Rosheen Garnon wanted to be an astrophysicist growing up, and still has the paraphernalia to prove she was serious about a star-gazing career.
But taught the importance of flexibility and adaptability at a young age – she caught the bus 30km to her rural NSW school every day at just four and a half – she switched her career ambitions following a high school exchange to the United States.
Garnon is now the national managing partner of tax at accounting firm KPMG, in charge of a team of about 76 partners and 750 staff, and actively passionate about seeing more women reach leadership positions in professional services. She started with the firm as a graduate, spent some years in the London office, and was appointed partner while pregnant with her second child.
She looks back to the independence she was given growing up as shaping how she’s handled her career, including the challenges she’s overcome along the way. “I think in today’s world having that resilience in thinking about how you’re going to adapt to new situations is very important as we think about our careers,” she tells Women’s Agenda. “Flexibility, resilience and adaptability – if you get them early then it positions you well.”
Garnon’s astrophysics aspiration took a turn after she attended a “close-up encounters” program in Washington during her final year of high school, where students were flown in from all over the country to participate in government decision-making. She was also part of her school’s United Nations club. The two experiences changed her perspective on what kind of career she could pursue and she returned home and studied economics (majoring in accounting) and law at ANU in Canberra.
It was a fortunate time to be studying tax, following the 1975 Asprey Tax Review Committee Report which led to the tax system being overhauled. Garnon found her skills were in demand upon graduating, and was offered six pay increases from when she got her first offer with an accounting firm until her first day in the job. She was one of 10 graduates (three women) to start in a tax practice of just 36 people at Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Company – which later became KPMG.
She met her husband at the firm – a relationship she says was hushed up in the early days – and later requested a transfer to London when he was posted overseas. “Back then, it was frowned upon for you to be going out with someone in the office. We had to navigate all that. It was a long time before we told people we were together.”
The two returned home after 18 months, spending just eight months locally before leaving Australia again to get the most out of their London experience, gain broader skills in a much larger economy and ultimately better position their careers. They had their first child overseas, and their second upon returning home again to pursue partnership in the Australian office. Garnon was appointed partner in July 2000.
“It was an interesting time in the lead-up [to being appointed] because in becoming a partner, you’re going through a process where you’re tested in a way, in that you have partners who don’t know you who are looking at you to see whether you have the skills set to go through,” she says. “In addition to that, you’re trying to deliver on a daily basis with all your daily clients and to not drop any balls. And you’re a brand new mum! There was a level of juggling required in trying to make it work. It was stressful.”
So how did she manage it? Garnon reflects again on the resilience and adaptability she learnt as a child, as well as the experience in multitasking she developed managing a large team in London. Meanwhile, she had a range of female role models she could call on for support, as well as three sponsors within the firm continually tracking and aiding her progress. “They were working with me on a weekly basis regarding what I needed to do and how I was going, giving me continual feedback on where I was positioning myself.”
Later, Garnon was appointed global head of international executive services in 2006, in charge of 2500 staff across 128 countries, a position that involved a significant amount of travel. Her husband took a career break to look after the children. “I remember I came home one night to an empty house with all the doors open, wondering what was going on,” she says. “I went into the backyard and there were the three of them playing cricket. I knew at that point that my husband was really happy and that we’d made the right decision.”
Garnon recognises that accounting firms still have a long way to go on getting women into their partnerships in equal numbers to men. Currently, KPMG’s female partner rate sits about 17%, but Garnon believes things are changing, especially now that 38% of senior management positions are occupied by women. She says women’s workforce participation across the board is a “collective responsibility” – though she personally has a strong role to play.
As such, she sits on the firm’s diversity leadership team and chairs the “Women in Partnership” group. She says accessible and affordable childcare is essential for retaining women in the workforce and that we simply do not have enough places and flexibility available currently.
“But it cannot just be about government funding. Employers have a role in this as well. It’s about how we set up the funding arrangements to make that happen,” she says. “There’s a role to play in the tax system and also for employers to be encouraged to offer more childcare places.”
As for her own career, Garnon concedes she never had a clear idea on how it would all pan out. She wasn’t shooting for partner, she says, let alone managing partner. Always with her eyes on the next promotion, she took on opportunities as they emerged. These days, she still doesn’t believe too many graduates need to think long-term about their career plans, even in a firm such as KPMG.
“There would be a small group who would typically be male, who have it all planned out,” she say. “But most of our people would have a view on the next couple of years, maybe a three year view.”
She encourages staff to look to the next promotion, and to understand what experience and skills are required to fill the role.
“For me, a promotion is about two things: your skills set and your commercial experience,” she says. “It may be that you can get your skills set up very quickly and that you’re just waiting on commercial experience, and if you can get to that point then that’s perfect. That makes it very easy for you to move up. If you’re still developing a skills set as you’re going through that, then it’s about understand what benchmarks you need to reach and where you’re positioned.”
It’s clearly worked for Garnon.