Billy Williams, KPMG partner, tackles the energy sector
Billy Williams, 39, is an audit partner and the Inclusion and Diversity leader for KPMG’s Houston office. Prior to joining KPMG in 2003, Williams played Division I football at Sam Houston State. His goal was to play in the NFL, but an injury prompted him to go with his alternative plan — an internship with KPMG.
Williams spoke with Texas Inc. about how his experience in college sports shaped his approach to his professional life and shared some thoughts on Houston’s oil and gas sector.
Q: You played Division I college football. How did that experience inform your professional life?
A:
There are several things. One is my concept of work-life balance: During football season you’re very busy. You really can’t do a lot of things outside of just playing football. After the season you have a break, and then you come back and do spring training. At KPMG, my busy season aligns with tax season. When that season is over, I can plan my vacations and do things outside of KPMG. When the next quarterly review is due, I get back into game mode and focus on getting my work done.
Another thing is understanding that every task we do is teamoriented. We work as a team, but all have individual responsibilities. On the Sam Houston State football team I had to do my job very well as an offensive guard. At the same time, I worked with the team of my offensive line. I made sure we developed a methodology by which we teamed up to beat a player on the other team. There’s never been a situation in my career where I’ve said, “I’ve done my job so now I can go.” It’s “I’ve done my job. Let me check with my team — ‘Hey, have you done your job? Do you need some help? Where do we stand?’”
Q: Anything else?
A: As captain of the football team, I worked with all different types of people — rich, poor, black, white, Asian, Hispanic — and I was able to lead them. I gained skills for working with
people, understanding people and leading people during my college years in sports. I didn’t have experience with so much diversity until I got into football. That experience helped teach me how to communicate, lead and work with diverse individuals.
Q: How did you get interested in football?
A:
I grew up very poor in Marshall, a little town in East Texas. It was difficult to get out of my community. I didn’t know many people who left. My mom always pushed education very heavily. And as far as planning for the future, I thought, “Yes, I’ll get my education, but I think football’s going to help me get out of this situation.” I really became good at football in my senior year of high school, and I thought I could make it to the NFL. When I started getting recruiting letters from all these big schools, I started believing I might actually make it to the league.
Q: But an injury in college made you change your career goals.
A:
Yes. The injury was best described as a hip dislocation. I had to get injections to try to reduce the swelling. The doctors told me I needed six months to heal, but by the time they diagnosed me, it was August before my senior year, close to football season. So six months to heal wasn’t an option. I was getting injections maybe every three weeks or so. I would do physical therapy and would be feeling great, and then I’d slip or fall or something, and it would jar my hip out of place. I’d go back through the process of injections, physical therapy, and getting my hip in place.
Emotionally, it took a toll on me. I was a four-year starter at Sam Houston, captain of the team, and had NFL scouts looking at me. And then, in my senior year, all that disappeared. The NFL came to watch practices every other week and take measurements. But I couldn’t practice because the coaches were trying to save me for the games.
At the same time, I had an offer to work from KPMG. Essentially, the writing was on the wall for me. It was time to end one career and start a new one. Q: You already knew what your transition would be? A:
Yes, I’d been taking accounting classes. My coach knew I was really good at math, so he said, “Why don’t you get into accounting?” Accounting was not the kind of math I liked — I liked trigonometry and calculus. I thought of accounting as like learning a new language, the language of business. At the end of my junior year, I interviewed for an internship at KPMG and got an offer.
Q: So it wasn’t an abrupt switch.
A:
Right, I was already interested in accounting and definitely focused on academics. Also, for me, there was always this fear of my mom — that if my grades ever slipped, she was going to take football away from me. My academic adviser told me that the day I came to school my mom called and gave her her phone number and said to call if I slipped up in my grades and she’d come up there and take care of it. That phone call was never made. My plan was to be successful in academics and football. I was going one 100 percent in both directions.
Q: What makes good leaders?
A:
Leading by example. Whenever I try to lead people, I make sure they understand the end goal. In football we’re trying to score goals, we’re trying to win a football game. In accounting, we’re trying to get a quarterly review or an annual report fin
“There’s never been a situation in my career where I’ve said, ‘I’ve done my job so now I can go.’ It’s, ‘I’ve done my job. Let me check with my team.’ ” Billy Williams