stronger economy and a healthier society. Deloitte is a part of the largest global professional services network serving clients in the markets that are most important to them. Building on more than 175 years of service, Deloitte’s network of member firms spans more than 150 countries and territories.

Will you highlight Deloitte’s history and heritage and what have been the keys to the organization’s consistent industry leadership?

Our roots go back 175 years. We’ve been at the intersection of business and technology and have served clients through three industrial revolutions. We have a remarkable history of resilience which we owe to our founders who had the prescience to take strategic risks and make long-term, forward-thinking investments even in the toughest of times. They not only laid the groundwork for an incredibly strong foundation that we’re continuing to strengthen, but also paved the way for an innovative and entrepreneurial mindset that is deeply embedded in our culture. This has empowered our growth as a multidisciplinary organization as we’ve made steady investments to augment our extensive range of capabilities. Having all of these resources under one roof to serve client needs and tackle issues from a multitude of lenses is a source of differentiation for us and, I believe, one of the key reasons for our consistent industry leadership.

The pandemic has been a challenging time for all, but at the same time the bold investments we’ve made over the years have allowed us to navigate it from a position of strength. The current environment has prompted us to make even greater investments in our people, acquisitions, alliances and technology solutions that will serve our organization well into the future. I am confident that with the accelerated pace of technological change, the next generation of leaders will be met with even more rewarding and exciting opportunities in our profession.

How do you define the Deloitte difference and what sets the firm apart in the industry?

Deloitte is differentiated by several key characteristics: the size and scale of our global network; the breadth of services we bring to the marketplace; our talent experience; and our culture of innovation, inclusion, and purpose. The amalgamation of these attributes equips and inspires our people to do their best work, and the impact Deloitte is making for clients, the capital markets, and society more broadly is ultimately a reflection of their distinct contributions.

Our people represent diversity in every sense of the word – in terms of geography, gender, race, skillsets and more. Over the last couple of decades, we have significantly expanded the type of experiences and skillsets we look for in the people we hire. What has resulted is a vast array of disciplines, perspectives, and backgrounds in our people – our workforce includes healthcare experts, data scientists, veterans, accountants, psychologists, engineers, forensics experts, designers, writers, economists, scientists, and even former professional athletes. This intentional effort over the years to build an environment with such diversity of thought has activated the full power of our organization. When we bring together the ingenuity of our people, especially in an age of rapidly proliferating technology, there really is no challenge we aren’t equipped to tackle.

How do you describe Deloitte’s culture and what have been the keys to maintaining culture during the pandemic?

Our people are at the core of our culture – all fostering an environment that promotes inclusion, trust, respect, collaboration, high performance, innovation and purpose every day. The way our people came together over the past year and a half is incredibly illustrative of this culture. Despite the multitude of their own personal concerns and challenges, they continued to take great care of each other, show up in our communities and brilliantly serve clients.

The key to driving and maintaining our culture has always been to prioritize and invest in our people. A crucial part of that is ensuring the talent experience evolves as their needs evolve and that there is continued alignment between the values of our organization and that of our workforce. We achieve this through active listening, empathy, authenticity, inclusiveness, and empowering our people to engage in meaningful work that not only results in a tangible difference for our clients, but also for society as a whole. We are committed to continually enhancing the opportunities for growth and development at Deloitte in order to make an impact that matters for our people, clients and communities. It is the very reason we launched our Purpose Office earlier this year and named our first Chief Purpose Officer as part of a concerted effort to embed purpose into every facet of our business, including connecting our people with the types of projects that reflect their core values and passions.

What has made Deloitte so successful at building long-lasting client relationships and client loyalty?

The relationships we build with clients are based not only on the high-quality services we provide, but on a shared sense of values and commitments. Our clients are operating in an increasingly complex and highly matrixed environment, and what we do exceptionally well is help them see and navigate the interconnected pieces to the issues they’re trying to address as well as recognize the untapped opportunities that exist for their organizations.

We are unmatched in the breadth and scale of our capabilities, and we bring all of it together to accomplish amazing things that simply can’t be achieved working in a silo. The very traditional nature of how companies interact is fundamentally changing. Since we’ve built a deep portfolio of ecosystem and alliance relationships, we’re able to collaborate with other organizations to combine resources and deliver enhanced value, insights and custom-built solutions to those we serve. Above and beyond our work, many of our clients choose Deloitte because there is an alignment of values, and the reciprocity in our relationship allows us to make a positive impact for society and our broad range of stakeholders.

The last year and a half was a testament to all of this as we brought together the agility and resilience of our organization to respond to the changing needs of our clients, while also collaborating with them on COVID-related relief efforts.

Deloitte has had a long-standing commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. How is the organization building upon its efforts and what does accountability look like today?

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) is foundational to who we are. It’s a business imperative woven into every aspect of our organization, and we aspire to set the standard for DEI by creating the culture and systems that empower all of our people to thrive. We have refreshed our multi-year DEI strategy to heighten our focus on equity. This includes enhancing equitable talent and business systems and processes within Deloitte, as well as working with organizations like OneTen, Management Leaders for Tomorrow, and others in the marketplace, to orchestrate actions in our communities that help create equitable outcomes for all. Just recently, we announced a $75 million investment to increase racial and ethnic diversity in the tax and accounting fields as part of our new Making Accounting Diverse and Equitable (MADE) commitment. As we continue to make significant investments across our diverse communities, we are demonstrating our allyship in visible and impactful ways – whether that’s speaking out against all forms of racism or advocating for our LGBTQIA+ community.

Our senior leaders play a significant role in driving accountability. They are deeply engaged in our DEI strategy and committed to our DEI investments within Deloitte and externally. Through the recent launch of our inaugural DEI Transparency report, we took further steps to show how important we feel accountability is for driving greater equity in society and the marketplace. The data in that report ultimately allows us to set goals that effects real change and take ownership for reaching our goals.

What do you see as Deloitte’s responsibility to the communities it serves and to being a force for good in society?

More than ever, we’re seeing the need for the collective business community to deepen its role in helping address some of the world’s most critical societal issues. We also know that our own people want to be a part of something bigger; they want to build careers with us where they can fulfill their passions, do purpose-driven work, and connect to the causes they care about most. For us, operating with purpose is not just a societal responsibility, but also a strategic priority, and our size and scale allows us to make significant contributions and produce substantial outcomes.

The business landscape, more broadly, has dramatically shifted as well. The pandemic has further underscored the significant interest from key constituents – employees, investors, suppliers and others – to make certain that leading companies are incorporating purpose into their core strategies.

Deloitte is headquartered in New York. What are the keys to New York’s recovery and rebuilding from the pandemic and how critical is a strong public/private partnership to New York’s future success?

We have three offices in New York City and thousands of Deloitte professionals who call New York their home office – we’re very proud of our economic footprint here. We’ve seen time and again that New York City’s energy, cultural dynamism and resiliency bounces back stronger after each crisis which comes from this city’s special ability to turn challenge into opportunity.

Strong public/private partnerships are absolutely critical to recovery, rebuilding and future success. Through organizations like the Partnership for New York City, for example, Deloitte and business organizations across the city are coming together to push forward with priorities such as infrastructure modernization and a more equitable healthcare system. This aggregation of assets across New York City’s ecosystems will continue to be fundamental to tackling issues at scale and building a tech-driven economy that is inclusive and sustainable.

What advice do you offer young people interested in a career in the industry?

One piece of advice that I would offer is to take in a broad worldview. Success in professional services is more than just being very knowledgeable in a particular subject or specializing on an issue. Everything is connected in the world we serve, and if you can model those connections in your own experiences and your own thinking, you’ll be better equipped to tackle complex issues with an interdisciplinary perspective. Very often, we find the solutions to disparate problems intersect in unexpected ways. When you’re tuned into those crosscurrents, you can bring exceptional value to your teams, clients and community.