Joe Dunleavy
PricewaterhouseCooper LLP
Houston, TX USA
"Having perspective about what lies ahead helps you to understand if you should pursue a career and for how long."
Career Roadmap
Joe's work combines: Travel, Business, and Learning / Being Challenged
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Day In The Life
Skills &
Education
Here's the path I took:
High School
Plainview Old Bethpage High School
Bachelor's Degree
Economics, General
University at Buffalo, the State University of New York
Graduate Degree
Accounting
Canisius College
Here's the path I recommend for someone who wants to be an Accountants and Auditors:
Bachelor's Degree: Economics, General
Graduate Degree: Accounting
Learn more about different paths to this career
Life & Career Milestones
My path in life took a while to figure out
1.
Paying for an undergraduate degree while balancing my work and social life.
2.
Failing step one and having to re-prioritize my academic, work, and social lives. This allowed me to earn my undergraduate degree and get into graduate school.
3.
Earning my MBA in Accounting while attending night classes and working two jobs. Experience professors who took an interest in me and helped me to achieve my academic goals.
4.
Receiving my first several job offers and selecting PwC as the place where I would start my professional career. I have several options and chose the firm where I felt I would be most challenged.
5.
Early in my career, I had the option to travel throughout the US and then realized that I wanted to go abroad. I embarked on a 3-year overseas assignment to Russia (this grew to 4.5 year assignment).
6.
Life in Russia—New culture, new office (10 times the size of the office from which I came). New and diverse colleagues. I didn't speak the language and couldn't read the alphabet—What have I done?
7.
Returning home to a new office in the US and then moving to two different offices after repatriating. Being mobile paid off in knowledge, skills, relationships, and admission to the Partnership.
8.
The final phase on my career, the most complicated, challenging, and rewarding phase. The lessons, relationships, knowledge & skills gained to this point need to be leveraged to be successful & happy.
Defining Moments
How I responded to discouragement
THE NOISE
Messages from Teachers:
You'll never be an accountant.
How I responded:
I assessed my behaviors and actions that resulted in the discouraging statement and stopped those behaviors/actions that moved me away from my goal and implemented new behaviors/actions that moved me to my goal of becoming an accountant.
Experiences and challenges that shaped me
Obtaining the financing for a college degree was something that I was going to have to do on my own.