The consulting firm PwC has nearly 1,000 people who work on evaluating mergers and acquisition deals, but despite that army of consultants, each deal comes down to a one-on-one conversation and the relationship behind it.
Having the emotional intelligence to make and maintain those relationships is going to drive career success over the next decade, PwC partner Nick Donkar (MBA ’05) told University of Georgia students gathered for his keynote speech during International Business Week at the Terry College of Business.
“It’s great to have an amazing résumé, but if you can’t hold a conversation and don’t have a defined perspective, a great résumé won’t be enough,” Donkar said. “I can hire really smart people. But to form relationships with clients, to build your network and brand inside the firm, it takes somebody who has a high emotional intelligence — understanding where you sit relative to the room, reading the body language of people, and so on. That’s something that takes practice.”
Donkar joined PwC in 2002 and earned a reputation as the go-to guy to consult on healthcare mergers and acquisitions. Firms contract with PwC to perform financial due diligence on healthcare companies they are interested in acquiring, and Donkar’s team leads that due diligence process and structures the deals.
He told students that he never anticipated healthcare would be his niche at PwC, but he received an incredible opportunity to manage a healthcare merger in California when he first started out. The opportunity came at the worst time for him personally, but he persevered, and it ultimately launched his career.
Moving from Atlanta to California immediately after he and his wife had their first child was unplanned, but it allowed him to work with clients he hadn’t previously considered and to expand his network and reputation.
It also broadened his perspective and strengthened his emotional intelligence. His advice: take big risks while you’re young. They’re easier in your 20s.
“You need to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, right?” Donkar said about opportunities to travel and work for large firms. “It’s OK to start big … It’s always good to try to go as big as possible and figure out if you like it or not. You can always go smaller.”
Over the past 24 years, he has become a go-to resource for healthcare mergers worldwide. Building a personal brand requires time and intention, and hundreds of one-on-one interactions to grow a network.
“I’ve invested the time to make sure I can provide easy answers when people call,” Donkar said. “At jobs internationally or otherwise, when people are doing these large-scale deals, they don’t want to have to make 30 phone calls and get passed all over the place. They want a one-stop shop. And so, when people think healthcare deals at PwC, whether I’m still the head of that unit or not, they call me and I solve the problem.”
It’s up to each student to start building that brand early by becoming someone people know they can count on, he said.
Having the ability to build relationships and have conversations — across borders and cultures — is becoming more important as technology and software skills advance in the consulting world, he added.
“AI has effectively democratized knowledge and information and quick access to answers,” he said. “So, then what’s the point of differentiation? It’s everything you bring to the table — your POVs, your perspectives, your work ethic, and you bring the ability to connect relationships across the board.”
In addition to Donkar’s keynote talk, Terry College’s International Business Weeks included a roundtable of alumni working international business including, Aly Sparks (BBA ’94), global chief human resources officer for The Adecco Group; Drishti Jain (BBA ’11), global manager for partnerships at Booking.com; Marissa Maldonado (BBA ’10), CEO and founder of Proda Technology; and Shannon Totten (BBA ’93), chief underwriting officer for Sompo insurance.
The goal is to increase students’ exposure to global perspectives, global career paths and the tools they will need to compete in a global economy.
