Julie Sweet, CEO of Accenture, learned a lesson at age 15 that has fueled her success as a leader
In today’s edition: Kamala Harris’s California decision, another Ivy’s deal with Trump, and Fortune‘s Lila MacLellan on the first leadership lesson Accenture’s Julie Sweet ever learned.
– Ready to win. When Julie Sweet, CEO of Accenture, was a 15-year-old girl growing up in Tustin, Calif., she would often enter local debate tournaments and speech contests in the hope of winning cash prizes. She grew up in a working-class household, she explained recently, and at a Lions Club tournament, “you could earn, like, $500.”
Sweet’s father would drive her to the events in his beat-up VW bug, wearing the one sports coat he owned, and Sweet would regularly win at the podium—but not every time. One evening, she made it to the semifinals of a competition but lost to the daughter of the club’s president. On the way home, she recalled, “I was kind of complaining in the car to my dad, ‘Oh, she was so cutesy, and she was the daughter of the president.’
“My father looks at me, and he says, ‘First of all, Julie, you’re never going to be the daughter of the president of the Lions Club. That’s not the family you were born into,’” she recounted. “‘And I believe you can do anything, but…you have to be so much better than anyone else that they have to give it to you.
“‘Tonight,’” he continued, “‘you weren’t that much better.’”
Sweet called that exchange her first experience of constructive feedback, one that also taught her to be honest with herself about her performance. Her late father’s lesson that night has no doubt also helped her and her army of consultants give feedback companies desperately need as they try to navigate a world being disrupted by AI.
As I report in a new feature story, Accenture is an AI powerhouse, booking hundreds of millions in AI services for clients that are among the world’s most influential companies. Under Sweet’s tenure, Accenture has also grown; it’s worth over $170 billion now, nearly double its value in 2018, the year before Sweet took the reins. It employs 774,000 people globally, compared with 460,000 six years ago. Earlier this year, Sweet was No. 2 on Fortune‘s 2025 Most Powerful Women list. Accenture is No. 211 on the 2025 edition of the Global 500, which was released this week.
Sweet, true to her 15-year-old self, is prepared for whatever comes next, and says she isn’t worried about suggestions that AI itself might one day replace consultants. “AI is only a technology,” she told me. “The value comes from reinvention of how we work, our workforces and the tools we use…We are making sure that we are leading the way with our own reinvention.”
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Lila MacLellan
lila.maclellan@fortune.com
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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com