Path to Partnership
With Tracey Waring, a former Senior Partner at EY who spent 32 years with the firm across Australia and the UK
Tracey shares her unconventional start, growing up on a Victorian farm, ruling out careers in singing, hairdressing, and fashion design before discovering a love for the "beauty of debits and credits" through her family accountant. She reflects on her early days as a vacationer in audit, the importance of saying yes to opportunities, and making partner in 2008 while working four days a week. A pivotal moment came when Tracey nearly turned down a two-year London secondment due to family concerns, until a mentor bluntly told her, "You're an idiot." That role shaped the next decade of her career, taking her to over 30 countries as a global accounting advisory leader. Tracey opens up about the factors that led to her departure at 52: the post-Covid shift to hybrid work, the erosion of human connection, the generational changes, and the gradual realisation that the parts of the job she loved most were being handed to the next generation exactly as they should be. Now running her own leadership advisory practice. With her high energy, Tracey focuses on teaching the human skills that shaped her own trajectory: self-awareness, accountability, curiosity, and connection. Her core message for aspiring and new partners: know thyself, invest in relationships, and remember that how you leave people feeling becomes your trademark.
