The 2017 Global Leaders in Consulting: Avani Desai

Avani Desai says there is a lot to be proud of working at a high growth firm—every day is a new challenge and new opportunity to be successful. "I have enjoyed working on starting new service lines to support the demanding compliance landscape, such as HITRUST and GDPR," she says. "Working with our principals, teams, and clients on how we can leverage what is already being done to add on what their clients are asking is exciting and fulfilling."

Desai is a Partner and Executive Vice President at Schellman & Company, the largest niche CPA firm in the world that focuses on technology and security assessments. Her career spans more than 15 years. For the last five years at Schellman, Avani has been focusing on growth strategies, strategic client and market development, industry analysis, and new services.

"It is humbling and gratifying that the work I do every day is impactful and worthy by both our clients and my firm," Desai says. "I always have lived by the Confucius quote, 'Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life,' and I have been lucky to find that in the consulting industry."

Desai says being a trusted partner for clients and helping them solve their compliance issues has been exciting since she started and still is today. "We are not just helping our clients, but we are helping them write their story so they can tell their customer how much they have achieved," Desai says. "Whether it is emerging requirements from technologies like blockchain or artificial intelligence or the threat of cyber-security the compliance market is seeing a lot of growth and I am excited that I along with the Schellman team are at the forefront to help clients."

In this industry, information security, we estimate that by 2020, there will be a deficit of two million jobs.  Jobs we won't be able to fill—good paying, satisfying jobs, that will go unfilled. "Therefore, there is a growing urgency to empower and encourage our children to go into STEM-related fields. The solution is simple and straightforward: embrace and encourage children into expanding their career search to emerging disciplines," Desai says.

That's why for Desai, mentoring women is a priortity. "There is a huge pool of latent female talent which is inhibiting not only the speed of commercial change, but the potential of all our businesses," she says. "We women have a mission-critical battle which is to fight against the gravitational pull of our own self-doubt to achieve 100 percent gender parity."

Q&A: What motivates you to excel?

Desai: "My family. My parents pushed me towards a path of success and encouraging me every single day. I clearly remember my father telling me when I was young: 'You'll face many obstacles, but you will be your own biggest competitor, your biggest critic. You'll have bad days and bad bosses and bad clients, but those will come and go. But it's the voice in your head telling you that you aren't good enough that will keep you up night.' That voice can be persistent, and you can't just ignore it. Work hard honestly, enough to silence the doubts in your own mind and you'll sleep soundly every night."