women-in-energy

Life at Deloitte

Christine Carmazzi on audit leadership in the energy sector

Deloitte is proud to introduce the next profile in a series featuring women in the energy industry in conjunction with the Women’s Energy Network (WEN). By highlighting the stories of women in energy, we hope to help facilitate meaningful conversations, create connections, and showcase the myriad of opportunities for women to enter and thrive in the energy industry.

Christine Carmazzi is a partner in the Audit & Assurance business at Deloitte & Touche LLP, focused on clients in the Power, Utilities & Renewables and Energy sectors. She has 31 years of experience serving large, diversified energy companies as well as emerging growth entities including retail power and gas operations, renewables, regulated and unregulated power and gas operations, oil and gas exploration and production, royalty interest entities, and gas transportation and storage operations.

Fueling a future as a woman in energy

Christine graduated from Miami University and started her career in Deloitte’s Columbus office. Her first client assignment was for a large public energy company. Little did she know that she would spend the next 17 years of her career working on that same client!

One of the reasons Chris decided to start working with clients in the energy sector was that she was attracted to the complexity of the industry and how that translated into a number of learning opportunities. She found it fascinating to watch how clients were “reinventing” themselves to shift their focus to the next big thing.

Chris likes a fast-paced environment and enjoys learning as much as possible, and that has always been the case with the energy industry. The constant pace of change continues to excite her about the future of the industry. She states that a significant evolution happening now is the transition to green energy, and it’s exciting to see not only how energy companies deal with this transition but also the impact on other industries. She adds that significant new technologies and innovations are needed right now, which means there’s still a lot of work to do. This pace of change creates attractive opportunities, and it’s a great industry to be in.

On the importance of relationships

Chris shared about the importance of relationships in business. Through her client engagement teams, Chris has met a number of people through the years who have come to serve as mentors in her daily work. She credits her client assignments and mentors as the key factors in preparing for her future assignments.

Christine Carmazzi
Partner
Audit & Assurance
Deloitte & Touche LLP

One particular Deloitte mentor taught Chris that people often do not follow a leader unless they feel that the leader genuinely cares about them. She learned the importance of building trust and having mutual respect for people you work with.

Regardless of the client that I’m serving, I always try to take time out and think about the relationships I have with the people on my team. If you don’t have those relationships, then you don’t really have anything, quite honestly.

Looking back on becoming a partner

Chris shared that earlier in her career, for many years, she was unsure if she wanted to be a partner. It was not until she became a senior manager that she knew for certain this was what she wanted. She says, “Just seeing what the partners did and how they worked with clients to help them with issues was really amazing. I admired what I saw, and I, too, wanted to be that person who could go into a room and help handle any situation.”

Before Chris became a partner in 2003, she didn’t know of any Deloitte female partners who had their first child until well after becoming a partner at Deloitte. That realization was a turning point for Chris’s career, and she set her mind to being able to be both—Chris was a mother of two children before making partner, with 12 years of experience at Deloitte.

However, managing family life and work wasn’t easy, especially in her early years as a partner, but she came to acknowledge that it was part of her life and journey. She took great strides to balance being a good mother, wife, and professional.

It’s a lot to navigate through, but it gets easier over time, and you learn to adapt and become more resilient.

Chris is excited by how much has changed at Deloitte over the past 20–25 years from a diversity, equity, and inclusion perspective. She wasn’t always sure if being a new partner with young children was a compatible mix. However, looking back, she has no regrets. Her oldest daughter, now a senior at Penn State University, is working toward her master of accounting and plans to work in public accounting upon graduation, essentially following in her mother’s footsteps. Chris hopes that being a working mother served as a good example to her daughters and other women, regardless of their chosen career path.

Christine Carmazzi: The lightning round

Favorite food or drink: Pizza

Favorite place to travel: Italy

One thing on her bucket list: An around-the-world cruise

One way you’ve practiced self-care during the pandemic: Reformer Pilates every day

Women in Energy

Fullwidth SCC. Do not delete! This box/component contains JavaScript that is needed on this page. This message will not be visible when page is activated.

Insert Custom CSS fragment. Do not delete! This box/component contains code needed on this page. This message will not be visible when page is activated.
+++ DO NOT USE THIS FRAGMENT WITHOUT EXPLICIT APPROVAL FROM THE CREATIVE STUDIO DEVELOPMENT TEAM +++

Did you find this useful?