Video transcript: The advice I’d give my younger self, with Joanna Ahlstrom and Ali Butler

Transcript

Joanna: Hello. I'm Joanna Ahlstrom, Chief marketing officer in our UK consulting business, and I am here with one of our MCA finalists for this year.

Ali:Hi, I'm Ali Butler. I've been at the firm for two and a half years, and I was recently nominated as a finalist for The Apprentice of the year category.

Joanna: Congratulations. No small achievement there, so really good luck on the evening. So two and a half years in, what have you enjoyed most on your journey so far?

Ali: To me it's really the variety you get here. I've worked with so many amazing people and amazing teams, and I've seen places I've travelled to places that I would have never expected to, and I think all of this is just summed up by the amount of clients we work with in the different areas, I think the exposure I've gotten to different topics, areas where frankly, in the past I wouldn't have even known I loved, is just incomparable to anywhere else.

Joanna: Did you expect the nomination? Was it a surprise?

Ali: No, I didn't expect it. I'd spoken a bit with my team about these kind of things coming up,
but still, when it came through, it was quite surreal.

Joanna: And so why do you think you were nominated?

Ali: I think it comes down to the opportunities. In such a big organisation, there's always something going on, and I think if you can reach out and grab those opportunities, it's
genuinely a fantastic place to be.

Joanna: Great. Well, good luck for the evening, but, I also want to ask you, at the start of your career over here. So looking ahead, what are you most looking forward to?

Ali: I would say in the future, I really, really want to be leading projects that make a difference and to actually see where these things lead, not only for us as a business, but as a society. I think that there's so much going on here that if you're passionate about something, there will always be a way for you to go out and get involved or grasp onto it, and I think that we can really make
some good things happen.

Joanna: I look forward to seeing your career progress over time.

Ali: Thank you very much. Question for you now. At times like this, what makes you most proud of our people?

Joanna: So, our people really care about the clients that they work with, they want to do the best for them, they want to deliver exceptional value every day, and they work really hard for that, and so it's fantastic, it's a fantastic feeling to see them being recognised and celebrating that hard work on an evening such as this.

Ali: Absolutely, and if you were to give advice to your younger self or anyone else my age, what would that be?

Joanna: So, we talk a lot about being curious here at PwC, and I would probably focus on that,
because if I had to go back to my younger self, I did ask lots of questions. I love asking questions and I was curious, but I'm sure there were times I can think of times when I held back asking questions because I thought that maybe someone expected me to know the answer, so I would say, what I would say to my younger self is, ‘don't do that, ask as many questions as you want’ because this is a brilliant place, so many different, such great talent, first of all, but diverse talent, people from different backgrounds working on different client projects, that the more questions you ask, the more curious you ask, the better your experience and learning from that. So that's what I would say to my younger self.

Ali: Thank you very much.