PwC Fireside Chat: Catching Up with PwC US Senior Partner Paul Griggs (’96, MSA ’97)

What resonated with you during your time as a student here at Wake Forest?

Oh, so much. There’s a natural beauty about Wake Forest that makes you want to show up on this campus and be a part of it. I remember the day that I came for my visit. It was a day like today — the sky was popping blue, the flowers were beginning to come out, the leaves were beginning to turn green. So what drove me to Wake was the beauty, the reputation of the University, and the feeling that I was going to get a whole university experience, from great academics to community environment to sports, all in one place. What I have taken from Wake more than anything else is this place taught me how to work and how to focus and how to grind and, yes, how to have some fun in the process. But it was the discipline and the focus and the kind of foundational commitment that the school establishes in you, because they make you work hard. 

There’s a reason why the students affectionately call it “Work Forest.”

I will tell you, as a working professional, the students that come out of this university are prepared. They’re equipped. They have that grit, and that defines what you do when you get into your next thing, whether it’s more professional schooling or a working experience. You know, this place sets a foundation that if you go on that continuous learning journey and you apply yourself, and you stay focused, and you remind yourself that it’s the whole person that has to show up, no matter where you go it’s still what you put into it that you get out of it. That old adage, you know, that’s real. Wake Forest gives you that foundation.

So you kind of talked about the work ethic you developed here, but how do you think your education at Wake Forest contributed to you achieving your personal and professional goals?

First, personally, I met my best friend and wife right here on this campus. If I step away from the so-called “social side” of what Wake Forest did for me, it taught me what problem solving really looks like. The group projects, the engagement with faculty on a one-on-one basis, the words of encouragement, and frankly, the words of constructive criticism. Those moments when they basically said, in their own ways, “Paul, I expect more,” and it was those moments where, for me, expecting more was always encouragement to go further, because they believed in me. They were saying it to help me go and figure out the things that I was struggling with. “You want to figure it out, Paul, we’re gonna have to go figure out how to solve the problem, and I’ll give you the tools, and I’ll give you the encouragement, and I’ll give you the direction, and I’ll allocate and assign teammates that are part of your resource pool, but you gotta go solve the problems.” 

And this problem solving skill set, to me, was something that was instilled by Wake Forest. It’s a perfect size institution with amazingly bright students and amazing faculty members and in a setting that helps you to learn and reminds you that you have to also step outside and breathe the beautiful, clean spring air.

So switching gears a little bit, with PwC, what has been a career highlight for you? 

I’d say a highlight was spending three years living and working out of London. You know, PwC has 370,000-plus people that operate in 150 or more countries, and we do a lot of tax work, from compliance work to tax advice and planning, and we do end-to-end consulting, from strategy to business transformation to technology transformation to cyber risk and control to analytics and data and AI. As a result, we have clients all over the place. And so the opportunities to move and to travel and to go on long term assignments is just unbelievable. 

I’d say the defining moment for me, or I should say one of the most proud moments, was taking my family and living in London with our firm for those three years. I mean, it was a fairy tale experience for me, both personally and professionally, so it was awesome. I also spent time leading pieces of our business, whether it was a practice in Charlotte, North Carolina, or a practice in London, England, or back in New York City. I had a chance to run all of the offices and regions of our US and Mexico firm, which was fantastic. I had the chance to be the business sponsor for our people strategy.

And was I always prepared to step into those next assignments? No, but that’s but that’s the joy of the opportunity. It’s figuring it out. It’s the problem solving. It’s back to what Wake Forest instills in its students, and certainly has instilled in me. These are the things that I’m most proud of professionally that were, frankly, things that you didn’t necessarily pursue or chase, but things that just kept coming to you because you were an eager and a competent and engaging teammate of the people around you.

Can you touch on why you feel PwC’s work with AI is such an important initiative?

To me, emerging technologies will change our business. But as we talked about this morning with some of your students, you go back to 1994 when I was in college at Wake Forest University and the internet was showing up for the first time. We’ve stared into changing and progressive technologies in the past, and what’s happened in the process? We’ve created jobs, we’ve created new opportunities. We’ve done things that we never imagined at the speed of change that is great for our business, and it’s great for businesses across this country and across the globe. And so to me, what excites me about AI and emerging technologies is the fact that it is going to push us further and faster. 

If you look at things that we do across each of our businesses and inside PwC, our teammates have what we call “ChatPwC,” which is the layer that effectively enables our connection to language models across the board. So all of our people are engaged in the technologies, in their workflows every day, some to a great extent, and some only beginning in the process. Someone once said to me that AI won’t take your job, but someone who knows AI will, and that’s stayed with me. And whether we’re talking about AI, whether we’re talking about quantum computing, whether we’re talking about data and analytics, whether we’re talking about the advent of technologies, moving into cloud environments, to me, if we’re not constantly thinking about what’s next, what’s around the corner, what’s five years forward, then we’re not going to be at the leading edge, either as people or as companies. And at PwC, our strategy, our North Star, our mission, our vision, is to drive our clients to the leading edge, period. 

Am I the deep technician engineer that understands all elements and is out creating the agentic workforce and how the agents talk and operate and move together? No, I’m not, but I’m asking lots of questions. I’m engaging with loads of smart people who are doing things that I could never have imagined inside our company and with our clients in the marketplace. It already blows my mind, and we are only in the infancy part of AI.

What advice would you give to our current business students who are beginning their career journeys?

One thing would be, attitude matters. Say yes to everything. Why? Because it attracts people to you. It makes them want to work with you. It makes them want to give you assignments and challenging opportunities, which are hard things to figure out. You need all those things, because all those things enable your progression. So I’d say first, it’s attitude. 

Two, it’s do your homework. It’s not that different from college. What you put into it is what you get out of it. And so those of us that decide that I have to be on that continuous learning journey, we progress just a little bit faster. We get a little bit smarter, but to me, you have to be that continuous learner, and you have to pour yourself into it, not because somebody tells you to, not because the job requires it, but because you want to continue to learn. 

The last thing I’d say is be proactive in managing and navigating your own career. Don’t wait for somebody to tell you what you’re going to do next. If you have something that is a passion of yours, something that you’re being drawn towards, tell somebody about it, because the best thing about professional work is when you develop those informal coaches, those informal mentors, those informal champions. You tell them about your goals, your ambitions, and the next thing you know, you find yourself in those environments, and you turn around and you say, “How did I get here?” Well, I got there by attitude. I got there by hard work. I got there by doing my homework over and over and over again, and by putting myself out there and telling people what my ambitions were. 

And the next thing you know, you’re a partner at PwC, you’re the senior partner at PwC, you’re the CEO of a private firm, or you’re working in private equity or an investment bank, or you’re standing in marketing or human capital, or you’re teaching at Wake Forest. All of those things happen in my mind because of the characteristics of behaviors that I’ve just outlined.

Interview conducted by Melanie Porter, Associate Director, Marketing and Communication – Social Media