Chris Anderson.

• Date: 01 July 2020

As a senior in college, Chris Anderson had an epiphany while attending an information session for internship interviews. It was the early nineties. There was a recession; the financial crisis of the time was the failure of the savings and loan institutions. And the Big 8 had just become the Big 6. "The job market was challenging, and I knew I wasn't at the top of the class," he explains. "Most classmates wanted to go into audit and stay in Knoxville, Tennessee. I simply played the odds and chose tax and told the recruiters that I would go anywhere jobs were available."

That put Anderson, now director of tax operations at Facebook Inc., on an exciting path in the tax profession, which included several stints at Ernst & Young (EY). "I have been fortunate to have worked with strong organizations (EY, PwC, Facebook, and GE). In private industry, personal responsibility is more absolute; you are 'management,' ultimately responsible for making decisions, identifying issues, building/executing processes, and developing...