Petra Kuret

I have been with Accenture 23 years, I would say I allowed Accenture to consume me and my life. And I got to a point where I was numb to everything around me, whether that was my family, my kids, the things I had actually enjoyed. And it got to the extent that because my head and my heart couldn't tell me that, my body did. And so I had a number of medical issues including what they thought was a heart condition that had developed because there was just too much stress, too much on me, resulting in having to take over a year away from work, away from Accenture, to start to rediscover where I'd gotten to and what I needed to change. I think a really big turning point came in the middle of that when I was invited to go with an organization called Free the Children to Kenya and I took my 11 year old son. He has this great thirst for life and he's well beyond his years, and he taught me how to start to enjoy life again. And I was back to the things that I'd really enjoyed much earlier in my life which was experiencing new cultures, discovering things about myself. We had this incredibly powerful experience in the middle of the Serengeti where we had a medical emergency with one of the other tours with us that was sort of a fight or flight experience. And so with all of this, after a month away, it was the thing I needed to remind me of who I was and what I really enjoyed. And so the journey to reestablish friendships, to get back to the things that I really enjoyed doing, and the ability to live and to love again. So that's what that means. There's a greater level of happiness and that I'm on a journey to a greater than life because I had that wake up call. I took the time out, I'm still struggling with mental illness which I will probably have. And it's something that at some point I'll have to confront in the context of Accenture because I think it's' the next journey that the firm needs to explore. Just like we've had the dialogue around inclusion diversity, and the stigma that was there 15 years ago around women in the workforce, I think this is the next journey that we're going to be on around mental health and what that means in our workforce and in any workforce. Especially given the disruption, the complexity, in the world in general. It's something that is becoming a topic that is more discussed and more accepted. I would say I no longer feel numb but I'm still on a journey of fulling finding my way and writing the next chapter which will be more about giving and changing the world that I live in as opposed to looking at the profitability of corporations, which has been the first 25 years. The next 25 years has to be more outwardly focused to try to really change the world we live in. C: Tell me about your son. He is an amazing amazing kid. He will turn 13 on June 1st and he completely gave into the experience that we had in rural Kenya to be out, to understand this organization, what their development model is like and so each day was sort of focused on something different. Whether it was health or water or alternative income, each day we had an experience, whether it was walking 3 miles with a 20 liter canister on our back from the river with the Kenyan mamas or building a school or participating in beading that provided income – those products are now sold at Nordstroms. So it was a great way for him to see that closed loop cycle of how it's not about hand outs but hand ups. Those communities after 2 years are very much self sufficient and they're not reliant on us as a western country to continue to support them. In Tanzania we worked in an orphanage and again he sort of rose to the occasion because he usually gravitates – he watches BBC world news in the morning and just soaks up anything to do with what's going on in the world at large and he totally gave in to working with or playing with the younger kids and feeding them which is not something you'd expect an 11 year old boy to do. And then he found his little kindred spirit in a 12 year old boy who was at the orphanage and they totally connected on what had gone on in the World Cup in terms of soccer. They loved math so they kept challenging each other on math equations. And then we in the volunteer house there was this very old TV that would always have the BBC world news on... So they're sitting there and Hassani says 'Oh look that's John Kerry!' and Gabe says 'Who's that?' and he says 'Well it's the Secretary of State for the United States!' And the Swedish volunteer and I were almost in tears because here we were sitting in a rural part of Tanzania and this child who is in an orphanage is talking about and knows who John Kerry is above the rest of us. And then they would debate what was going on in the Ukraine with Putin and stuff. Gabe was so committed to helping Hassani out with his high school education that he said 'I really want to figure out if we can sponsor him' and I said 'well if you collect half the money, I'll match it' a