Data-Driven: Tech-enabled and diverse leadership experience at PwC

Blog | 4 minute read | July 11, 2025

When Ruyi first moved to Australia, she arrived as an international student from Shanghai, China, and didn’t know what path she wanted to take. But during her time at Macquarie University, she attended a panel discussion with a female Asian partner from one of the Big 4 accounting firms, and for her, that was a major turning point.

“I did some research and, within the Big 4 accounting firms, PwC was a standout. And because I was an international student, I thought I might go back to my own country after several years. So, I researched some options for my major and found that audit skills transfer to anywhere in the world. Wherever you go, the audit methodology will not change.”

Working as an auditor and financial advisor for the past 14 years, Ruyi has learned that no two days are the same. “Auditors regularly move from client-to-client and you have to learn about a lot of new companies and industries all the time. It’s all about analysing different risks and learning about how we can pick the material issue to focus on because you have limited time to finish. Not everything can be a priority. This has taught me to not only develop my technical accounting skills but also how to be a quick learner, teamplayer, resilient and how to prioritise tasks such as managing deadlines and negotiations.”

For Ruyi, technology has played a big role in her career. Not only has she worked for countless clients, but she also helped to digitally transform PwC’s internal finance function to be more automated. After streamlining the internal processes and reporting using powerful software like PowerBi, Ruyi turned back to client-facing work and was assigned to help Google with their global IFRS standard transformation.

“As auditors, we need to pay more attention to the technology to be able to compete in this new world. As leading audit providers, if we don’t focus on technology, we will fall behind. It’s these digital transformation experiences in my career that drove me to volunteer to be the Digital Accelerator leader for Assurance. PwC invests a lot in digitisation. So together, we develop a lot of new tools and apps with the help of our digital accelerators.”

When she thinks about what makes PwC special, Ruyi can boil it down to three words: collaboration, teamwork, and innovation. “When it comes to culture,” she says, “I think we can embrace our differences. Because at PwC, we respect and value difference, we know that people from different backgrounds can provide different thoughts. They have different points of view. When we value that difference, it makes their work easier and provides more value to our clients. It’s about working together. The culture is second to none.”

And when it comes to building culture, Ruyi has nothing but praise for the female leaders in Assurance. “When I first joined PwC, Sue Horlin was a young partner, and Michelle Chiang, who has an Asain background, was also a partner. It was important because I could see that in this world, it was not just white males who could be the leaders. Here, females and people with different cultural backgrounds could be leaders too. Sue Horlin encourages digital transformation too. She encouraged me to think outside of the box and to challenge myself, so she gave me a lot of opportunities to create digital assets for the partnership to use.”

Ruyi believes lots of different people can be successful at PwC. Her advice to anyone who wants to apply is to “never stop learning and being curious. Be brave, be passionate about what you're working on, and always be prepared to seize opportunities that may be presented to you because in these big organisations, we have so many opportunities and you can grow to be a better ‘You’ in your career. Journeys like Ruyi's happen every day at PwC. See if your journey is waiting by checking our open roles.

Data-Driven: Tech-enabled and diverse leadership experience at PwC

Meet Ruyi, a Senior Manager in Assurance - CFO Advisory, who prides herself on being a lifelong learner and making work simpler using technology.

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