By Christine Imbs
Rodney Kinzinger is a farmer at heart.
“I always tell people after I retire if you want to find me, look on the farm,” he says.
That farm he’s talking about is a 1,500-acre grain and livestock farm in New Athens, Ill. owned by his family.
“I grew up there. It’s a 400 head cow/calf and crop operation, so it’s fairly sizable,” he says. “It’s something I’d like to dabble in.”
But these days there’s little time to dabble on the farm. In July, Kinzinger was named the St. Louis Office Managing Partner for Deloitte. Deloitte’s U.S. subsidiaries rank among the nation’s leading professional services firms in audit, tax, consulting and financial advisory services in more than 20 industries. Kinzinger, a 20-plus year veteran of Deloitte, admits his position is a far cry from the agribusiness career he originally planned.
“Agriculture is a business, and my father was very progressive, not only in farming practices, but the business of agriculture. So naturally I was interested in an agribusiness career,” he explains.
That interest led Kinzinger to SIU-Carbondale’s Agricultural Economics program. But through the accounting classes that were part of the program, he says he began learning about business as a whole. He soon realized with an accounting degree his career opportunities were much greater, so he made the switch to accounting. But as it turned out, it was perhaps his agricultural background that made Deloitte take notice.
Kinzinger says in 1987 Deloitte was trying to build its banking practice. But at the time its clients were agricultural banks located in southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and southern Missouri. The major risk of auditing these banks was the loan portfolio. And of course those loans were with farmers.
“Who better to understand that than a farmer himself,” he says. “So I was hired. I took my agricultural background and created a niche in the firm. Then I built that niche into serving other agribusiness clients.”
By 1997 Kinzinger was admitted as a partner in Deloitte where he served many of the office’s strategic clients. Eventually he became Missouri Practice Leader for Enterprise Risk Services, successfully growing that practice to more than 60 people. He relocated to New York in 2002 where he served two of Deloitte’s largest global clients, primarily performing services in corporate governance and controls and mergers and acquisitions due diligence.
“Looking back, I’ve had a very non-traditional career path,” he says. “When I joined Deloitte, its new Global CEO believed the future auditors of the world would be general business practitioners, and the way to become a generalist was by rotating throughout the firm. So that’s what I did. Looking back over my 20-plus years at Deloitte, I’ve pretty much done it all, and I’ve been a lot of places. Now sitting in the managing partner role, I can see that clearly the networks I’ve built, the competencies I’ve learned, and the awareness I have of the firm will be most beneficial.”
Kinzinger says that although he didn’t end up with an agribusiness career, he still credits his parents, and specifically his father as being his biggest influence.
“I was the youngest of six kids and my dad had two requirements—you will go to college and you will pay for it. It wasn’t if you go. It was you will go. It was a pretty interesting set of demands. Especially since back then the coal mines in southern Illinois were paying top dollar. Guys my age were going to work in the mines for $25 to $30 an hour. And when I look back at that town and I think of my dad’s mandate—you will go to college and you will pay for it—that was a bold mandate of him. And you know every single one of us went to college.”
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FAMILY: Wife, Cindy; two daughters
and a son.
BORN: New Athens, Ill.
EDUCATION: Accounting degree from SIU-Carbondale; MBA in finance from SLU.
BOOKS: Anything on leadership.
MUSIC: Has a varied taste put probably slants toward Country.
TRAVEL: Traveled extensively internationally, but favors southern Germany.
key to success: Always deliver what you've committed to.
BEST ADVICE: Always look for the best
in people.
ST. LOUIS IS: A best kept secret. |
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