The Fast and the Curious: Nothing Can Stop Carlyn Taylor

“Consulting is an extremely challenging but stimulating and rewarding career,” Taylor says. “It’s demanding and it goes up and down and it’s unpredictable.”

“I’m a big work hard, play hard kind of person,” Taylor says. “I believe in exercising pretty much every day or I wouldn’t be able to keep the pace that I keep.”

Variable and energetic endeavors are a perfect fit for Taylor, who admits she “gets bored easily” but “loves learning new things.” However, for someone that has jumped from specialty to specialty, Taylor has never actually changed jobs. She got her start at Price Waterhouse in 1990, eventually rising the ranks to become the youngest partner in the firm’s history in 1998. The day she made partner was also the day Price Waterhouse merged with Coopers & Lybrand to form what we now know as PricewaterhouseCoopers, or PwC. Taylor worked within PwC’s restructuring practice for four years before the company sold the practice to FTI Consulting, where she still works today as global co-leader of corporate finance and restructuring.

Taylor has controlled the variance in her career, launching multiple practices, both with PwC and FTI, including a renowned telecom, media and technology consulting unit in 1995. Taylor has continued to add new practices at FTI, expanding its reach beyond restructuring to include industry practices and revenue-growth practices, which, in turn, have opened the firm’s clientele to include companies across the business life cycle spectrum.

With Taylor’s leadership, FTI is continuing to expand its services as well as its geographic reach. For example, while it has been active in England and Germany for quite a while, it is currently finishing a full footprint expansion in Europe.

Of all the varied experiences she’s had in her career, Taylor says working in restructuring has been the one she’s enjoyed the most. She worked in that space exclusively from 1999 to 2005 and then got back to doing more after the 2008 financial crisis. Although she can’t put an exact number on it, Taylor estimates that she’s worked on roughly 140 restructurings during her career, including nearly 100 that equated to more than $200 billion in debt at the beginning of the 21st century as the telecommunications industry crashed.

“They certainly could cough up some money if they wanted to. They had clearly chosen not to,” Taylor says. “They kind of panicked that we would shut down the internet in certain countries.”

Although not every one of her assignments has had such high stakes, Taylor believes in a consistent approach to restructuring. To start with, she says its important to do business with people you trust. Adhering to this principle has helped her maintain a long list of recurring clients, some of whom have worked with her for more than 20 years.

Making an Impact

When she isn’t monitoring the restructuring world, Taylor is mainly assisting private equity firms, giving her the opportunity to work with a variety of different portfolio companies in multiple industries. However, she is also doing transaction diligence, merger integration and carve-out work while sprinkling in some restructuring here and there.

Regardless of what the future holds, Taylor already has a long career of success to look back upon, but its not her own accomplishments that fill her with pride.

Taylor is also proud of the relationships she’s formed with businesses and their leadership teams over the years, whether they be one-time clients or long-term partners.

“I had one CEO tell me unsolicited that the work we did was the most valuable thing she had ever seen consultants do in her career,” Taylor says. “I’m proud of that kind of stuff that makes you feel like you really had an impact on a business.”