The focus of the Intuit ProTax Group is on you

Q&A with Jorge Olavarrieta, new GM, Intuit® ProTax Group

We have a new general manager (GM) for Intuit’s ProTax Group: Jorge Olavarrieta! After 29 years with Intuit, Jorge is going to share insights on who he is and his vision moving forward. Let’s take a few minutes to get to know Jorge.

Debra: Tell us about your background. How did you get here in your career?

Jorge: Well, that is likely a very long answer, but let me try to summarize. In my nearly 30 years at Intuit, I have had the pleasure of working with almost every part of the ProTax business. As a new college graduate, I started my career as a technical support agent for a small company called Lacerte, now known as Intuit Lacerte® Tax. In that role, I gained a tremendous amount of knowledge about our customers and our products.

That knowledge was later augmented by roles within our education team, marketing team, and our sales team, all which led to my discovery of a role I had not heard much about until Intuit acquired Lacerte: product management. For the next 20 years or so, I continued to build a strong knowledge base about our industry, a great deal of empathy and respect for the tax and accounting profession, and took advantage of all the amazing leadership development opportunities offered by Intuit, all of which helped me ultimately get to this point in my career as GM for the ProTax Group.

Ultimately, maybe the short answer is that I developed empathy for the customers we serve, developed a strong knowledge of our products and the tax and accounting market, invested in my personal and career development, and always strived to deliver winning results in every area for which I was responsible.

Debra: What is the most important lesson you have learned in your career?

Jorge: Stay humble and be open to learning. No matter how much experience you have, there is always something new to learn or a new perspective to consider. And learning isn’t just about the work you do; it’s also about you. It’s important to be open to feedback and criticism. While that’s not always fun, it helps you grow and become a better leader.

Debra: What are your top interests that are non-work related?

Jorge: My favorite hobby is cooking. I love to experiment with different flavors and ingredients to create what I hope are delicious dishes. I also enjoy the process of creating something from scratch and seeing the end result, which hopefully leads to satisfied family and friends.

Perhaps on a more adventurous front, I love to explore new places, cultures, and food. It’s been a great way to grow and connect with people from different backgrounds and learn about their experiences. It’s also a way to reset, recharge, and learn about yourself, and provides perspective about your place in the world.

Finally, I also love to tinker, so I am a DIY type; I love to take things apart and problem solve. For me, these activities actually serve as my time for self introspection and reflection. Some people meditate, others find quiet time, some exercise … for me, cooking, cleaning, and fixing frees my mind to reflect and focus.

Debra: What is your vision for ProTaxGroup?

Jorge: I am a big believer that what we can do as a team far outpaces what any one individual can do on their own. My vision is to build on our amazing culture to help us accelerate the benefits we deliver to our customers, establishing a culture where everyone is empowered to do their best work and making an impact in the lives of the customers we serve. For decades, we have been an integral part of how tax and accounting professionals serve their clients, and I expect us to continue to lead and innovate to deliver on the changing needs of tax and accounting firms for decades to come.

Debra: What is your favorite thing about working at Intuit?

Jorge: Short answer, our mission to Power Prosperity Around the World energizes me every day. And while our mission inspires and motivates me, delivering on that mission requires amazing talent enabled to deliver great work through a culture that embraces teamwork, collaboration, trust, respect, diversity and inclusion, and the opportunity to learn and grow as an individual. We have a tremendous opportunity and responsibility to make a positive impact for the customers we serve, and I know that working at Intuit I can really make a difference. I guess it comes down to the ability to be part of something bigger than yourself, the ability to be part of a team that is making a difference in the world.

Debra: What are the industry trends you are addressing at Intuit?

Jorge: It all starts with delivering on our customers’ needs, and I see that through the lens of short term and long term.

• For the short, we must focus on the challenges that impact tax and accounting professionals from doing their work efficiently. This includes multiple disconnected applications within the firm that introduce inefficiency and the potential for errors, staffing shortages that make it difficult to serve clients effectively, and tedious tools and processes that don’t add value to the work the professional can do on behalf of their clients. For those items, we are actively working with partners to more tightly integrate our applications, and provide outsourced staffing for those who need it. We also continue to lean into automating time consuming tasks such as data entry and data collection.
• Longer term, we need to better solve for the accelerating trend of the shift from compliance-focused services to higher-value advisory. To address those longer term shifts, we are investing heavily in creating an advisory solution that surfaces insights that can help clients achieve their financial goals, in a manner that is simple for the professional to do. Ultimately, our role is to help solve the problems our customers face today, while simultaneously investing in the future needs of the profession; rapidly changing technology is key to our endeavors. So what are we focused on? Automation and advisory, as we see both of those as key to the future success of the profession and prosperity for their clients.

Debra: What is your number one priority moving forward?

Jorge: For our organization, it’s acceleration as one team. Everyone in our organization needs to understand our strategy, because it will take all of us to execute with excellence to deliver amazing solutions to our customers. When we collectively march toward a clear objective, everyone in our organization can ensure their actions are aligned to our ultimate goal, which empowers our people to innovate. In addition, the speed at which technology is evolving, as evidenced by the recent advent of Generative AI, is leading us to reimagine what we can build and what we will deliver. To ensure we are delivering results for our employees, our customers, and our business, we must move boldly and at higher velocity.

Debra: What is your motivation to innovate for the profession?

Jorge: I have been blessed to have 29 years of working with a company that has an incredible culture, amazing talent, and an insatiable desire to solve customer problems. And I have also had an opportunity to build strong relationships with our employees and customers. With that in mind, there are two things that motivate me to innovate for the profession:

1. Tax and accounting professionals play a critical role in helping their clients succeed, and helping our tax and accounting customers make a bigger impact in the lives of their clients gives me a sense of accomplishment and purpose. 
2. Growing and helping our employees succeed. I know that if we solve big problems for our customers, our employees and our company will thrive. Some day, I hope to look back to see how I was able to help our customers and our employees prosper. I think most people would like to know they had a positive impact on the people around them, and that is what motivates me the most.

Debra: Thanks Jorge!