Life at Deloitte

Career Journey: Tori Boegh

Life Sciences tax professional

“My dad teaches accounting at Long Beach State and used to work at Deloitte. I think he sort of finds it delightful that his scientist daughter ended up at his old accounting firm.” — Tori Boegh, Tax, Los Angeles

Not only do I go to the traditional tax training like all my peers, but Deloitte sends me to things like BIO, which is the largest biopharmaceutical industry convention. So I get both tax training and to stay current on medical research.

Science major to tax professional

If you ask Tori (short for Victoria) what she does at Deloitte, she’s quick to say “I’m not an accountant. My graduate degree is in a specific neurophysiology, but I just say biology.”

Tori is a “specialist,” one of several non-accountants or attorneys within Deloitte Tax who advise on tax for extremely vertical and technical industries. In Tori’s case, she works primarily with biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and medical device companies. In a given year she may work on projects for as many as a 50 different clients, ranging from startups to large multinationals.

When you ask Tori about her day-to-day work, she speaks of orphan drug tax credits and helping to define which types of research and development are eligible for tax incentives. Rules around both are highly technical and the tax teams at Deloitte have to understand how the science relates to tax regulations to devise sound planning.

“I spend the vast majority of my time talking to people with medical and scientific backgrounds, peer to peer.” The alternative—accountants having those conversations—is simply not as efficient. “There's a lot of misunderstanding and, frankly, it just annoys our clients’ technical professionals if they have to repeatedly explain their work.”

Industry view is key

When Tori started at Deloitte 15 years ago the common belief was that in regard to tax issues, industry was not very relevant to tax issues. She’s proud to have played a role in changing that perception and helping the life sciences practice grow. Now having technical specialists “is a huge selling point for Deloitte’.”

It’s also meaningful to the world of medicine, because the money from credits and incentives is reinvested into the development of new medicines and devices, fueling innovation and changing lives. “To me that's absolutely the best thing,” Tori says.

Balancing act

Tori is also active in Deloitte’s Women’s Initiative (WIN). She came to Deloitte directly from academia where she conducted research. Networking, how to present yourself, selling the organization, it was all foreign to her. She found WIN to be helpful in connecting with people and understanding the culture.

Now as a leader, she advocates for WIN as a way to help people understand the differences between them. Not just gender-related differences, but personalities, styles, cultures and educational backgrounds. “WIN teaches you how to work well with people … how to best utilize your strengths.”

Born and raised in L.A., Tori has a twin brother, Jason, who is an actor, and an older brother, Eric, who’s a stockbroker. She and her family are quite close, and are passionate UCLA football fans. She has a dog named Bruno; “I’m one of those weirdoes who takes their dog everywhere.” Though she travels for work extensively, she loves to travel for leisure, too, and has a group of Deloitte friends who’ve been all over world together, including at trip to Japan in 2010—“We still talk about it all the time.”

Tori is proof that the most fulfilling career journeys aren’t always the expected ones. At Deloitte, she’s helped grow a practice, changed thinking about tax, and made Managing Director … as a biologist. Then again, with an accountant for a father, perhaps it was in her DNA all along.

Continually learning

“I love getting to learn about many different areas. And I've seen at many different companies’ drugs go from infancy in the lab through clinical trials, and now be on the market.”

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