Current role: Division Director, Net Zero & Climate Risk
Current organisation: Macquarie Group
Last role at PwC: Senior Accountant, Financial Assurance - Financial Services
Time at PwC: 2006 - 2009
What’s the one career achievement you’re most proud of?
Throughout my career I’ve been very lucky to work on interesting and complex problems, and I am proud to have been part of high performing teams that have been able to solve them.
Today, I am working on perhaps the most defining issue of our time. As part of Macquarie’s Central Net Zero team I am helping our businesses align our financing (lending and equity investments) activities with the objective of enabling and accelerating the world’s pathway to net zero emissions by 2050.
I am proud to be making a contribution towards solving this global challenge.
What’s been your biggest career challenge and how have you overcome it?
Throughout my career I’ve changed roles a few times, and it’s always been somewhat challenging. My first big career change was when I moved from being an auditor at PwC to an operational risk analyst role at Macquarie. I later changed roles within Macquarie from an Operational Risk Lead Director role to the Regional COO and Change Management Lead for Commodities and Global Markets Group. My last career change happened a year ago, when I took on my current role in the Central Net Zero and Climate Risk team.
The more you change roles the easier it gets, however some of the challenges include being able to recognise the right time to make a move, having the confidence that you can be successful in the role, understanding different concepts and expectations, and collaborating with new colleagues and different stakeholders.
I am grateful that I have had great mentors throughout my career who have shared their wisdom and experience with me.
What’s the most valuable lesson you learnt during your career at PwC and how has that helped you get to where you are today?
At PwC, you learn to be nimble, adaptable, and how to work under pressure to meet client deadlines and goals – all of these skills have been critical to my career beyond Audit / PwC.
However, the most critical lessons from my time as an auditor at PwC has been to always apply a level of professional scepticism, while keeping client relationship and team collaboration strong. I continue to apply this lesson to my role today, where I deal with a wide range of different views, opinions, and stakeholders.
What was your dream job ‘growing up’ and why?
Growing up I’ve always dreamed of being in film and TV.
I was born and grew up in the former Soviet Union, and TV and film was my way of wanting to connect to and learn about the big, wide world out there. This fascination later triggered my wanderlust. So, when I graduated from a university I left my birth country of Uzbekistan, to travel the world and study and work overseas.
Today, I live in Sydney, Australia, and I work for Macquarie, a global financial services group operating in 34 international markets.
Every day, living in a global city, working for a global bank, I feel lucky to be living my dream.
If you could have an hour lunch with anyone - dead or alive - who would it be and why?
I would seize this opportunity to have lunch with my parents who have passed. I lost them in my formative years when I left my birth country of Uzbekistan to further my studies and build my career. It would be nice to spend some time with them and share the life and career I lead today. I hope that they would be proud.
How are you and your business making a difference for your customers, employees and society?
I feel that everyone in Macquarie can be proud of our purpose of empowering people to innovate and invest for a better future, and it’s certainly something that really resonates with me. Additionally, I am lucky to be working in a team whose mandate is to develop and refine Macquarie’s net zero and climate risk strategy. I am glad I can contribute to this space and help our clients and communities address this global challenge, as well as play a role in educating our internal teams on the best way we can all contribute to solving this problem.
What are the key actions that Macquarie is taking to fulfill its commitment to net zero emissions by 2050?
In 2021, Macquarie made a commitment to align business operations and financing activities with the objective of enabling and accelerating the world’s pathway to net zero by 2050. We established a dedicated cross-group Net Zero program team to assess our lending and equity investments’ existing climate footprint and released 2 Net Zero and Climate Risk reports, prioritising efforts to reduce financed emissions in carbon-intensive sectors. We have estimated our financed emissions and set interim targets for the residential mortgage, oil/gas, motor vehicle and coal sectors. As a result, we now have targets in place for over 80% of our dollar exposures to carbon-intensive sectors and, in line with the NZBA guidelines, we expect to set targets for all remaining material carbon-intensive sectors in our next Net Zero and Climate Risk Report.
According to Macquarie’s 2022 Group Annual Report for ESG, Macquarie and Generation UK have launched a pioneering green jobs programme. Can you tell us more about this?
The global transition to net zero will bring significant changes and opportunities to communities and in some cases that will have an effect on people’s jobs, especially those employed in high greenhouse gas emissions sectors. To address this, Macquarie and Generation UK have launched a pioneering green jobs programme. The initiative is the first of its kind offering profession-specific training to people facing barriers into employment to help them enter the green sector. It helps address youth unemployment and the skill demands for reaching net zero targets across the UK. The programme has been developed with the guidance from experts across Macquarie, Green Investment Group (GIG), which is now part of Macquarie Asset Management (MAM), and with funding from the Macquarie Group Foundation.
