I am a corporate tax attorney and CPA with experience at a Big 4 firm, at a top PE-focused Manhattan law firm, and now I'm finally in-house at a large multinational corporation doing tax planning. My ultimate goal is to become the CFO, either at this particular corporation or at another. I'm 31, and have 8 years of experience (I earned my JD mostly at night). I primarily focus on mid-market Cross Border M&A and Cross Border tax planning transactions.
I've been at this corporation for about a year now, and it is clear that I finally have some free time on my hands. I went from working 60-80 hour weeks at the law firm to a firm 40 hour work week, and of those 40 hours, I have quite a few that I could fill with study time.
My undergrad was in Accounting, hence the CPA, and my JD/LLM focused primarily on tax. I've definitely obtained all of the tax education that I possibly can, but with ~30 years left in my career I want to make sure that I am doing everything I can now to set myself up for the future. I make $175k now and can get expect mid-200's in the next 3-5 years if I stay here or if I leave.
I'm geographically close enough to Philly or NYC, making Wharton or Columbia/NYU possible. The biggest drawback is that my employer only has a token reimbursement program- $7500 per year, so I'd be paying for most of the education out of pocket.
As far as long term career goals, I intend to make it to the top of a tax department in the next 10 years or so if I remain solely focused on tax, but I would like to broaden my horizons in order to open the door to CFO as well. I work closely with the finance, treasury, and legal groups in my daily projects, but overall corporate finance is still somewhat a mystery to me. I fully understand the concepts of leverage from my days serving PE clients at the law firm, but corporate finance has so many more facets beyond simply raising debt to finance a transaction so that is something I'd like to get a better handle on. Also, I'd like to start getting involved in the larger strategic decisions for the corporation, such as our mid- and long-term plans for growth.
Anyway, in my mind I've sort of come to the conclusion that a Wharton EMBA would be worth the effort (and cost), but I haven't decided if an NYU/Columbia EMBA would be as well. I've always done well on entrance exams and have a mid-range pedigree (ivy undergrad, top tier law school), but can't be certain that I'd get in to Wharton so I'm just sort of thinking out loud at this point.
Curious to hear the opinions of the board. Full disclosure, my colleagues in the tax department think I should not do an MBA, but I've been discounting their opinions because none aspire to make it out of the tax department (and most don't even aspire to make it to the top of the tax department, which is at least my minimum goal).
Thanks!
I didn't do it but I have a few friends & family who have done the Wharton EMBA (I grew up outside of Philly and as anyone from Philly knows, most people don't drift too far outside of the Delaware Valley) and were in similar positions to you: they weren't the typical 27 year old candidate who wanted to take 2 years off and had made it to the point in a larger non-Wall Street finance company/industry where they had advanced but hit a plateau and wanted something to bust through it and it seemed to work for them. I'm thinking a cousin who rocked it in sales at an F500 industrial and was encouraged to get an EMBA to move up in the company (and by encouraged, they gave her a lot more than 10% of the tuition) and a friend who was in pharma with a science background who the company wanted to move out of the lab and into a senior management track. Another acquaintance did it from a major CPG in that borders the mid-south (not tough to guess which one...) and flew in twice a month to move up in marketing. It helped all of them.
If you think you're pigeonholed in tax it seems like it would work well although I'd check with your company (if you want to stay there) and confirm that it will allow you to move into corp fin because it's a shit load of money to do the Wharton program and to get into that CFO seat you'll need to get out of tax pretty soon. If you happen to be in the the healthcare/pharma space I know that the Wharton program is strong because it's obviously a good program but also simply due to the number of pharma companies within 50 miles of Philly.
I know people across the Columbia program that rave about it. NYU I generally hear is definitely lower quality. I know at my firm specifically it is definitely a plus and helps you move across the firm. But I second DingDong that, more importantly, I would look to move out of the Tax space within the next few years as well. What type of industry are you in currently? That will, in my opinion, change the answer to your question as well.
many EMBAs are monthly fly-in session for 3-4 days, and Wharton EMBA is full-time 1 year I think. Kellogg/Booth always are fine options if Columbia/NYU arrangements make you tick.
Thanks for the opinions, all.
Whattherock: Wharton EMBA is Friday+Saturday twice per month for two years.
Dingdong/Allday: I'm presently at a multinational industrial company, but in tax we can float between the non-financials with ease (i.e. pharma, manufacturing, retail, etc)- basically anything with significant intellectual property. The financials can present different issues, but it's still pretty common for tax professionals to move throughout the industries pretty frequently. My goal is to stay with the large non-financials, most likely pharma, manufacturing, or consumer products industries.
According to a study by a trade group for CFOs, just under 10% of Fortune 100 CFOs came up through the tax group, so it's not totally unheard of but also definitely not the standard progression. I had a tax professor in law school who was formerly the CFO of Pepsi who came up through tax, doing a brief stint in treasury after 15 or 20 years in tax, then jumping up to CFO. The key seems to be to really focus on leadership and being a high performing individual- when companies find the right person they will make sure to get them into a decision making role. My intention is to make sure that I am equipped with all the tools to be that right person.
So op got a CPA (takes 5 years or 150units), graduated law school (3yrs) and has 8 years experience. Sounds really remarkable and I thought lawyers with 8+ yrs experience made much more at these Big Law firms in Manhattan. (Wachtell?)
Human Capital: I've only been an attorney since 2013. If I were still at the law firm my comp this year would have been 190k and next year 210k, but I went in house and took a pay cut since the hours are much better and the company is not based in Manhattan. ~5 of my 8 years were strictly as a CPA, which is why my comp doesn't compare to an 8th year attorney. I do sometimes regret not going straight to law school after undergrad but sometimes life just follows its own path!
As far as the CPA, I used the first year of law school as my 5th year of education to meet the requirements. The law school took 4 calendar years since I did it at night, although I did take a few semesters off from work to compress the legal education such that I was able to receive the JD and LLM in a total of 4 years. It's been a little over 10 years since graduating undergrad but I have only 7.5years of work experience (8 years as of May 2016, which is exactly the minimum requirement of Wharton's EMBA) due to the few semesters of full time education in between.
It's been a busy decade for me, but now I'm worried that I might be too tax-centric to be considered for higher leadership roles in the future so I'm just trying to figure out how to best use all the extra free time I have on my hands now that I'm in-house :)
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