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Cool Careers in Accounting Ep. 36 - Chance Encounters and Big Outcomes: How Accounting Opens Doors with President Joseph Echevarria
50 Plays4 hours ago
Joe Echevarria went from a South Bronx childhood to the CEO of Deloitte—and now President of the University of Miami. In this candid interview, he shares the two chance moments that changed everything, how mentors “adopted” him and taught him the rules of the game, and why relentless effort beats trying to be the smartest person in the room. He also breaks down what AI will really mean for accounting and why finance remains the “book of truth.” This interview is practical, inspiring, and packed with hard-earned leadership lessons you can use right away.
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Transcript
Introduction and Personal Connection to Joe Echeverria
00:00:02
Speaker
Music
00:00:09
Speaker
Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Becker Accounting Podcast. I'm here this week with a very special guest, Joe Echeverria. Now, President Echeverria was the CEO at
Welcoming and Setting the Tone
00:00:21
Speaker
Deloitte. He's currently the president at the University of Miami, and University of Miami is pretty special to me. You can see I have my shirt on, not my regular jacket and tie, because I have a daughter that graduated there under his tenure, and it's just so great to have you here. a President Echeverria, thank you so much for agreeing to come on the podcast.
00:00:39
Speaker
Thanks for having me, Mike. Appreciate it Now, do you mind if I call you Joe for this? You must call me Joe. I don't mind. Yeah, we'll be here for about three days if I have to keep saying President Echeverria. So Joe is a lot easier.
00:00:53
Speaker
All right. Well, Joe, thanks again
Joe's Dual Success in Accounting and Education
00:00:55
Speaker
for being here. And listen, you've done so much in the world of public accounting. Now you're doing so much in the world of higher education. You've really you know reached the peak of both of these worlds. But I don't want to just jump in right at the top. I want to kind of step back a little bit, and you know, maybe to your younger years when you were growing up.
00:01:14
Speaker
can Can you tell the audience, yeah where exactly did you grow up and go to school at a young age?
Life Lessons from the South Bronx
00:01:19
Speaker
Sure. So um I am a South Bronx native. That is my first neighborhood in terms of my experiences.
00:01:29
Speaker
I went to all the public schools in New York, PS 47, 123, which is what is called junior high school, but it only went by number. And I went to Monroe and then they opened up a new school called Adlai Stevenson. And I went to Stevenson High School, all in the South Bronx. I'm like,
00:01:44
Speaker
Love it. Love it. i actually grew up in the Bronx myself, grew up off of Pelham Parkway. So not too far, but spent many a days down on the Grand Concourse and Yankee Stadium as a kid. It was really it was a great place to grow up. That's for sure. Now, it's for you if you're you in Pelham, you must have.
00:02:01
Speaker
Lehman must have been in your neighborhood. Absolutely. Lehman, Columbus High School, you know, they were all right over there. But ah it was definitely, definitely a great place to grow up. And, you know, growing up in the Bronx, you you learn a lot of lessons, right? You learn how to kind of think on your feet and be smart.
00:02:16
Speaker
any Any lessons you learned at those early days in the Bronx that kind of helped you down the road as you progressed through school?
Affirmative Action and College Bound: Joe's Path to University
00:02:24
Speaker
Well, I think for me, you know, being a product of an inner city and a single parent, um you know, a latchkey kid is what they were called back in those days. mike um you You just learn sort of the basic instincts of survival.
00:02:37
Speaker
I mean, that's really what every day was about. You didn't realize you were poor because everybody in your neighborhood was the same. There was nothing unique about your circumstances. So it was just a grind. You learn to stay committed to things and you learn how to read human dynamics.
00:02:53
Speaker
which is probably the one thing that I continue to use to this day. Those are the sort of the things that you learn. You have an appreciation for. You know, from my where i where I grew up, you know, Hunts Point area, for those of your listeners who may know them the city, um I could see the Manhattan skyline.
00:03:10
Speaker
perfectly on a nice day. Weren't that many of those in the haze days of the 60s and 70s. But that was another world to me. It didn't really exist. It was just there. And other than jumping on the train to go to the garden or go to Broadway and run around.
00:03:24
Speaker
We didn't really have any exposure to, quote unquote, the city as it's defined by people today. But really it was just learning how to navigate on your own. Literally on your own. In a community of kids who are all on their own. So I wasn't unique in that context.
00:03:40
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah, there was definitely community in that group of latchkey kids. I had the same thing. You have parents or parent that works and you come home and you you take care of yourself and it makes you you know learn how to think and survive on your feet. So how does that now translate from those days in the South Bronx and Hunts Point to get you to the University of Miami as a student? Because that is where you attended college. Isn't that correct?
00:04:07
Speaker
Oh, yes. I attended the University of Miami. You know, when I'm almost 70 now, I'll be 70 later this year. So, you know, 53 years ago. So sometimes those memories get a little conflated. But I believe I went to school here from 1974 1978. And here just, you know,
00:04:24
Speaker
and how i got here was just you know Affirmative action programs. I was going to be ah an auto mechanic. I worked in a gas station, an auto body shop on 777 Bruckner Boulevard.
00:04:35
Speaker
And I thought that was a great job, um you know, making a little bit above minimum wage. But that was a lot of money to me in those days. And affirmative action just happened. You might you might know in the history, you know, civil rights and all that passes in the mid 60s.
00:04:49
Speaker
But it doesn't really get operationalized as a country until the Department of Labor starts to put rules in place that says, if you do this, it's affirmative actions. If you do that, it's a quota system and it's not legal.
00:05:02
Speaker
So all the universities, I guess, came up with ways to recruit minority students. And they just recruited me as a kid out of the South Bronx who had some version of aptitude in their mind. It took you to get some kind of a test, which in my mind today was some kind of an IQ test. If you scored somewhere above it at some level,
00:05:22
Speaker
They put you in a program called College Bound in high school. So I wound up being in a program called College Bound where they could come and get you in the neighborhood and bring you into school. Your mom, in my case, had to sign a power of attorney to allow you to be gathered up and forced to go to class. um And they filled out all your college applications.
00:05:43
Speaker
That's how they did it. And you didn't pay for any of it. And they just asked you, where did you want to go? And I'll never forget this day because it's etched in my mind when the counselor, John O'Hara, God bless him, put a map of the United States in front of me. And he just said, where do you want to go to school?
00:05:58
Speaker
And I just drew a line as far south as I could find on that map. Okay. And I had no idea what the University of Miami was. And That's how it started. And the University of Miami gave me scholarship of some kind um
Discovering Accounting and Career Beginnings
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Speaker
to go to school. and I had to maintain a certain GPA, three, five, I think it was.
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Speaker
um And that was it. I didn't go visiting things that I didn't know. no clue. First person in my family to go to college. So for me, it was a surreal experience. And the building I'm actually sitting in right now, it's called the Ash Building.
00:06:31
Speaker
I worked in this building when I was a 17-year-old work-study student downstairs. um So this is a place that I've known for the majority of my life, not just professional life, personal life.
00:06:43
Speaker
So the University of Miami is pretty special to me, Mike. Well, you could not have drawn a line at a better place on the map. That is for sure. Now, when you go there and you enroll, is right away someone tells you about accounting and you're like, I have to do that? Or did you discover it later on in your education? When did you start studying accounting?
00:07:04
Speaker
All roads start in the South Bronx. So at that same gas station, auto body shop that I worked in for, in my mind today, what is minimum wage, which must've been two bucks an hour maybe in those days, 250 maybe. um And I worked, you know, as much as I could when I wasn't in school.
00:07:24
Speaker
There was a ah gentleman who would show up to the gas station or the auto body shop um once a month. In my mind, it's once a month. For all I know, it could have been every week or once a year.
00:07:37
Speaker
um And he had a big Cadillac. And he came in and he spent a couple of hours there. And it looked like the owner, whose name was Eddie, or the manager, John, gave him $75. And one day I just said,
00:07:53
Speaker
What does that person do that you're giving the $75? And he said, well, he's an accountant. And I said, and how do you become one of those? and i said, well, going to have to go to college. And i go well, that's not going to happen. But then when I wound up in college, they said, what do you want to be? I said, an accountant.
00:08:09
Speaker
I didn't even know what an accountant was. I just knew that that person had moved further in life than I had in terms of a profession. And that's the only thing I'd ever seen before.
00:08:21
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So that's how it happened. I didn't have any, no other path to being an accountant. Amazing. Amazing. Like what if you never saw that transaction where you know, the person you work for paid this guy $75, who knows what you could have said at that. So that's a pretty great story.
Transition Challenges and Support from Family
00:08:37
Speaker
what What would you have said if, ah you know, 50 years ago when you're 17 years old working in the Ash Building, someone walked in and said, hey, Joe, in about 50 years or so, you're going to be president of this whole place. so yeah How would you have responded to that?
00:08:52
Speaker
Well, after I would have stopped laughing okay at the person because it's that would not have entered the recesses of my mind. I just I didn't even know what an accountant did. Never mind what a president of the university did.
00:09:04
Speaker
And in fact, in my day, I never saw the president university. Henry King Stanford was the president when I was at the university. And I saw Dr. Stanford at graduation. And that's it.
00:09:15
Speaker
So he was not a real person to me. The fact that I was in the building where his office was, that was just serendipity. I didn't have any context of it. It would't it would have been an insane conversation.
00:09:27
Speaker
I didn't even think I was going to finish college because after being here for one semester, I was ready to go back home. Is that right? That was my question. How easy was the transition for you? And you know how did you become acclimated to living away from home and doing all these studies?
00:09:43
Speaker
So, you know, it's hard to imagine in this world that, you know, you've got a daughter, one of our alumnus, you mentioned, I've got i've got four kids, ah and so they live a different life than we live, obviously, but that's part of the American process, right? We want our children to live a different, better life than we've lived. um So you have to remind you remind yourself that, you know, i was a 17-year-old kid who got in a car in the South Bronx and drove 23 hours on I-95 to get to Miami, Florida.
00:10:09
Speaker
There's no phones, None of those things exist. Literally, you get there and call your mom and me let her know you arrived two days later. So I went from what is arguably the biggest city in the world to a city called Miami at the time. Miami by the locals, not Miami.
00:10:28
Speaker
um and it was And it had a view. It was it was much more of being in a southern town. And I was used to being in an inner city um and the campus. Most of the people who are on the campus who came from the Northeast um came of parents who were, who were far better off than I was.
00:10:45
Speaker
So they were more prepared to be here. I grew up in the Bronx, right? We had the Yankees. We had the Knicks. We had the New York Giants. We had the New York Rangers.
00:10:55
Speaker
College was not relevant in sports in the city. And here, basically, there was three channels, and they used to put high school sports on the news. And the University of Miami was not the U that we talk about today.
00:11:07
Speaker
wasn't that school. So I just craved being back in a big city. I was a Puerto Rican kid who who had no no business being at the University of Miami, or in college, period, quite frankly.
00:11:20
Speaker
And the only reason I stayed is because I drove back. I used to literally drive my car back and forth, 1969 Maverick.
00:11:29
Speaker
built out of a junkyard. um I drove back and I told my mom I wasn't going back. It was the first December break. So it would have been December of 1974. I was still 17. I I'm not going back. I'm done with college. And she said to me, so where are you going to live?
00:11:45
Speaker
I go, I'm going to live right there on that sofa that I've been living on for the last 10, 15 years. She goes, oh no, this is my apartment. You're going to have to live somewhere else if you're going to quit the University of Mayan. You can't live here.
00:11:57
Speaker
you need to go back or find yourself a place to live all by yourself. I had no chance of doing that. So i got back in my car and I drove back to the University of Miami ah because I knew I had no options. I had nowhere else to live. i a University of Miami gave me housing.
00:12:12
Speaker
So I had a place to live here, but nowhere else. that's why I stayed. Well, God bless strong, smart parents, right? That know how to handle their kids and give them some good advice. Absolutely. Great to hear that. So, okay. So you go through um Miami, you stay, you get your accounting degree.
00:12:30
Speaker
Tell me now when you graduate college, what is it like when you get out and where did you first start working? So I interviewed on this very campus in ah It would have been August or September, maybe September, October 1977, because the firm is the big eight back then.
00:12:48
Speaker
Now there's four, but back then there were eight of
Networking and Career Growth at Deloitte
00:12:50
Speaker
us. ah They all came to the campus and you had to have 3.5 GPA to sign up for an interview. That was just, which is why someone had told me you got to have a 3.5 to keep your scholarship. I didn't connect all those dots. Yeah.
00:13:05
Speaker
um And if you so if you had that, you got an interview. But but i had a I had a line sight into a firm called Haskins & Sells, which is today Deloitte.
00:13:17
Speaker
But back then it was H&S, one of the eight. Because when I registered to be an accountant on this campus, I stood behind a person. It's is ironic. Those registrations were in a manual process in our library. You've just been there, the auto-rector library. it's Essentially right to to my left here. um And the sign for accounting was ACC. That was the abbreviation, right? Of course, we're in the ACC now. If you used that today, everybody everybody talks about the conference in. Back then, it just meant a accounting.
00:13:46
Speaker
And there was a person right in front of me in the line, Mike. who seemed to know what he was doing. And I had no idea what I was doing. They gave me a book. Here's how you register. You pick classes. I had a counselor. The university did all it could do for me.
00:13:59
Speaker
I just had to get in the line and ask a question and I was done. But that seemed overwhelming to me. But the person in front of me knew exactly what he was doing. And he was in the accounting line. So I just asked him.
00:14:11
Speaker
And he said, sure. And he walked me through the process. He said, you should pick this class, not that class. He had insights into what class to pick. And I picked it. Um, and we struck up a friendship in that line.
00:14:23
Speaker
And I went to his house one day, in the middle of the semester, my first semester. And it turns out, you know, he had a, he had what you and I would call a normal house today. But in that day, it looked like a mansion to me because I had never seen a person's house. I lived in the projects.
00:14:39
Speaker
And he turned out to be the ah HR partner for a firm called Haskins and Sells, his father. who was there. And those parents, his name was Ed Dettman and Ed Junior and Ed Senior, Ed Senior and Darlene, the mom, they adopted me. They were like my college parents and they taught me all the things I needed to learn.
00:14:59
Speaker
So they, they were committed for me reviewing, interviewing with all the firms, But I was going to go to Haskins & Sales no matter what. So I got seven offers and I was going to Haskins & Sales wired from being a freshman.
00:15:13
Speaker
I also had the highest GPA of any accounting student because Ed had told me you should get a 4.0, not a 3.5. And so I didn't get a 4.0. I got close to it, though.
00:15:25
Speaker
So I got offers from all the firms and I went to Haskins & Sales. So I was wired to Haskins & Sales from the get-go. Well, and standing behind the son of the head partner of HR.
00:15:37
Speaker
Yeah. That's how I got there. That was my experience of getting all organized by the university of Miami, by the way, the interviews. So you've been on our campus, you know, where the new dorms are. Well, those used to be apartments and that's where career counseling used to be right there where lakeside villages, which is those new buildings we have on the other side that I'm sure you've seen.
00:15:57
Speaker
So it all happened there. I'm like, that, that is another one of those chance encounters in my life. In one of those sliding doors moments as the movie made famous, you go this way, this could happen, you go that way. So there's two sets of big encounters, me seeing some person in a gas station and me standing behind somebody whose father happens to be the HR partner for what is today Deloitte.
00:16:19
Speaker
Well, that is an amazing story. And the fact that your life took such change in direction because of these two encounters and the fact that the friend that you met and his parents really advised you and treated you well almost, let's call it like a son, so to speak.
00:16:34
Speaker
You know, God bless people that are out there that help other people and lift them up. So that's that's a very heartwarming story to hear.
00:16:52
Speaker
Yeah. So I stayed at Deloitte for almost 40 years. Wow. know, I, I think I started when I was 20 or 21. Um, and I stayed till I was almost 60.
00:17:05
Speaker
And so I, and I, and that was the same skill sets from New York. You just grind. You can't always be the smartest person in a room. In fact, it's highly unlikely you're going to be, but you can always be the hardest working person in a room. Cause that's a choice.
00:17:19
Speaker
And I was just motivated to get to the next year. And I just figured out what the person ahead of me did. I got them there. And I said, okay, I got to do that. And that's it.
00:17:29
Speaker
And 37 years, 38 years later, you're the ceo Amazing. So i what i i'm what I'm trying to connect now is, you know you grow up in the South Bronx, you go to Miami, and you know admittedly you say, you know I didn't have much guidance. I didn't really know I had to ask a lot of questions.
00:17:45
Speaker
But to rise up to the level of CEO in Deloitte, Big 8, Big 4, whatever you want to call it, you have to have a a very well-versed set ah skill set of leadership qualities, right? Where did you then learn how to be a leader? And was that difficult and challenging for you?
00:18:06
Speaker
Um, it was difficult. It wasn't easy, put a lot of hard work and learning. Um, I had a, this gets back to the the neighborhood you grow up in. Remember I said, one of the things that, that kind of being seven, eight, nine years old and roaming the city on your own, quite frankly, was you learn how to read people.
00:18:25
Speaker
Cause you have to read people. You have to know, was this a friendly person, not a friendly person? Should I be in that environment or not? And so you have a good sense of people. Um, And because that's all we really had. We didn't have a lot of of ah accumulated wealth type of things that one would have. So really what you have was your community and the people in your neighborhood.
00:18:44
Speaker
And so i I had a skill of reading people and reading situations. And it wasn't complicated. All I did was decide who are the really successful people?
00:18:55
Speaker
Who are they? at the next level that I'm trying to get to. What is it that they do that has made them successful? What is it I think I can do? What is it I think I'm not going to be able to do and pattern my behavior? I never look beyond the next step.
00:19:11
Speaker
Never. I just knew that I was a first-year person, what it which was called an assistant in those days. What does it take to be a senior assistant, which was the next level? I watched what I thought were the great senior assistants that I got to work with.
00:19:26
Speaker
And they helped. And I just followed their el lead. And I got to the next level. and I said, okay, what does it take to be a great senior account? Which was the level after that.
00:19:37
Speaker
One step at a time. um And I never did anything beyond that. and i And I was privileged to work. um There's nothing particularly great about me.
00:19:48
Speaker
I've just been in the company of great people. And people generally want to help you if you ask them for help. They will. Well, and I learned to ask. yeah That makes a lot of sense. And it's ah it's a great lesson for young people out there right now, because we if we don't ask and we don't know, we're never going to learn, right?
The Role of AI in the Future of Professions
00:20:11
Speaker
It's all part of the learning process.
00:20:13
Speaker
But thinking about whether it's a firm like Deloitte or any big public accounting firm now and any other industry out there, the world's kind of changing today because of AI and all of this artificial intelligence. And you know you learned by doing. Right.
00:20:28
Speaker
And now there's a lot of these students that are coming in where technology is doing a lot for them. So what do you see happening? And again, i know you don't know the answer to this, but I'm just asking your opinion on this.
00:20:40
Speaker
How do you see AI affecting those young people and giving them the lessons that you got when you were early on? And how much will you think it changed the profession? I suspect there'll be quantum changes in many professions, including ours.
00:20:54
Speaker
Like I said, I'm still a proud card-carrying member of a CPA. um I still do my CPA credits every year. I can get certified in the state of Florida and New York. But i I think, you know, when we were young, when I was young, people would say, you need to know reading, writing, and arithmetic.
00:21:13
Speaker
If you know those three things, you're going to be fine. And then in the ninety s we added computers to that. Reading, writing, or and computers. So we had four things you have to be proficient at. Now I think it's reading, writing, arithic computers, and AI.
00:21:29
Speaker
And now there's a fifth thing you're going to have to be somewhat proficient at. And if you can be proficient at it, I don't mean you're building your own LLMs. As a user, if you can become proficient at it, then it's going to help you be much better at the role you have today.
00:21:46
Speaker
You won't have to be the creator of everything. You can be the editor of things. And over time, there are lots of things. Look, we did auditing. We still do auditing. We don't look at every transaction.
00:21:57
Speaker
Well, that's going to go away. Eventually, we'll be able to look at every transaction. But there's going to need to be a human involved in all of those decisions.
00:22:08
Speaker
So will the pyramid change? Probably a little bit. We need a little bit of the less of these and a little more. but Probably. But it will also create a whole set of opportunities for people um to advance differently than I had advanced.
00:22:23
Speaker
You know, my grandkids, two of them, have two of them, they're 12 and 8. And you've got a display in front of you, as do I, a flat screen of some sort. And when my eight-year-old grandson, when he was three or four years old, he would go up to any screen and he would swipe it.
00:22:41
Speaker
He just thought you swiped it. Okay. He didn't think it was something static that stood there. He's going to easily become ai native because he doesn't know any other world.
00:22:52
Speaker
Those of us in the middle of the generation are going to have to embrace it slightly differently. Like learning a language that you know is really hard to do when you don't learn it from when you're young. learning a set It's the same thing to me. So AI is going to change. I think of it this way.
00:23:07
Speaker
Like for me, I want to have a digital twin. I would love to have a person that thinks like me and can help me do the things that I need to get done so I can spend my time with a little more value creation. If I have any of the people in the room with me, um I want them to have a whole group of digital employees that help them do their role so they can focus on the things that are higher value because it has the ability to get information a lot quicker.
00:23:34
Speaker
You know, when you and I were younger, there's no way, you know, I had to read the newspaper to find out what the news was. I had to watch the six o'clock news or the 11 o'clock news to find out what the news was.
00:23:45
Speaker
Otherwise, I didn't know what happened in the world. Like that is so different today. But with all that incoming information, there's got to be some way to parse through all that data. And to me, that's essentially what AI will do. We'll parse through with the data for you, and it will help you access that data to get facts that you would not have gotten easily before. would have taken you weeks to get.
00:24:06
Speaker
So I think it's going to be the fifth discipline that you're just going to have to have at some level. As a user and create your own workforce, so to speak. um So at the University of Miami, we have 20,000 employees, including our 4,000 terrific faculty.
00:24:22
Speaker
But we should also have 20,000 digital employees. We should have 40,000 square people. That's what we should have. So the 20,000 humans will be able to do exponentially more than they can do now by by eliminating things that they don't have to do anymore.
00:24:37
Speaker
not get replaced by elevating what they can do now. So this really creates capacity for the things we want to get done. And that's what I think AI will become. Today, all the hyperscalers are making all the investments.
00:24:49
Speaker
All of us are investing in AI. We've gotten no return on AI yet. We're in the heavy investment phase of AI. No matter what anybody says, I happen to be privileged and sit in pretty big public companies in my other part of my life.
00:25:02
Speaker
Everybody's invested. The returns are de minimis right now. But it's got a lot of energy and hype, and it'll be the fifth discipline, reading, writing, arithmetic, computing, and AI. Makes total sense. And I really like how you kind of laid that all out there.
00:25:16
Speaker
And ah yeah, it's going to be scary to think what, you know, your grandkids, my grandkids, what they're going to be able to do one day and hopefully make the world a better place from it. But let me get let me get back to Joe Echevarria now.
Transition to Higher Education and Public Service
00:25:28
Speaker
At Deloitte for 40 years, you went from step one to step two up to the top as CEO. and You say, okay, I've had a great run. You could easily ride off into the sunset now, have a great retirement.
00:25:40
Speaker
but you choose not to do that. You say to yourself, you know what? think I'm not retired? This is my retirement. That's a good retirement though. That is a pretty good retirement. So in your retirement in public service and higher education, what really motivated you to say, I'm leaving public accounting, but I'm going into higher education?
00:26:01
Speaker
And how did you come about as president of U Miami? Did you pursue them? Did they pursue you? Talk to me about that transition process. Sure. So, you know, when you spend essentially your entire adult life at one firm, Deloitte, I mean, every, every significant marker in my kid's life happened with people of Deloitte, Deloitte, Deloitte was everything.
00:26:24
Speaker
Um, So when you retire from that, the classic convention is, well, maybe you'll be on some boards, you do some community service. And I followed pretty much that conventional retirement. I got on the board of Bank of New York and Pfizer, who were my Deloitte clients at the time.
00:26:41
Speaker
worked for, a you know, the then president Barack Obama and his presidential center that was getting set up. And that was my public life. And we relocated our family full time back to Miami because all my kids were born here, even though professionally i spent half my time in New York.
00:26:58
Speaker
Half my career was there and half was in the South. So they all come back um to to sort of plant roots. And I've been on the board of directors. We call it the board of trustees for UM for 20 years.
00:27:11
Speaker
unrelated from my Deloitte life. So I've always been part of the board. My predecessor, Julio Frank, good friend of mine. I voted to hire Julio. Donna Shalala, I voted to hire Donna Shalala, the professor that. So in my life, I never lost connection to the University of Miami.
00:27:25
Speaker
Two of my kids, like you have your daughter, two of my kids went to the University of Miami. um So I was connected throughout that four-year cycle. Never mind being and ah a crazy fan of all of our sports, not just football and a season ticket holder to everything.
00:27:39
Speaker
So I was never disconnected from the universe. So I'm on the board already. And all that happens is now that I'm retired, this thing pops up called COVID. And now no one's getting on airplanes flying around and going anywhere.
00:27:54
Speaker
So no one's flying to, I'm not flying to New York for Bank New York or Pfizer anymore. And I'm not traveling from, the presidential center, everybody's staying Miami and Miami grows in the COVID era, as you know, um, cause your daughter was, that's, but that was probably the very beginning of your daughter's career here was doing COVID. August, 2021. Yep.
00:28:13
Speaker
Yes. That would have been the beginning of her, of, of her career here. Um, So now no one's traveling. So we're dealing with COVID on this campus. And I was asked by by a board member um who who was the chair of of of our board at the time, of our health system, and the chair of our UN board, since I have nothing else to do because I can't travel anywhere um other than doing virtual, why don't I help out my good friend Julio, Julio Frank, Dr. Frank, the president, because he's got to navigate a bunch of circumstances. got a health system. We got athletics and the whole.
00:28:44
Speaker
You can help him because you got a lot of free time. So I just started out as a project helping Julio and helping led to the one thing, to the next thing, to the next thing. And up before you know it, you're the CEO of the health system.
00:28:58
Speaker
And then before you know it, Julio gets an opportunity to become the chancellor of UCLA. Now the university needs a president. And you're there. And they ask you if you're willing to serve. yeah So I'm like, I have not interviewed for a job since August of 1977. The Deloitte job, that Haskins and Sells job.
00:29:17
Speaker
Every other job has been, it just came about somehow. Literally, it just arised somehow. didn't There was no process involved in my mind. I've been very fortunate that way. It's been extreme fortune on my part. I'm very blessed individual. And that's all that happens. So they say, you'll serve. I say, sure, I'll serve.
00:29:35
Speaker
um As long as I'm having fun and I'm adding value to my faculty, my students, and our patients, I will serve. The day that stops happening, that's when the service ends.
00:29:47
Speaker
And that's how this all came about this chapter of my life.
Continuity and Vision for the University of Miami
00:29:51
Speaker
Talk about being in the right place at the right time on numerous occasions. That's pretty impressive. So, you know, I'll say when my daughter started school there and, you know, President frank ah Frank was still, you know, serving his tenure. He was amazing during COVID. He was just absolutely fantastic. And and like you said, just smart man, great man.
00:30:11
Speaker
And And it's good to hear that you worked with him because I would have to think you know transitioning from president that's doing really well, taking on all these responsibilities coming out of COVID, but at the same time, trying to figure out your own priorities and your own initiatives. So when you first took the reins of you, Miami, was there anything that you said, all right, here's what I think we really need to work on, or here's some things that we need to develop for the university?
00:30:40
Speaker
Well, in the timeline, um Julio and I worked together throughout COVID because I was actually the time the CEO of the University of Miami Health System, which is owned by the University of Miami.
00:30:51
Speaker
and So all the COVID protocols, Julio was a master at public health. That was his background. So he was the one that would came up with the health protocols. um And it was driven by all the clinicians and faculty members of the Miller School of Medicine, which is that. like So he and I were joined at the hip around all the things that happened, including strategies.
00:31:12
Speaker
because Julio eventually asked me to help him with that. um and we And he charts a strategy. So there really wasn't a major shift when it went from ah Julio to me, because we had already worked together on that whole journey.
00:31:29
Speaker
the The last five years of his time there, we were together. I was his CEO. I was his volunteer CEO at the health system. And then he asked me to come back to what we call the Gables campus, which is where your daughter, I'm sure, spent most of her time and help here um because he was brilliant and is brilliant.
00:31:49
Speaker
But what he didn't have a skill at was, well, how do you operationalize ideas? How do you take wonderful ideas and put them into operation? And when you step back and think about any university or any health system, they're large operating entities.
00:32:06
Speaker
The University of Miami, on any given day, we have 55,000 people come through our doors every single day. We have 20,000 faculty and employees.
00:32:17
Speaker
We have 20,000 students, grad and undergrad. And we have 15,000 patients. And they come through your enterprise. That is a large operational process.
00:32:29
Speaker
engage And that's the nexus of any, whether Deloitte was 250,000 people and 180 countries, the concept was the same. um So we we formed this partnership out of a friendship, quite frankly. um And he used me to help him navigate the operational side. So our vision for the university hadn't changed.
00:32:49
Speaker
We want to be the leading of the future of education and shape the future learners and teaching and research. We want to be world-renowned pioneer in integrated research. In healthcare, we want to be the quality destination hub for pan surgery.
00:33:01
Speaker
And in athletics, we want to win on the field and win on the classroom. None of that changed. That was the same, okay? What we did below that started to change, but the concept of where we were going didn't change one iota. And hes and I still talk to him all the time now.
00:33:18
Speaker
um And he's trying to do a similar thing at UCLA that he and I did here under his leadership. So there really wasn't much of a change. The only real change that happened in my mind was because of my experience with a president where I never met a person.
00:33:34
Speaker
i I have an objective that it's mission first always. And when I say that our students, our patients, and our research driven by our faculty staff, the first word in that is our students. So like you said, I met your daughter on the baseball field because I make it a point to be out and about on the campus and meet the students, meet at the faculty. I'm doing this, what we're doing today, because Seth asked me if I would do it.
00:34:00
Speaker
Literally in the hallway, right out there. Because he's a CPA. I'm a CPA. He would you do it? I go, well I don't need to do anything for me. Would it help you and value these two? Yes, then I'll do it. So I'm doing this for my faculty.
00:34:12
Speaker
That's probably a bit of a pivot from a servant leadership model because I came from a partnership model. And you know this of partners. They're partners. So I had 7,000 partners at Deloitte. We were all partners.
00:34:26
Speaker
And they have to be inspired to follow you They don't have to follow you. And the way they inspire you is you care about. And so Seth was in the hallway, my faculty member in accounting, and he asked me this question. And I said, course, I'll do it. I met your daughter on a baseball field. Of course, I'm going to talk to That's probably been the only real change. And it's not because it's because i didn't want my students to have the experience with the president that I had.
00:34:53
Speaker
That's it. Well, big shout out to my buddy, Professor Seth Levine, who's inspiring CPAs around the world. He is a great guy. And my daughter had him down there too. you know What a great teacher as well. You have such a good staff down there.
00:35:06
Speaker
and And one of the things that surprised me about UMiami when I first went down there, I knew how great the undergraduate academics were and they just keep getting better and better. I didn't realize how many graduate schools there were. I mean, we're talking a law, business, music, architecture, communication, education, marine biology. That's just some of it.
00:35:24
Speaker
But what really amazed me most was what you were referring to earlier about public health, right? We have a medical school, have a nursing school, public health program. But that's not just for the students that are going there. I mean, you're really benefiting the entire community of Carl Gables and even bigger than that, the city of Miami. So just talk to me for a moment how far outreaching the public health is and how you're really just giving back to the community you know where you grew up as ah as a college student.
00:35:53
Speaker
Yeah, so it's it's a great segue that you just framed up because we we have 11 schools and colleges and we have Massive graduate. board We have. 13,000 undergrads, seven or eight thousand graduates, graduate students between the big schools, the what we call the professional school, which is law, business and medical um and our medical enterprise, which is the other campus downtown.
00:36:19
Speaker
That's a top-ranked institution in the United States. It's number three, actually, right now. um So when you have that, that's really in the community. There's two pieces of us that are embedded in the community. The medical enterprise is completely embedded in the community because it's physically here.
00:36:37
Speaker
Patients are from here. Athletics is completely owned by the community. I know the two extremes, right? The medical side and the athletic side.
00:36:48
Speaker
Because I tell people all the time, we are the University of Miami. There is no other. There's just us. There's this is Miami University up in Ohio somewhere. And sometimes people confuse.
00:37:00
Speaker
But we are the University of Miami. The community thinks and feels like they own the university. We have a mayor. Vince Lager was great mayor.
00:37:11
Speaker
And Vince, who lives right off the campus, says, no, no, we own athletics. We own the health system. We own the professors on the campus because we we we sit, and you've been to our school, so you know this.
00:37:25
Speaker
We sit right in the middle of the Coral Gables. I mean, literally. Because the guy who founded Coral Gables, a guy named George Merrick, if he's He convinced himself, and he wasn't wrong, all great cities have a great university. That's what he said.
00:37:41
Speaker
So I'm going to give all this land, and we're going to start this thing called the So we were charted in April 2025, April seven um of three after the university. and the city of caral gables was charted three weeks later after the universe When he gave the land for the university, it was way south of where the mainstream Coral Gables is, like two miles south.
00:38:04
Speaker
I'm sure Merrick at the time did not think that Coral Gables would extend as far as it has and that the campus would be literally dead center. So we sit inside a community. They believe they own us.
00:38:17
Speaker
The larger community, as you refer to it, South Florida, they believe it's a fabulous partnership, quite frankly.
University of Miami's Structure and Athletics
00:38:24
Speaker
um But that's because we're the University of Miami. You know it's a little similar, not exactly because Manhattan is much more dense and there's so many universities. You know, NYU in New York thinks they're New York University, right? They're the University of New York.
00:38:38
Speaker
But they're not really because there's about five others in that same borough. There's us here. that that is That is great. It's so true. And it's such a great place to be. And the campus is so beautiful. I would call my daughter up and be like, hey, Regina, you know, I could come down next weekend if you want. She was like, dad, you were here last weekend. You don't have to come back down. like, come on, please. But it's it's such a great place to be.
00:39:02
Speaker
Now, yeah you're you're you're doing so much for the students between the undergraduate and graduate programs. you know you're You're giving them you know professional lives that they're just springboarding into and you know being very successful. You're giving back to the community with all of the public health and things you're doing.
00:39:17
Speaker
But the other piece you mentioned, and we have to talk about it, is the athletics, right? U Miami is you know one of the top schools in the country with respect to athletics, yet you have to navigate these NILs and you know all of the scholarships and things.
00:39:33
Speaker
So is that something that's been hard for you to transition into and have the right teams in place to manage all of the NIL deals? So if you think about I like, you know, because, ah you know, my first lens is always from the the the world I come from, running large-scale enterprises.
00:39:53
Speaker
We have essentially three verticals. If we were in the for-profit world, we would say business units, but there are three verticals. We have academic, which is what most people think university. Academics, which is the teaching and the research and the scholarly debate.
00:40:08
Speaker
We have a clinical enterprise, a health system, and we have a third, athletics, So we have three subsidiaries, if you will, under the umbrella of the University Miami, the parent enterprise, not technically, but figuratively.
00:40:22
Speaker
Each of them have some similarities, but they all have some very big differences in how you have to manage those enterprises. So athletics has its own set of differences. I remind people, because our mission, again, is mission first, always our students, our patients, and our research. And I say, well where's athletics? said, no, athletics is a student experience.
00:40:42
Speaker
That's why it exists. It doesn't exist just to exist on its own. We didn't need it for our student experience, whether they're today or whether they're alumni like your daughter or the parents of the alumni like you and I are.
00:40:57
Speaker
It exists for that. um But you have to manage that enterprise very different than the other two. The student part of it, you manage the same. They have student counseling. They have student needs.
00:41:09
Speaker
We need them to graduate. Our graduation rate, thank the Lord, is about 95%. um And we need them to graduate. It's important because most of them, unfortunately, are not going to go to the professional level.
00:41:22
Speaker
Very small percentage. Although when they all arrive here in all the sports, they think they're going to go to the next level. The truth is it's small. So getting their education is really important.
00:41:34
Speaker
so you have So that one we do quite well. It's the whole area where because of Because of the structure of the NCAA and the approach we took as an industry to call them amateurs, and therefore all the flow of dollars did not inure to them.
00:41:52
Speaker
And they challenged that model over the last five, six, seven years. And the courts have sided for the most part in the favor of the student athletes, probably appropriately so, quite frankly.
00:42:03
Speaker
um Now it's a different mindset. now Now you're a student, but you have a job. When I went to school, I was a student. I had a job. The difference was my job. Nobody cared too much about. I was working in the bookkeeping, the accounting department. No one was watching me on Saturdays in my job.
00:42:21
Speaker
Now they have a job that is quite important because it elevates the brand. When I went to school, it was not called to you Nobody threw up the U. We didn't do any of those things. None of that happened in those days.
00:42:34
Speaker
That all came from incredible athletic success. ah So I think of athletics as elevating the brand of the university, creating an incredible student experience. I suspect that the last two years, our students have had amazing experience with the football success that would have been different than their first couple of years that they would have had.
00:42:54
Speaker
um And last year in particular. So it's it's a brand and a marketing model. And you have to manage it, though, as a professional sport, because now they're getting paid through various and sundry means.
00:43:08
Speaker
And that requires a whole different discipline. that didn't used to exist. You recruited a player, he came, they got a scholarship, they got room and board, they got a little bit of cost as attendance. Well, now it's different. So now you have to have a whole professional model around the player part, not the student part.
00:43:25
Speaker
They all have agents now. They can have agents. So the person who represented Tom Brady in the NFL also might represented one of our players. So they have sophisticated agents.
00:43:38
Speaker
so yeah So the whole model is different. um it's It's a professional model inside a university system. And it's not equal. Football obviously is the big thing because football mike drives 90% of revenue for all universities.
00:43:54
Speaker
Why? Because you sell the most tickets and it's the only one that has big national contracts. All the media rights are for football. Why? Because it's the second most popular sport in the United States to the NFL.
00:44:07
Speaker
Period. End of story. It's not even close. So that drove it. So it's it's different. So how we deal with athletics, and I tell them my coaches are the faculty of athletics.
00:44:18
Speaker
They're teaching their discipline. Seth is teaching the discipline that's not the athletic discipline that they may need. There more of them. So I have two sets of faculty in athletics. I got my coaches and I have my faculty on the campus. um So you manage it differently.
00:44:36
Speaker
When I was at Deloitte, we managed the consulting enterprise different than the audit enterprise, different than the tax enterprise. We managed it different. We managed it differently if it was in Hong Kong or if it was in Seattle. We managed them all differently.
00:44:48
Speaker
Here, we're fortunate. We just have three, and we're all within 50 miles. Literally. but The scale. So that's really the thing. And we manage it very differently. And it needs different kind of people now.
00:45:00
Speaker
So the athletic director of the past is not the athletic director of the future. Over time. Well, you're doing something right with the sports because basketball, Elite Eight, and then Final Four, football, you'll make it to the championship game one series away from winning another national championship. So you're definitely doing
Passion and Striving for Perfection in Career
00:45:18
Speaker
something right. So keep up the good. Don't worry about my women's rowing team that finished 14th in the nation, my women's volleyball team that finished 15th in the nation.
00:45:27
Speaker
We got others. I know you do. I know you do. There's just too many for me to name. There are, but they're all my students. That's right. That's right. Now, i i was you know doing a little research on your background and just kind of reading different stories. And I came across a quote that was attributed to you that really struck me. And and I want to understand, is this a quote that you still use today? And do you use it with your students? You said, all great things in life are accomplished by people who are passionate about what they do. Is that something you still use today? And do you use that at UMiami?
00:46:02
Speaker
I use it. I said, all great things are accomplished by people who are passionate about it. It's not, it's not easy to be great at something you don't really love doing. When you say it that way, it makes sense, right? If you really don't love doing it, you're not going terribly great at it.
00:46:15
Speaker
You got to really be passionate about your choice. That's why I always pass people. What do you like to do? Because if I can understand what you like doing, that's the path you have to take.
00:46:27
Speaker
Whether it brings you economic levels, that's a side conversation, right? And so passion is important along with effort. You know i tell people all the time, you can't, being perfect is hard, but you can give me perfect effort because you control that.
Reflections on Accounting as a Career Choice
00:46:45
Speaker
And we should always chase perfection because in the process, we're likely to catch excellence. And that's all I tell them, my students, my kids, people who work with me, some of the great people I have, some of my terrific faculty. So I do it all the time.
00:47:02
Speaker
But you should be able to get a feel in this short time we're together. mind I'm passionate about this place. Absolutely. And i I felt it because I've heard you speak at graduation. I've seen you at the football games and, you know, you're you're always one to talk to the crowd and answer questions and and you could feel how you just exude passion. So you don't have to tell me I've witnessed it and it's it's great to watch. Thank you.
00:47:28
Speaker
I we've been here a long time. I could I wish we had like three more days to do this because I could talk to you forever. But I want to be respectful of your time. So I just want to ask you one last question before we kind of wrap things up.
00:47:40
Speaker
Sure. You know, we know in accounting, the pipeline was diminishing, but now, you know, a lot of effort's been put into it to kind of swing it back and the pendulum's starting to grow again in accounting. But let me ask you, if you had to do it again and you were back as a kid and you had to be standing in the line and fill out that account, that major, whatever it was going to be, would you do it all over again? Would you start with accounting? And what's the message to young people out there about accounting and maybe why they should look into it?
00:48:11
Speaker
Well, you know, it's funny. I'm glad you asked me that question, Mike, because for those who aren't in accounting, it kind of has a stereotype associated with what it is, right? Pencil protector, the whole thing they used to say about us, and they still say about us.
00:48:26
Speaker
um But what i what I learned in a accounting was that all roads lead through finance in some context. Doesn't matter what it is, if it's athletics, if it's patients, it all leads to finance.
00:48:40
Speaker
And the glorious experience that you have in accounting is that you are knee deep in understanding that. And you're an integral part of every intersection of that journey, whether it's Pfizer, Bank of New York, the University of Miami, you pick it.
00:48:57
Speaker
All roads lead to finance at some point because of the model we have in this country. um And I got to experience in the role I played the best of the best and those who are very challenged all through the lens of accounting.
00:49:12
Speaker
It's sort of the book of truth. The hype, put the hype to the side, put the splash to the side. When you peel it back, The world of finance and accounting is the ultimate book of truth.
Conclusion and Gratitude
00:49:24
Speaker
And if you want to hang where truth lives and you want to have a spectacular career around it, it's endless the things you can do if you have that discipline. if you have that discipline and that rigor that it takes to learn it. So it was fantastic. me What I changed it. Notice nothing I would change except I wish I could have another hundred years. Okay.
00:49:45
Speaker
Don't we all don't we all? Well, president at your area, Joe, I can't thank you enough. Your story is absolutely amazing. And, you know, between what you've done for young people through your years at Deloitte, all the way up to what you're doing for your students now at University of Miami, just want to thank you. And on behalf of my daughter and all the alumni for continuing the traditions, it's just been phenomenal. And you're such a great leader. So thank you again for being here. I really, really appreciate date it. And I hope I get to bump into you at one of the games next season and hopefully on another road to another national championship. game.
00:50:22
Speaker
Appreciate you, Mike. And remember, go Canes. Go Canes.
00:50:27
Speaker
Thanks so much for listening to this podcast with President Echevarria and with me. And really special thanks to Joe for joining me. What a gracious guest. He was so nice to have as part of this podcast.
00:50:39
Speaker
Now, I just want to make sure that everyone out there is aware you can earn CPE credit just for listening to this podcast. All you need to do, visit the link in the show notes and get your credit.
00:50:50
Speaker
But even better news than that, if you are a prime CPE subscriber, you can earn the CPE at no extra cost. All you need to do, log in to finalize your credits. That's it for today. i hope to see you at another Becker Accounting Podcast in the future. Thanks again.