I Help Corporate Professionals Gain Career Clarity & Fulfillment | Founder @Amplify Your Home | Global AI Tax Copilot Strategist @EY

Don't be fooled by my appearance. Quiet, Asian, tiny girl.

In the last decade, I've...

Successfully navigated the corporate giants: Goldman Sachs, PwC, Deloitte and EY.

Built communities, tax and financial models, and automations. (Excel wizard here)

Empowered employees to own their damn careers,

Challenge their norms to do something special.

That's when Problems become Opportunities,

Strategies into Actions.

You are not Alone.

Ready to redefine your career? Let's make it happen.

Mary Fung

Something quiet is happening inside Big 4 consulting.

They’re not just “adding AI.”
They’re changing who they hire, who they promote, and who they quietly stop needing.

For decades, consulting ran on leverage:
armies of smart doers grinding slides, models, and research.

AI just ate that layer.

Now firms want fewer doers
and more people who can:
• frame the problem
• judge tradeoffs
• tell the story
• own the recommendation

Which sounds empowering… until you realize what it means.

If your value was execution,
AI just made you optional.

If your value is judgment, synthesis, and client trust,
you just became more valuable than ever.

That’s the uncomfortable shift most consultants haven’t internalized yet.

The firms will adapt. They always do.
The question is whether the people inside them will.

AI isn’t coming for “jobs.”
It’s coming for roles built on repetition and polish.

And the people who don’t move up the value chain
won’t get a second warning.

This isn’t a future-of-work thought experiment.
It’s already showing up in who gets staffed — and who doesn’t.

Own Your Damn Career | Founder @Amplify Your Home | Head of Synthetic Data & Simulations @EY

No one tells you this,
but the higher you climb, the less you build.

You spend less time solving problems,
and more time defending decisions.

Meetings replace momentum.
Politics replace progress.
Justifying replaces creating.

By the time something ships,
you’re too drained to enjoy it.

You didn’t lose your passion.
You just buried it under decks, updates, and “alignment calls.”

At some point, you have to ask:
Am I managing outcomes,
or managing theater?

The consultant's dilemma: build vs. advise.

I've been on both sides.

As an advisor:
• You recommend the best solution
• The client nods enthusiastically
• You leave with a fat invoice
• The recommendation dies in a drawer
• You're hired again next year to 'refresh the strategy'

As a builder:
• You recommend the best solution
• Then you have to make it work
• Every shortcut comes back to haunt you
• Success is measured in production, not slides
• If it fails, you own it

The industry has an advice surplus and an execution deficit.

Every company has a strategy deck. Very few have working AI in production.

The consultants who win long-term are the ones who cross the line. Who stay for implementation. Who put their name on outcomes, not just recommendations.

'We advised them' is worthless if nothing shipped.

The market is figuring this out. Clients are tired of paying for slides. They want results. The firms that adapt will thrive. The ones that don't will wonder why revenue is flat.

My advice to consultants: learn to build. Not just 'understand' technology. Actually build things. Your credibility depends on it.

People ask why I’m okay sharing my “secrets.”

Why I teach everything I know.
Give away resources.
Tools.
Playbooks.

Because you can copy the output but
you can’t copy the process.

You won’t have my judgment.
My taste.
My reps.
My scars.

If sharing makes you afraid,
you were never the edge.

My DMs are full of vendors pitching AI tools. Every. Single. Day.

'Hi Mary, saw you're in AI - would love 15 minutes to show you how we're revolutionizing [thing].'

I counted last week: 23 vendor pitches. All 'AI-powered.' All claiming to be different.

Here's what I've learned:

> If your pitch starts with 'AI-powered,' I'm already tuning out. Everyone is AI-powered now. That's not a differentiator.

> If you can't tell me the specific problem you solve in one sentence, you don't know what you're selling.

> If your demo requires 'ideal conditions' to work, it won't survive my enterprise environment.

> If you're comparing yourself to ChatGPT, you've already lost. That's table stakes.

To the founders reading this:

I'm not anti-vendor. I'm anti-noise. Tell me what you do, who it's for, and what it actually costs. Skip the AI buzzwords. Win my attention with clarity.

That's it. That's the secret.

TCS just paid $700M for Coastal Cloud, a Salesforce consultancy. Becoming a top-5 Salesforce partner globally.

Why should you care about a consulting M&A deal?

Because it signals where the big players think enterprise AI is actually going.

TCS COO said the quiet part out loud: 'advancing our AI-led transformation agenda' through Salesforce expertise.

Not building custom AI. Not launching a foundation model. Embedding AI into the platforms enterprises already use.

This is the enterprise AI playbook that actually works:

1. Meet customers where they are (existing platforms like Salesforce)
2. Integrate AI into workflows that already exist
3. Don't ask enterprises to rip and replace - enhance what they have

The AI startups trying to replace Salesforce should be nervous. The big consultancies are betting that AI's value comes from integration, not disruption.

$700M is a lot of conviction in that thesis.

What Big 4 AI people know that tech companies desperately need.

I've worked with both worlds. Here's what Big 4 people have that tech often lacks:

1. Governance fluency. We know how to get AI approved, not just built. Tech companies build amazing products that die in procurement. We know the 47 stakeholders who can say no.

2. The 'no' navigation skill. Every enterprise has blockers. Legal. Compliance. Risk. Security. IT. We've learned to map them, sequence them, and neutralize them one by one.

3. Executive translation. We can explain transformer architecture to a CFO without their eyes glazing over. We speak business value, not technical capability.

4. Scope discipline. Tech wants to boil the ocean. We've learned that shipping a smaller thing that works beats a bigger thing that never launches.

5. Documentation-as-strategy. Tech sees docs as a chore. We see them as the approval pathway. Good documentation is how you scale without being in every room.

6. Political patience. Enterprise deals take 18 months. We know how to keep momentum through leadership changes, budget cycles, and priority shifts.

The best AI teams in 2026 won't be pure tech or pure consulting. They'll be hybrids who can build AND navigate.

The “AI experiment” phase is over.

New data out of Wharton shows 75% of companies already see positive ROI from AI.

Less than 5% see negative returns.
Nearly half of business leaders use AI daily themselves.

That matches what we see on the ground.

This isn’t about prompts anymore.
It’s not “improve this email” or “summarize this doc.”

That was Phase 1.

Phase 2 has started and it’s bigger:
• “Solve this customer’s problem”
• “Handle this contract end-to-end”
• “Optimize CSAT”
• “Run this workflow”

AI is moving from accelerating steps to owning processes.

And that’s when productivity actually compounds.

The companies still stuck debating pilots and guardrails are about to feel very behind, not because AI is new, but because process always beats tools.

We’re just exiting the first act.
The second one is about systems, not shortcuts.

And once AI is embedded in how work flows - not how tasks are typed - there’s no going back.

What a time to be alive!

AI isn’t failing because it’s complicated.
It’s failing because no one owns it.

McKinsey’s data says it all -
most companies have no dedicated AI teams, no incentives, no feedback loops, no accountability.

Everyone wants the upside of AI.
No one wants to take responsibility when it breaks.

This is the corporate paradox:
You can’t automate what you refuse to own.

Until enterprises stop treating AI like an experiment and start treating it like infrastructure,
95% of “pilots” will keep dying in PowerPoint.

What Executives Get Wrong About GenAI:

> They think it's plug and play. 'Just add AI to our existing processes.' That's like adding a jet engine to a bicycle and wondering why it doesn't fly.

> They underestimate the data problem. Your AI is only as good as your data. And your data has been accumulated across 47 systems with no consistent formatting for 15 years.

> They expect immediate ROI. GenAI is infrastructure, not a feature. You don't ask 'what's the ROI on electricity?' You ask 'what can we build now that we have power?'

> They compare themselves to tech companies. Google has 10,000 ML engineers. You have Dave who took a Coursera course. Calibrate expectations accordingly.

> They skip the change management. The AI works. Your employees are terrified it will replace them. Guess which problem kills your project?

> They buy platforms before defining problems. 'We need an AI strategy' leads to expensive enterprise licenses collecting dust. Start with 'we waste 400 hours/month on X.'

I wish I could ask Copilot about a meeting I forgot to record.

Here's the trap:

> Option 1: 'Only during the meeting' - Copilot uses temporary speech-to-text. Meeting ends, data deleted. You can't ask questions later.

> Option 2: 'During and after' - Requires saving the full transcript. Now you have retention, compliance, and legal implications.

There's no middle ground.

Missed the meeting? Too bad. Forgot to enable transcription? Too bad. Your organization restricts transcript storage for compliance? Too bad.

What I wish existed:

> A 24-hour summary window. Copilot gives you the highlights, then the raw data is deleted.

> Personal-only transcripts that don't create discoverable records.

> Retroactive summary requests. 'I was in a meeting at 2pm, can you recap?' should work.

> Graceful degradation. If full transcript isn't allowed, at least give me action items.

The 'catch up on meetings I missed' use case - the one Microsoft demos constantly - only works if someone remembered to hit record.

That's not AI. That's a tape recorder with extra steps.

Uncommon Man Australia

Founder & CEO

Leigh Stafford - Quality Mind 

Mind Mentor / Corporate Specialist

Loan Market

Mortgage Broker

Edge FP Pty Ltd

Co-Founder

Principal

Commonwealth Bank of Australia

Financial Services Manager

Silvan Ridge Financial Services

Financial Planner

Committed to helping Men move from stuck to unstoppable. Using modern coaching techniques and systemised processes to b iNG men together and get body and soul fit.

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