A Day in the Life of EY’s Bridgette Carey
Interviews
In this week’s 'A Day in the Life of...' interview, EY’s Bridgette Carey provides insights into her role as a senior leader in the company’s data analytics practice.
Hi Bridgette, can you tell us a bit a bit your role?
I am a senior leader in EY's Data Analytics practice and responsible for People Analytics across several sectors. With a strong background in HR, having worked in Musgraves as a HR Analytics Senior Manager, and VMWare as a HR Research Analyst, I combine my technical skillset with a rich domain expertise having undertaken a PHD in Sociology from UCC, MA in Sociology from University of Limerick, and a BA in Psychology and Sociology from Limerick.
What does a typical day look like for you?
My days are quite jam-packed. I color coordinate my meetings to keep track of what is coming up next. For example yellow are ‘internal meetings’ which can include coaching sessions, interviewing and team bonding sessions; orange is ‘business development’ which I really enjoy because that focuses on meeting new clients to see how we might offer analytics solutions to a wider audience; red is ‘personal time’ which might be training for personal development which I schedule for two hours on a Friday, my lunchbreaks or dentist appointments; Green then is my side-of-desk work, mainly this time is dedicated to my volunteering for our EY LGBT Network, offering DE&I training sessions, meeting with CWIT (Connecting Women in Tech) or grabbing coffee with anyone who wants to share their personal experiences or learn about what supports we have in EY for our colleagues. Everything else is the standard blue for outlook and these are client meetings, that takes priority over everything else.
What part of your role do you enjoy the most?
I am extremely passionate about uncovering trends in people’s behavior through data analysis and managing positive changes in those trends through strategic decision making. I am currently assisting teams with Gender Pay Gap Analysis and building out our capability for Trustworthy AI for our Artificial Intelligence capability, ensuring that it is human centric, and our methodology works for a multi-disciplinary team.
Gender Pay Gap Analysis goes beyond the financial gap but looking to explore first the tangential supports such as various types of leave, career breaks, or further education opportunities, to then exploring how subjective (and therefore possibly biased) annual review processes are, how that hinders women’s career growth and ultimately leads to a gender imbalance at leadership levels of companies and leads women to believe they are less capable of wielding power in the workplace. The lack of role models and being judged as less-able through HR systems and processes, compounds the implicit messages women get from society and the media. I am acting to change this through tangible changes to HR strategies to create a better working world.
Which top three skills are vital for this role and why?
Relationships:
- Building rapport based on trust and ability is invaluable. Showing my teams capabilities through delivering strong reports in a meaningful way within a current engagement really enabled us to work with them in additional areas, despite an initial misgiving about working with consultants.
- Relationship building was also evident to me as of great importance while at Musgrave during presentations to board of directors, and training sessions on HR strategy. Initially the topic of HR was dismissed as nebulous until I was able to ground our theories and strategy in quantifiable reports. Building relationships on a foundation of trust is something everyone should practice.
Versatility & Delivery:
It is important that I can work across industries and at differing degrees of technical requirements (report creation, team leadership, project management). I have led on complex projects, often in tandem with internal projects and BD tasks (100% chargeability, plus coaching, client meetings, supporting diverse hiring, D&I events, social events, financial management of billing and internal workings of EY, as well as L&D organizing trainings).
Opportunity identification:
- I help deliver great work through collaborative brainstorming of business questions and possible solutions. Within one of our teams, we generated 18 up-sell ideas, winning buy-in for 12 of these and this is hugely rewarding.
- Working with clients who are unsure of what their business question or challenge is. Facilitating workshops with them to figure out how their business strategy can be supported by data. For example if a client wants to learn about the impacts of Covid on their revenue but don’t know what they should begin to measure or look at, we explore options together. If a client wants to know the impact of “the great resignation” on their company, we would explore the current talent pool, the profile of the people who left and measure the talent gap that is required to be filled.
How do you help others feel like they belong in your team/promote inclusion?
While I make a huge impact through my work with clients, I get the greatest satisfaction from being instrumental in driving DE&I initiatives across EY. When I first joined the company, I became ROI Unity Network’s Education Lead, becoming a disruptive voice in the firm. Some of the events I’ve worked on to date include What’s the T in LGBT (UK&I collaboration), Unity’s Trans Awareness Week Event in collaboration with the Family Network; Unity’s HIV panel discussion for World AIDS Day commemorating the 40th anniversary of the emergence of HIV and I presented at the Colours of the Rainbow Charity Art Auction to speak about Bi+ Visibility, not to mention being involved in organising Pride celebrations across the country.
Recognizing that LGBTQ+ people are not a homogenous group, I have helped to create new sub-communities for Gay Women, Gay Men, Trans & Non-Binary, Asexual & Aromantic as well as the Bisexual community which Bridgette co-leads. These groups were officially launched on June 15th across UK & Ireland, leading out in this DE&I space. Clients and other groups look to EY for guidance on furthering their DE&I work.
In an industry that is largely male dominated, my presence and voice continues to be needed to make a difference. I am a strong advocate for all colleagues both junior and senior in our practice, and a lot of people have reached out to me to share personal experiences and for mentorship. Colleagues in our team feel safe speaking with mentors and this is a real strength in EY. My momentum and enthusiasm doesn’t just stop at being a people manager. I also work with Special Isterne, a support agency, to hire people who are neurodiverse, giving advice for job descriptions to include gender neutral adjectives and an equal opportunities statement, as well as questioning if the burden of visibility on minority interviewers was fair (female, non-white males etc). I will always advocate for change by addressing barriers in the different stages of the employee life cycle for females and ethnic minorities and across all strands of diversity. I strive to make significant efforts to achieve equity, equality and inclusion.
Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
Ten years is an awfully long time. I’m not sure where my career will take me but I hope to continue to impact peoples lives through my work. Whether that is in a small way through supporting and encouraging my peers, teams, colleagues, potential new hires and wider working world. Better yet if I can continue to do impactful work such as my recent work with the Government and Health Service Executive on the Covid Response, I would feel blessed to say that I helped to protect the health of the general public during a time of crisis. I would particularly love to be involved in analytics and consulting around immigration, social housing and other items of concern for social justice and reducing social inequality.
WORKFAIR 2022
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