Episode Details

Marna Ricker, Global Vice Chair, Tax — EY, has held various leadership roles including most recently the EY Americas Vice Chair – Tax. She engages and inspires her team to provide unique client experiences and create digitally enabled services.

On this podcast episode, Marna shares her insights on how to blend and balance soft skills with technical skills — touching on how to develop each set and how emerging technologies influence future accounting professionals.

What you'll learn in this episode

• How the tax industry has evolved over the years and advice Marna would give to her younger self (1:15)
• Key skills leaders are looking for in employees today (4:15)
• Can soft skills be learned? (6:18)
• Balancing technical changes while also developing leadership skills (8:23)
• How artificial intelligence (AI) is set to influence tax professionals' skills (10:52)
• Final thoughts (16:00)
• A page from Marna's travel journal (17:15)

AICPA resources

• Reimagining your tax practice — Tackle today's top practice management issues with insights and tips from pioneers in the tax community. The Reimagining Your Tax Practice webcast series will tackle these issues and more in a Q&A roundtable series with tax pioneers from the profession.

Transcript

April Walker: On today's podcast, listen to hear the importance of balancing soft and technical skills in a digital first world. Hello everyone and welcome to the AICPA's Tax Section Odyssey podcast, where we offer thought leadership on all things tax facing the profession. I'm April Walker, a lead manager from the Tax Section.

I'm here today with Marna Ricker, she's EY's Global Vice Chair of Tax. Marna, I just listened to a podcast you did with Tax Notes where you really delved into some heavy-hitting international tax topics. But thankfully, today, our discussion is going to be a little bit softer.

We're recording on a Friday so we're a little more relaxed. Your technical skills are definitely honed. Spent 28 years at EY and I think as I was doing some digging into your background, I think we're just about the same age or we've been in the career the same time. I was just at a conference earlier this week and telling my story about starting off in Big Four. Except it was Big Six at that time.

Welcome and I'd love to hear your thoughts on how the tax industry has evolved over this time in your career and what you would tell that fresh-face, eager tax staff that you were, if you could give her advice knowing what you know now.

Marna Ricker: First of all, thank you for having me and I agree it is a great Friday and we're in the holiday season, so it's really nice to be with you.

Yes, 28 years of doing this and obviously similar tenure to you. It's changed a lot and so let's just get into that.

I really on this precipice of a once in a generation, maybe once in a century change. We're rewriting old tax codes and we're moving from a bricks-and-mortar world to a digit