Client Service Award
Leanne Sardiga
PwC
Despite winning a Women Leaders in Consulting Award this year, it's safe to say 2010 was the life-changing one for PwC's Leanne Sardiga. Professionally, she led a team on a client's $1 billion retail and consumer acquisition, including cross-functional diligence, synergy analysis and integration assistance. "It was a major strategic move for my client and had very high visibility and focus," she says.
Meanwhile, Sardiga was pregnant with her first child, which she was not aware of until a week after they announced the transaction. During the months that followed, she continued to work on the integration and other client work and helped the client settle a working capital dispute on favorable terms on her final day before maternity leave. "Needless to say, the client's acquisition has been quite successful and my family's 'acquisition' has been more rewarding than my husband and I could have imagined."
At work, Sardiga's deal experience includes over 200 transactions globally, and she has worked on numerous complex acquisitions and divestitures and has helped clients work through issues in commercial, financial, tax, valuation, operations, IT and HR diligence.
"The stakes are high, time is short, and no two transactions are exactly alike," she says. "I love the challenge of helping my clients separate the issues from the distractions, and executing the right deals on the best terms possible. And I certainly don't do this alone. I love the teamwork and diversity of perspectives involved in a transaction—both with my clients and within a cross-functional team from PwC."
As if all that wasn't enough, she also received the Elijah Watt Sells Gold Award for the highest score in the U.S. on the Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination.
"I always had an interest in both finance and accounting as well as broader business issues, so I thought that starting my career at an accounting firm that also offered consulting options would be a great match," she says. "I was hooked early on and am still enjoying it after over 17 years."
Sardiga says that when she started in Transaction Services, there were virtually no women managers or above. "It was challenging to figure out how to be successful in the industry while being true to myself," she says. "As I became more comfortable serving clients with my own style, I saw my career take off."
—Joe Kornik
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