Embracing the AI opportunity: Elio Luongo, KPMG

When Elio Luongo started working for KPMG in Canada in the 1980s, artificial intelligence was the stuff of science fiction movies. Remember when The Terminator hit the big screen? Now, as Luongo prepares to retire as CEO, AI is no longer the purview of sci-fi imagination. It’s increasingly the day-to-day reality in a modern workplace.

Luongo is encouraging all KPMG employees to experiment with and learn from AI.

“Businesses need to help their people develop skills around AI,” he says. “That is probably one of the most fundamental things that we can be doing right now.”

In an interview on the Speaking of Business podcast, Luongo reflects on what he has learned and how he has adapted to technological change during his decades-long career.

Effective leaders, he says, open doors for employees to develop their skills, continually. “This is what’s going to change the productivity and the prosperity for people in Canada and we all have that responsibility to help develop our people’s skillset.”

Listen to the full interview – including why he describes leaders as HEPA filters – on the Speaking of Business podcast.

Transcript

Elio Luongo

How many people’s lives have you touched? How many people have you helped? Who’s better for knowing you? Who’s better for being here? That should be the goal, and that’s the measuring stick. The best life KPI you can get is how many people have you made lives better for?

 

Goldy Hyder

Welcome to Speaking of Business: Conversations with Canadian Innovators, Entrepreneurs and Leaders. I’m Goldy Hyder, president and CEO of the Business Council of Canada.

When Elio Luongo started working for KPMG in Canada, few companies had websites on the World Wide Web, fax machines were the fastest way to send information, and mobile phones were strictly used to make, wait for it, phone calls. A lot has changed in those few short decades. Now as Elio prepares to leave KPMG at the end of September, he’s using AI and the Metaverse. How did he adapt to such a massive technological transition and what else has changed for the CEO of KPMG in Canada? Let’s find out.

Welcome to the podcast, Elio.

 

Elio Luongo

Thanks, Goldy. Great to be here.

 

Goldy Hyder

My friend, great to see you. Thanks for doing this. You and I know each other well. I want to start with the beginning, if I can. Your family comes not from Canada, although you were born in Vancouver. Tell me their journey here. When did it begin?

 

Elio Luongo

So back in 1950, CP was looking for labour on the railroads and the test when the recruiters came around is they would look at people’s hands to see how big their calluses were on there and how hardworking they were. And so fortuitously my father got picked and that began his journey here through Halifax and then into the interior of British Columbia where he helped CP lay down some track and

 

Goldy Hyder

Literally helped build this country, connect it.

 

Elio Luongo

Yeah. Literally connected the country. Yeah. It’s a great story actually.

 

Goldy Hyder

And you came along, born in Vancouver.

 

Elio Luongo

Born in Vancouver, yes. Great city. Great upbringing. Great family. Very diverse culture, lots of great learning, lots of good friends back there.

 

Goldy Hyder

Now let’s get something out of the way that I’m sure hockey mad fans are going to be wondering about, which is you actually are the older brother to Roberto and you were the reason behind his success in Vancouver, right?

 

Elio Luongo

Yeah, let’s go with that. But no relationship other than he comes from the same part of the Italian country as I do, Campania region of Italy.

 

Goldy Hyder

Yeah. Well, he’s broken your heart enough in the hockey playoffs I think.

 

Elio Luongo

I don’t know if you saw, he ate spaghetti out of the Stanley Cup there. So I don’t know if that’s a sacrilege or not, but anyway.

 

Goldy Hyder

Well, I did see that. It was great. Well look, we started by talking about the origins, but let’s fast-forward to right here, right now. You’re in your final month or so of your term as CEO of KPMG, something that you’ve given a very long time to, and we’ll come to that. And you’re describing this transition, shall we call it, as graduating. That you are graduating from KPMG. As you prepare for your graduation let’s talk about what you learned during your time with the firm. I want you to think back to 1987 when you started working at KPMG. What was your first job and what was it like?

 

Elio Luongo

I was a junior tax person in KPMG. Lots of energy, I think still have lots of energy today. But wanted to learn and really become the best tax practitioner that I could possibly be. I love tax because of the challenges and understanding and it’s always a constant change. So for me, what was important is to be around really smart people that I could learn from, Goldy. And that is kind of one of the neat things about our organization that’s always existed back then and now is there are very bright, smart people that you can learn from. And for me what’s always been important is that ability to learn and to be curious and always be better and know something more today than I did yesterday and more tomorrow than I know today. That’s really important for me and that has been one of the neat things about this firm, this organization and KPMG.

 

Goldy Hyder

How did the opportunity come about?

 

Elio Luongo

So I had actually articled at another firm, Goldy, and then I’d gone to CRA-

 

Goldy Hyder

Canada Revenue Agency. Yeah.

 

Elio Luongo

Canada Revenue Agency. Thank you. As part of my journey to be a great tax practitioner, I always wanted to understand the Canada Revenue Agency as well. So I was coming back out, I was actually going back to my old firm and then a good friend of mine said, “Hey, I’ve got this opportunity for you. I’m going to introduce you to this person.” I said, “No, I’m good. Not to worry.” And I think the thing that made the difference, so I do want to share this story, is I actually turned KPMG down. The partner, the recruiting partner says, “Hey, where are you?” I go, “It’s Friday, I’m at home.” He goes, “Oh, I’ll come and see you.” I go, “What?” He goes, “Yeah, I want to come and see you.” That personal touch, he came over and my wife said, “You’re going to work for them.”

 

Goldy Hyder

Relationships.

 

Elio Luongo

Yeah, relationships matter. And this is a people business. And he said, “Look, I can see you’ve got a lot of great talents and I’m going to support you and I’m going to mentor you and I’m going to make sure you have a great career here.” And that’s what made the difference, Goldy.

 

Goldy Hyder

When you got there, did you think, this is where I’m going to spend the rest of my working career?

 

Elio Luongo

No, I thought, look, I’m going to hang out here for a while, learn, get really good at something and then move on. Yeah. That was my thinking back then and I think it’s been a pretty amazing 37 years.

 

Goldy Hyder

Yeah, it’s been a hell of a journey. At what point, I guess did you say, you know what? I think I want to be CEO.

 

Elio Luongo

I never thought I was going to be CEO. I thought I was going to be a great tax practitioner. I mean, I had a lot of great opportunities here. In Vancouver I became the head of tax there. Then I became the managing partner in Vancouver, which was great. Lots of great opportunities. And then I got the call. And here’s the interesting part. I said, “I’m never moving to Toronto. There’s not a chance in hell.”

 

Goldy Hyder

Spoken like a true Westerner.

 

Elio Luongo

Yeah. I go, “There’s no chance.”

 

Goldy Hyder

I believe I’ve also said that from Calgary and look where we both are.

 

Elio Luongo

Yeah, I think think we share that, right? And then you get here and you go, wow, this is an amazing place. This is centre court for business. And I’m so grateful that I had that opportunity and I was convinced to come here.

 

Goldy Hyder

What kept you there? What is it that beyond the work that you were passionate about, and you certainly spoke about the relationships, what motivated you and turned you on to get up every single day and give it all you got?

 

Elio Luongo

So I mean, one of the things that I think is fundamental to me is every day I learn something new. So I think university and all of the prep work that you do before you get into any role is… And again, I think universities teach us how to learn. So you learn how to learn at a university, but that’s just the beginning. It’s a fundamental building block. What really gets me motivated here and what gets me going here is my ability to learn, my ability to increase my skills and to develop.

But as you got into more senior roles, Goldy, the neat thing about what we do every day is we really help a lot of people in their career to develop their skills to become smarter, to be on the leading edge of whatever’s happening, whether it be regulation, whether it be technology, whether it be rule changes, standard changes, regulatory environments. This is what we do every day. So you really have to love learning, you really need to be curious and you really want to keep moving and advancing your skillset each and every day.

The neatest part of this job, Goldy, now as CEO is the number of people that you’ve been able to help in their career to develop their skills to make them better. And look, I wish I keep them all, but there is something really neat about them going out into the world and whether they work at other organizations to help other people, whether they go to government, whether they go to nonprofits, all of those other things, we really kind of seed our Canadian community with bright people, really smart people that have great skillset and have come and learned a lot more and really advanced their career. And it’s one of the most rewarding parts of the job and what we do every day, and that’s what gets me up and motivated each and every day.

 

Goldy Hyder

And it’s consistent with your theme of sort of graduating, right? I mean, ultimately these people, I used to use the same analogy as used. They’re all alumni of the place where they worked and they take with them-

 

Elio Luongo

Yeah, they are.

 

Goldy Hyder

… you don’t develop amnesia when you leave, you still take with you everything that we taught you.

 

Elio Luongo

Absolutely. You get to keep it all, you get to keep it all and it’s yours. Nobody’s going to take it away from you. This is the phenomenal thing. I think this is really important for all businesses. I think really, Goldy, I’m just going to zoom out here for a minute, I think it’s one of the most important things. I think you know I’m involved in trying to address our productivity issue here in Toronto and in Canada. And one of the most important things I think we do as leaders is to develop skills in our people. And again, coming back to it, I really believe that this is what’s going to change the productivity and the prosperity for people in Canada. And I think we all have that kind of responsibility to help develop our people’s skillset.

One of our values is courage and courage to try things. And to get out there and to learn about AI, learn about all the changes that are happening in your world, what you’re interested in, whether it’s tax, whether it’s regulatory, whether it’s audit, whether it’s advisory. All of those things is changing all the time and you’ll never ever master it. But what you will master is learning how to learn and how to develop your skills and how to get better. And I think the more skills we can impart on all of our people, I think the richer this country becomes.

 

Goldy Hyder

You’ve said a lot there and there’s a lot of powerful nuggets in there. Let me just break them down a little bit and we’ll explore the strands that you’ve created. First of all, I’ve spent a lot of time with leaders like you and CEOs from across this country. And I will say that what you just said about getting turned on by mentoring and really helping people and seeing them thrive, whether in your organization or ultimately in their life and in their career, I really think that’s an underappreciated value on behalf of Canadians to say that leaders, that’s what really motivates them.

 

Elio Luongo

It really is. And that’s what leadership is, is that it’s how many people’s lives have you touched? How many people have you helped? Who’s better for knowing you? Who’s better for being here? That should be the goal, and that’s the measuring stick. The best life KPI you can get is how many people have you made lives better for? And again, it’s a bit of our philosophy here is helping Canada be better. And how do you do that? Again, you develop people, you develop skills in people, you give them great opportunities, great experiences to learn. We need kind of this ecosystem to really get turned on, if I can put it that way, Goldy, here’s a great opportunity we got. AI that was developed in our backyard here. We need to take advantage of this and we need all of our learning institutions and all our organizations and all of us as a collective to really take this opportunity to help Canadians develop their skillsets. Whatever they might be, they will be impacted by this. This is a very important moment in the history of our country, for sure.

 

Goldy Hyder

Perfect segue to the second strand I wanted to drill down a little bit on is, you said it yourself, we’re at this intersection now. We’re not quite sure exactly where we are, how big it will be. We just know something’s going on here with artificial intelligence and the game changer that it may represent in our lives, the impact on robotics and impact on work and so forth. What are you doing now to help your colleagues but also your customers and your clients in preparing for what could be something as big as the internet, the impact that the internet had on us?

 

Elio Luongo

Look, Goldy, our clients really look to us to learn ahead and to help them in what they need to do. And that means we need to be ahead of the curve. So we need to be exploring, experimenting in a safe environment. And so what we’ve created at KPMG is that safe environment for our people to learn and we’ve given them courage and opportunities for them to learn about these great new technologies. I’ll come back to AI, we’ve got that in our own made-in-KPMG chatbot that is in a safe environment that they can learn. Nobody knows what you’re asking it, but it’s safe. We want them to experiment. We want them to be curious. We want them to develop their skills. And then we put on training sessions and then we help them and then we explore and we share experiences and we try different things.

So you need to be a bit entrepreneurial as you move along and you need to, again, learn and understand the technologies and all of these things that are happening. And so that is what we do and it’s really important for us to be there and to really… In order for us to teach other people, you need to learn it first. And so that’s really important. That’s why we need to be fast moving, understanding, exploring and doing it in a safe environment where we really understand, and I don’t know that you ever master this thing, but you certainly understand how to make it work, what it can do, what its limitations are. All of those things are kind of the key things.

And one of the key things we’re doing, again, also very proud of is working with Microsoft on the skills development centre. Again, it comes back, we need to help businesses and then businesses need to help their people develop skills around AI. That is probably one of the most fundamental things that we can be doing right now. It’s that skills development in our people. I think the adage goes that it’s not that AI will take away jobs, you know that, it’s people that know how to use AI will take jobs away from people who don’t know how to use AI. And I want all of our people to know how to use AI, it’s really important.

 

Goldy Hyder

I swear you’re reading my notes. That was my next point was to talk about exactly what you just said, which is this anxiety and fear that is innate in human nature. That when change comes, I’m against it. We all want it, we all want to upgrade our phones, we want newer cars, newer technology and all that. But when it comes, and it might affect me personally, I’m spooked, I’m alarmed. What you’re saying is don’t be.

 

Elio Luongo

Be curious. Experiment in a safe place. You have to be very thoughtful about it. But this is the environments we create, and there’s lots of ways to do that, again, but you have to try and you have to be open to it. And then again, don’t be embarrassed because it’s really neat. I was sitting with somebody today and they say, “The neat thing about AI is it doesn’t really know what you’re asking it.” Nobody sees what you’re asking. You can ask it whatever dumb questions you want, it’s going to be okay. And it’s going to learn how to interpret what you’re really saying and really help you. I mean it equalizes the bar kind of thing in terms of knowledge and knowledge extraction. It’s a great tool, but you can’t be afraid of it. And again, you have to be open to that prompt learning, prompt engineering. One of the courses we’re putting on for people is how to prompt the machine properly.

 

Goldy Hyder

Do you feel that this development requires regulations because this is a big discussion around the world, other countries not waiting, they’ve just moved on and have no interest in regulations. Others like in European countries are trying to figure out how to box this thing in. Can we even box such a thing in and what should we be doing in terms of regulations around this industry?

 

Elio Luongo

Yeah, I mean I think there’s lots of conversation and discussion around that. And some of it is sure, we need to safeguard it and we need to be careful with information and confidential information, you never want that out there, Goldy, but it’s that fine balance. And again, if you over pivot, you actually stifle creativity, you put the country back, you put it at a competitive disadvantage. So finding the right spots, but also finding the spots where you just got to let it go is kind of the real challenge ahead of us in doing that.

But the countries that don’t have it, obviously they’re going to plow right through and we’ve got to make sure we don’t fall behind. Because I’m going to say it again, Goldy, this thing came out of our backyard and shame on us if we lose that advantage and that first mover advantage in the world. I really think that we’ve got to somehow coalesce around this, figure out how to do this and figure out how to do it best and quickly. Speed is important.

 

Goldy Hyder

Indeed it is. And that allows me to link to the third strand that your earlier remarks got me thinking about and that is one of the issues of our time in Canada, a source of great frustration is productivity and lack thereof. Now a lot of people hear that word and they freak out because they think it’s, “You want me to work harder?” Not really what productivity is. How do you see the connection between addressing that problem and where we are at the advent of the next phase of technology through AI?

 

Elio Luongo

I mean I think skills development is what’s going to change our productivity and how we use tools. And this is in every industry, the best tools with the best people is going to create the best productivity. And again, our organizations have to deliver those tools, have to deliver that learning, that training. Goldy, you know productivity equals prosperity. And if we want a prosperous country and if we want our people to prosper, we have to help them.

Look, it’s what saved me. It’s what I believe in. My education is what gave me my opportunities. My experience is what gave me the opportunities. I want to give people those experiences. I want to give them the education. I want them to develop the skills so they have the opportunities to be more productive and therefore to be more prosperous. That to me is the algorithm, if you will, of the productivity curve here in Canada and how we move up. Again, we’ve got to move quickly. We may not get it all right, but I think helping people adapt and understand and to experiment with this is absolutely essential.

 

Goldy Hyder

We’re coming just out of the Olympics. We saw Canada haul in record numbers of medals and the pride that Canadians feel, whether it’s in Summer McIntosh, whether it’s in our four by 100 team that went from the worst time in the final eight to the best. So you see the Canadian competitiveness in a number of things, especially in sports and on the ice and things like that. Do you feel we’re the same when it comes to our economy and our business and our ability to work together to compete with the rest of the world?

 

Elio Luongo

If we could take that spirit and just infuse it in all of us, I mean it would be so great. But I think, again, that’s kind of the role of leadership at the end of the day is to be inspirational, Goldy. It’s to rise above it. It’s to create the environment, to create those ecosystems where people are inspired, where they want to be motivated, where they want to do better, where they want to succeed. I think innate in every individual is to succeed, I truly believe that. I think it’s there, Goldy, I think it’s muted for whatever reason. But I think what we need is inspiration here. Certainly those Olympians were all inspired along the way. You can see it. You can feel it. It’s the pride they have when they drape themselves in the Canadian colors and the Canadian flag. And I mean they share that pride and inspiration with all of us. And I think we have to do that too. That’s what we need to do as business leaders.

 

Goldy Hyder

I mean the formula is there, right? Good coaches, teamwork, investment in infrastructure, hard work.

 

Elio Luongo

Hard work.

 

Goldy Hyder

That desire to want to win. I know that Canadian businesses have that. They have those elements. But somehow, and I know this seems a little self-serving on a Speaking of Business podcast, but we’ve become the bad guy. Everybody has got a bull’s eye on big business and it’s not unique to Canada, it’s happening in the United States and around the world. What can we do to break through that?

 

Elio Luongo

First of all, just don’t buy into that. Because if we’re doing the right things in the long run and for the right reasons-

 

Goldy Hyder

The facts will catch up.

 

Elio Luongo

It’ll catch up. You can’t have the noise drive you. You’ve got to just keep doing the right thing all the time. And the right thing is the things that we’ve talked about here already. And so if we get mired in that, and so look, if they’re not listening right now, no problem. Let’s just keep going. Let’s keep doing the right thing. I think you have to be, what I’ll say a bounded optimist as a leader. I think this is important is you have to have that bounded optimism. You have to know that you will get there. You have to be that inspiration and need to keep going. I think that is critical in leadership. And you have to inspire people. You can’t look around at why it’s not working. Look at the things that are working and really focus on that.

And again, propel people forward. Give them a reason to get up and to want to develop their skills to be better and say, “This is for you. You get to keep all this. You learn these skills, you get to keep it. It’s yours. Stay with this as long as you want. If you want, go somewhere else, spread that in the world and make Canada better. Great. No problem. I get that.” But, we need to keep doing the important work of building Canada, Goldy, and we can’t get lost in the rhetoric there and so on. And I think, look, they’re not listening today, one day they will. That’s the way I look at it. We just got to keep driving on.

 

Goldy Hyder

Keep plowing through. A lot of what you speak about is cultural. It was once said that Canada’s a country born on third base and thinks it hit a triple. We just got lucky and it’s so lucky to be where we are. And the risk of that, of course, it’s created some comfort and some complacency. But Elio all around us, you know and I know the world is changing and it’s changing dramatically. How do we get at some of those impediments? For example, what you’re talking about, right? We’ve created in many ways and the forefront of AI, in Montreal, in Waterloo, in Edmonton, and we’ve got all these startups. How do we get past the idea of just simply building a business to $10 million and selling it so I can buy a cottage somewhere and off we go. How do we dream big in terms of scaling our businesses?

 

Elio Luongo

Running a national firm as KPMG, you really understand the whole country here and the different microclimates and the diversity you have and the richness and the diversity of different thinking, the entrepreneurial spirit, all of those other things. We are so lucky that we have that and it’s born out of necessity. You have to do that. Our size gives us agility and that means we have to move faster. We do have that ability to create and to innovate and to be thoughtful. What we don’t have is the population to sell into. But we have this phenomenal neighbor next door that everybody tries to sell into and to create that opportunity.

So Goldy, I think this is a bit of the story of Canada, isn’t it? It’s like we develop great things and so on and scale has always been a bit of an issue for us. And maybe our role in the world is to develop those great start-up companies and so on, and then to graduate into the next world. Listen, that’s not a bad place for us to be. It’s not a bad place for us to play. Where we can get scale in the country and keep our IP in Canada, great. But listen, let’s not lose the theme here of what we’re great at and we’re great at inventing, we’re great at creating, we’re great at innovating, and we’ve got this phenomenal culture that creates these great institutions that create great companies. I don’t think we should shy away from it. It’s great. That’s success.

 

Goldy Hyder

Well look, speaking of success, congratulations on your success. You’ve had a remarkable run a hell of a career. I know what an impact you’ve made not just at KPMG but well beyond and into our country more broadly. And you’re getting ready to graduate and normally you would get a degree and a grade when you graduate. I’m wondering, well, have you been thinking about your own performance over the last nearly 40 years and you mentioned, what you’re most proud of, but maybe things you look back and said, “Knowing what I know today I might’ve done this differently.”? And I say this not to judge you, but to help others who are going to be the next Elio Luongo career for 40 years somewhere. What do they need to know about leadership and the journey that you’ve been on?

 

Elio Luongo

The challenges really make you better when you overcome them. And you don’t always know that when you’re in the middle of it and you go, “Oh man, why did this happen?” So you get these challenges but what your job is to do is to figure out how to overcome them. And what’s interesting, Goldy, is when you overcome those challenges, you actually get better at overcoming the next challenge. And so what I describe as part of leadership is you are the HEPA filter. And what that means is you trap all these particles, all these challenges on this side, and you don’t bring them down into the organization. You let that organization do what it needs to do. But on this side here, you’re dealing with all this stuff and nobody sees and the people go, “What the hell does that guy do all day long? I don’t know. I don’t get it.” But what you’re dealing is you dealing with all these things and you try to get those particles off the other side of the HEPA filter. But what you do is you get really good at dealing with those and how to manage those and it’s actually a skill in and of itself.

So look, nobody ever wants those challenges in life and in roles and so on, you wish everything was smooth sailing. But this is kind of the quiet side of leadership that you need to do. You need to deal with all these problems. And look, you need to get help and don’t be afraid to ask for help. It works much better in a team environment. But you need to kind of navigate your way through all of these things. And when you do, you go, wow, it’s quiet success, but you’re the better for it. Again, that is another skill development that you learn along the way. So look, I hope for less challenges for all, but when those challenges do come along understand that getting on the other side of it, you’re going to come out better.

In the words of my friend Ranjay Gulati, Harvard professor, during COVID, he said, “Look, nine per cent of you are going to come out stronger than you went in.” And that’s the whole bounded optimism that I carry. And whenever these challenges come in, I go, I want to come out stronger than I went in. And that’s the approach I try and take.

 

Goldy Hyder

All right. Well, look, speaking of the other side, what’s next for you? I mean, I suppose you could be the brand ambassador for HEPA filters, but what do you got lined up?

 

Elio Luongo

Well, I never thought of that. That’s very creative, Goldy. If I end up there, you know where it happened. Listen, I’m going to be involved in something. I’ve got lots of energy. I’ve obviously got a commitment to our organization and doing what I need to do here. I’m always going to be involved in some kind of the ecosystem here in Canada I care. As you do, as you do Goldy, one of the things you and I share is the love of our great country and the opportunities that’s given us, our families and every Canadian. It’s something we should be very proud of. And so I really want to make sure that journey continues and I’d be part of that ecosystem somewhere along the way, and that’s what’s in it for me. Some of the greatest things come out of the unknown, Goldy. I don’t know for sure because as I said, I continue to be very focused on what I’m doing here until I’m not doing it anymore. And then I am very confident that some great things will come along and I’ll continue to be part of the ecosystem. And look, my friend, I’m sure our paths will continue to cross along the way.

 

Goldy Hyder

Oh, I’ll make sure of that.  And I will for this reason, Elio. And I want to just before we get to some fun and rapid fire questions, just conclude with something. As I said off the top, you and I know each other well, we have some shared experiences, shared history, immigrants to this country, in your case born here, but your family immigrated here. We’re taping here in the middle of August. I’m about to hit 50 years of landing in Canada. So I’ve been reflecting a lot and I think about the conversations you and I have had many times. And I want to ask you sort of a final question, talked a lot about you, your career, your journey here and everything, but we know that we’re really doing this for our kids and our grandkids. And I’m wondering what are your hopes for your grandchildren and the world that they’re going to live in?

 

Elio Luongo

Goldy, I do reflect on this. As you know, I’m a proud grandparent and I have seven grandchildren and it’s really important to me, and that’s why I continue to be focused on this.

So number one, we talk about safety, we talk about the physical safety, but it’s also the psychological safety that we need in this country. I think it’s really important that we continue to celebrate our differences and to celebrate them and work together. That is what diverse thinking is about. That is what really diversity is all about. It’s just leveraging off of each other’s strengths. So safety and psychological safety is really important. And of course you need peace to have that. And I think that’s what I really hope for. And finally, opportunity. This country gives my grandchildren, our children, great opportunities. And again, I’m going to come back to where I started, to develop their skills to be smarter tomorrow than they are today. To develop the opportunity to share and to come back to a philosophy that is really important and part of my mantra is, how can I help? How can I help? If we all take this approach, how can I help? How can I help my neighbour? How can I help this country? How can I help business? How can I help my clients? How can I help?

If we take that approach, and this is something I try and really embed here in our people and in our kids and go forward, it’s this, how can I help approach. You know Goldy, you learn a lot by raising kids. I think some of my best leadership skills came from developing my three kids. You have the very curious intellect. You have a rebel, but you have a really smart rebel. And then you have miss congeniality and it all works. Same parents, same …

 

Goldy Hyder

Not mentioning any names.

 

Elio Luongo

Not mentioning any names. But then here you go and you have to learn how to live together and kind of adapt and you know it’s not one size fits all. But opportunity, loving each other, loving this country, having a passion to help people is what I really wish for, for my grandkids. Yeah.

 

Goldy Hyder

Well said my friend. Look, we’d like to wrap up with some fun rapid questions. So I’m just going to fire a few at you. Favorite way to spend a summer afternoon?

 

Elio Luongo

Lake Okanagan. Just looking out and taking in the sun and it’s phenomenal. It’s a beautiful, beautiful place in the world.

 

Goldy Hyder

Favorite food?

 

Elio Luongo

Pizza. Come on.

 

Goldy Hyder

Okay. Favorite food other than pizza? I should have known that.

 

Elio Luongo

Actually, sushi. I love sushi.

 

Goldy Hyder

We would’ve also accepted Indian food, but that’s fine. Sushi is a good answer. Olympics just wrapped up. What’s your favorite sport?

 

Elio Luongo

Oh my god, breakdancing. Oh man, that was incredible.

 

Goldy Hyder

Come on.

 

Elio Luongo

That guy was amazing. Phil Kim, come on. That was phenomenal. It was fun. It was fun to watch. I never thought it was an Olympic sport. What entertainment? And it’s so proud to… Look, all of these things come back to really hard work and competitiveness and every single one of those sports is amazing. And we have, again, all of those individuals deserve to be recognized, Goldy, in terms of their inspiration and the pride that they bring to this country. So I think all of it, I can’t help but love hockey of course, and that is my favorite sport for sure above all. So that probably would have to be the final answer if I can put that.

 

Goldy Hyder

All right. Well, it’s not our final answer. A couple of quick questions. So what’s the one motto that you live by?

 

Elio Luongo

Oh, it comes back to how can I help?

 

Goldy Hyder

How can I help, I love it. And what’s your favorite memory growing up?

 

Elio Luongo

Just being with family. Picnics are a big deal. Picnics with all my cousins by the beach and all of that. Playing soccer, just being around a lot of fun-loving people, sharing food, sharing experiences, that’s the best, Goldy, that’s the best.

 

Goldy Hyder

Well, you know we East Indians and Italians were separated at birth. We have all the same stuff. I’m just so grateful, my friend, to have had a chance to work with you as we have.

 

Elio Luongo

Thank you.

 

Goldy Hyder

And I can’t thank you enough and I congratulate you on your success and on your graduation. Looking forward to what comes next. And you can bet we’re going to be in touch. And thanks so much for doing this. We really appreciate it.

 

Elio Luongo

Goldy, thank you very much. And same right back at you, my friend. Thank you.

 

Goldy Hyder

Elio Luongo is the chief executive officer and senior partner of KPMG in Canada. If you would like to hear more of our Speaking of Business conversations with innovators, leaders, and entrepreneurs, why not subscribe to our podcast? Search for Speaking of Business wherever you get your podcasts, or go to our website at thebusinesscouncil.ca. Yes, it’s thebusinesscouncil.ca. Until next time, I’m Goldy Hyder. Thanks for joining us.