Deloitte had been making a special effort to attract and retain top women consultants for 10 years when the company, in December 2003, asked Diane Davies, principal, to head up the effort nationally. The program, although initially successful, had stumbled during the economic turndown. “We started seeing an increase in the number of women leaving the firm,” notes Davies.

Given her passion for mentoring, Davies proved to be the right person for the task. In the short time she has headed the initiative, she has built a robust professional development program to groom strong women leaders and fill the pipeline. She does so by recruiting senior management across the practice for mentoring, coaching, and succession planning. “Our Women”s Initiative continues to be an engine for innovative professional development and retention programs that benefit not just our women, but all of our people,” she says.
The women’s program, however, is only part of what Davies does at Deloitte. She also leads Deloitte’s health plan practice on the West Coast. In this effort, she gets directly involved with the management teams at many of the West Coast’s leading health insurance plans, helping them to develop corporate strategy and improve business unit operations.

Still, the best part of her job at Deloitte is how it “allows me to be an entrepreneur, but do it in a large company. This means that I can sell the work I like to do and am passionate about and have the support infrastructure behind me,” says Davies. This allows her to sell an idea requiring an esoteric skill fully confident that somewhere within Deloitte the skill is available.

The hardest part of the job is setting boundaries. “This is a real challenge. You can do this job 24x7 if you let yourself,” says Davies. With two daughters, 8 and 10, at home — as well as a young puppy — Davies insists on carving out time to be there. Weekends are likely to find her on the sidelines of a soccer field cheering on her daughters.
Davies is a confirmed lifer at Deloitte, the only place she has worked since graduate school. She has spent 16 years at the firm — more, if she counts the years she interned there. Although she doesn’t envision herself as CEO — and certainly not if she continues to set aside the kind of time she wants to spend with her daughters — she intends to continue taking on new challenges and responsibilities at Deloitte and learning new things. Declares Davies: “I really enjoy consulting. I enjoy interacting with clients and our teams.”