How Julie Sweet Became CEO at Accenture

OK. So you're a corporate partner at Cravath which is a well-compensated law firm let's say. And you're making a fair amount of money by any standard. Why did you decide to leave and give up that partnership. And where the people at Cravath who usually don't have people leaving with a shock. I think they were surprised but I was leaving for a great role. So they were very supportive. You know I still remember being at my desk and picking up the phone when a recruiter called me about the Accenture job. And it was a few months after my father had passed away at a very young age at 68. And I think looking back that's why I took a meeting. And and I basically said I'm 42 years old and I can see my future and it would be a great future. I loved Cravath and Accenture offered me something different. And I decided to take it. And I think it was the last gift of my dad to be honest. So did you think when you joined the company that a female would become the head of this gigantic organization or did you think that it was going to be typically a male run kind of thing. You know I didn't really think about it because I joined as general counsel. And you know as the general counsel. And you know in coming in where the average tenure on the leadership team when I joined was 30 years. I didn't come in with the expectation that I would be CEO. And you know really when we think about how do you how do you make a change in leadership and how do you continue to foster diversity in your leadership. Our former CEO Pierre Nantan was a great example of someone who sponsored me saw potential and created a new pathway that I certainly didn't have an expectation when I came into Accenture.