ACCELERATE 2025: An Audacious Five-Year Strategy to Drive Meaningful Change at KPMG

Below is the letter I shared with all KPMG professionals today outlining my strategic vision to accelerate diversity and equity in our workplace.  

Today is Juneteenth – a day we commemorate the end of slavery in the United States. Sadly, on this day we are also reminded that we still have a very long way to go to achieve social justice, equity and inclusion in our country.

I have witnessed an incredible measure of change over my lifetime and over the course of my KPMG career. The firm today looks nothing like it did in 1983, when I joined as a young graduate from the University of Texas. Then there were 15 female partners and 37 partners of color; and those paltry numbers were commonplace across the profession. We’ve made significant progress during the past 37 years, and that has been good for our firm, good for our people, and good for our clients. We’ve changed a lot, but we haven’t changed nearly enough.  I’ve heard that message loud and clear from many of you who, over the last several weeks, graciously have shared your stories through emails, phone calls, and virtual meetings. For too long, we haven’t changed enough.

Now is the time for bold, audacious action and I intend to seize this moment. Fortunately for us, with the good work of Michele Meyer-Shipp, our Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer, and the National Inclusion & Diversity (I&D) Team, we have a solid foundation on which to build.  

That foundation includes important initiatives focused on three pillars:  

• Accelerating diversity and equity in our Workforce through fairness across our talent management systems and processes, as well as market-level representation of underrepresented talent on key account teams and leadership;
• Energizing an engaged Workplace through an elevated focus on developing inclusive leaders and using the power of our vast community of I&D Ambassadors and Culture Champions to maintain and enhance our environment of inclusion for all; and
• Winning in the Marketplace through enhanced client engagement, account team support, and top industry recognition around our I&D efforts.

These critical initiatives must continue now with more intensity than ever before. That’s why I have asked the I&D team to do just that, to double-down and mobilize all parts of the firm for an integrated, next-level approach to I&D that is fit for purpose here at KPMG.

At the same time, I know that doubling down will not be enough. While I am confident that our firm will continue to evolve, it will not evolve fast enough in the absence of an accelerant – a surge of focused activity, led by business leaders, and designed to put the firm on a path to dynamic change right away. That accelerant is ACCELERATE 2025. 

ACCELERATE 2025 will be a targeted exercise to tackle one essential dimension of the overall I&D agenda – namely, ensuring that more individuals from underrepresented groups choose KPMG as their employer of choice, build careers at KPMG, and advance to leadership positions within our firm and within the profession. ACCELERATE 2025 is focused on our people – recruiting the best talent, developing that talent, and promoting that talent through our ranks – and is intended to ensure that we set and achieve an ambitious goal for 2025. I have asked my management team and a task force of others to take the next three months to develop an audacious plan to ensure that, by 2025, the firm and the firm’s leaders look a lot more like America than we do today. ACCELERATE 2025 will launch on July 1, importantly on the first day of my tenure as the next Chair and CEO of our firm and appropriately during the week of Independence Day when the promise of our country is on full display. 

The initiative will have as its North Star three guiding principles. It will be propelled by bold leadership, informed by our values-driven perspective, and anchored by strong accountability.

Bold Leadership. My direction to the team is to think and act boldly in identifying concrete, actionable recommendations. The team will architect a creative and pragmatic roadmap, but they must begin with an unencumbered sense of the possible. I’m asking them to think outside the proverbial box and do what’s right and, perhaps in some cases, what we as a firm haven’t done before.

Values-Driven. We must, as always, be grounded in our values. We of course do not tolerate discrimination, harassment or racism, but we’ll have to do so much more than adhere to that basic tenet to effectuate the big change that we’re seeking. For ACCELERATE 2025 to take flight, we must commit to values-driven action that ensures that our people do not merely have a place to work but a place to thrive.

Accountability. Our leaders will be responsible for measurable progress, and that accountability must cascade throughout management. We also commit to publishing relevant information so that our people and the public can hold our feet to the fire. We intend to establish KPMG as a market leader, and we only can do that through transparency and an openness to constructive engagement both within the firm and with external stakeholders.

To my KPMG Family, this is my call to action: we must act with urgency, purpose, and stewardship.

We’re living in a moment in time when the dictates of justice couldn’t be more obvious or action more urgent, and when corporate America never has been more aligned on the business imperative. We know the benefits of a diverse workforce when inclusively led, especially in the professional services business, are immense: inclusive, diverse teams produce better ideas, increase creativity, and are more productive. In other words, we’re better able to solve our clients’ toughest problems, and that’s at the heart of what we do. 

At the end of the day, we are mere stewards of this firm. The work that we have the good fortune to do today is because of the effort and investments of those professionals who came before us; and we, in turn, have an obligation to leave this firm considerably stronger than we found it.  At this moment in history, Inclusion and Diversity is our legacy issue. 

Paul