Birmingham native Samuel A. DiPiazza, Jr. retired as chief executive officer of PricewaterhouseCoopers International Limited in 2009 and shortly thereafter joined the Board of Trustees of Mayo Clinic, the highly regarded health care institution, which he now serves as Chairman of the Board. Between the two positions, he served as Vice Chairman with Citigroup’s Global Corporation and Investment Bank.
DiPiazza graduated from The University of Alabama with a bachelor’s degree in accounting and earned a Master of Accountancy degree from the University of Houston. He joined PwC in 1973 and became a tax partner in 1979, the youngest partner in the firm’s history.
He served as a leading tax partner with PwC, specializing in mergers and acquisition, the financial services industry, and international tax. He led the Birmingham and Chicago offices before being named Midwest Region Managing Partner in 1992. Two years later he became the Regional Managing Partner of the New York Metro Region as well as Client Service Vice Chairman. Two years after that, he was named the Vice Chairman of tax services in the U.S. firm, and when PriceWaterhouse and Coopers and Lybrand merged in 1998, he was named the Americas Leader for Tax and Legal Services of PwC. Again, in two years, he became the first elected Chairman and Senior Partner of the U.S. Firm and PwC, an organization of 30,000 people and 2,200 partners.
Two years later, DiPiazza was elected as the Global CEO of PricewaterhouseCoopers international and served as its Global CEO for eight of the first 11 years of existence.
Under this leadership, PricewaterhouseCoopers experienced record revenue and growth. In his last full year of leadership, PwC reported more than $28 billion in revenue with operations in 147 countries and more than 150,000 employees.
DiPiazza has been very active in civic affairs. He is on the Board of Directors of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City and is a member of the Board of Executive Committee of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum. He is a trustee and a member of the Executive Committee of the Inner-City Scholarship Fund of New York City, Seton Education Partners, the United Nations Global Compact, and also serves as a trustee of the USA Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum.
He has served as a trustee of the London-based international Reporting Foundation as well as the U.S.-based Financial Accounting Foundation. He has served as the past Global Chairman of Junior Achievement Worldwide, past president of Big Brothers/Big Sisters of New York City, and a past member of the Board of Trustees of the New York City Ballet.
DiPiazza serves on the Board of Directors for a number of businesses, including AT&T, Jones Lang LaSalle, ProAssurance, and the Culverhouse College of Business Board of Visitors. He was honored as Accountant of the Year by Beta Alpha Psi Society and has received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor and the INROADS Leadership Award.
DiPiazza has been widely interviewed by the media and is a frequent commentator on issues of corporate reporting, transparency, and anti-corruption.
He and his wife Melody have two children, Amy and Jason, and six grandchildren.
