EY cheering on four Australian Olympian colleagues in Paris
The Australian branch of professional services firm Ernst & Young is getting set to cheer on a quartet of Paris-bound colleagues – beneficiaries of the firm’s internal elite athletes program.
Dual Olympic gold-medal winning swimmer Bronte Campbell, rowing pair Jessica Morrison and Olympia Aldersey, and Olympic and Paralympic table tennis player Melissa Tapper have all developed their skills at the Big Four firm.
Remarkably, EY’s Australian branch will supply four of the global Big Four firm’s ten athletes competing at this year’s Games in Paris, with Morrison looking to follow up on her gold medal triumph in the coxless four in Tokyo.
Now a manager in EY-Parthenon’s transaction strategy & execution team out of Sydney, Morrison first joined the firm as a people advisory consultant in 2018, fresh off an MBA with Melbourne Business School and ahead of claiming two silver medals at the 2019 World Rowing Championships. She will compete this year in the women’s pair alongside Annabelle McIntyre.
Morrison will be on the plane to Paris with world champion squad-mate and office colleague Olympia Aldersey – who has been a business transformation consultant with EY since 2021 following a law and health science double from the University of Adelaide. Aldersey will be looking to bring home back-to-back gold for Australia in the women’s four.
If they are successful, it will be just the fourth Olympic gold medal claimed by the women’s contingent of what is now dubbed the ‘Rowsellas’ (after first competing in 1984). Notably, Kate Slatter won the team’s first gold in Atlanta while working as an accountant at EY, while Rio single skulls hero Kim Brennan joined the firm following the event and is now a partner in Canberra.
While EY’s Women Athletes Business Network was established in 2013 to support female athletes in harnessing the skills they have developed throughout their competitive careers for a transition to the post-sports professional arena, Brennan was instrumental in setting up EY’s local Sporting Employment Program, which offers flexible working arrangements for current athletes.
One of those is Melissa Tapper, a part-time consultant with EY in Melbourne, who will be competing in the table tennis at both the Olympics and Paralympics in Paris, being the first Australian to achieve the dual feat back in 2016. ‘Milly’, who has brachial plexus palsy in her right arm, will start her overseas campaign as a member of Australia’s six-person Olympics squad.
“I can’t actually believe it,” Tapper said. “The goal as a kid was to qualify for an Olympics, I am now getting to head off to my third! I always just want to play my best table tennis every time I step out on the court, but if I can inspire just one young girl to get active in sport or a child with a disability to believe they can be whatever they want, then that’s the real achievement.”