Michelle Huang
“As a first-generation American, there’s a lot of pressure to make good on your parents’ sacrifices. It helps so much to see someone at the top who looks like you. When it comes to economic consulting, I want to be that example for other first-generation Americans.”
When it comes to the complex, technical nature of tax valuations, financial transactions, and global profit allocation strategy, there is no substitute for a knowledgeable, trustworthy expert. For most of her career, Trove partner Michelle served that critical advisory role for clients of Big Four firms KPMG and PwC. Tapping into her exceptional analytical acumen, even-keeled and unflappable demeanor, and bevy of relevant experience (including her CPA license), Michelle gave them peace of mind, bringing clarity, rigor, and unparalleled thoroughness to esoteric topics while guiding clients to sound outcomes. Now the owner of a growing solopreneurship practice, she offers clients a wide range of transfer pricing services related to profitability and capital structure benchmarking, tax valuations, global structuring, and global tax policy content development.
Michelle’s professional journey began in KPMG’s economic and valuation services group where she helped multinational clients make informed decisions on inter-company pricing and compliance topics. In that role, she honed her technical skills and knowledge, and gained a deep understanding of the levers that drive operational value for businesses in various industries. Five years later, she completed her MBA and was recruited by PwC to help stand up its financial transactions transfer pricing team. The team’s mandate focused on benchmarking loans, capital structure, financial guarantees, and cash pooling transactions between related companies, a highly technical, interdisciplinary field. She played an instrumental role in developing PwC’s technical approach and contributed to the development of proprietary software to automate data collection and analysis, yielding considerable efficiency gains and cost savings. In ten years at PwC, her financial transactions team evolved into one of the practice’s highest performing groups, consistently delivering exceptional profit margins.
Michelle has an uncanny ability to guide non-technical stakeholders on highly technical topics, supporting them to make the best decisions for themselves, their shareholders, and their customers. Since most people’s knowledge of transfer pricing is limited, she prides herself on being intuitive, asking the right questions, and pulling from her vast repository of experience and knowledge. Michelle is rarely starting from zero because she can make connections to work she’s done previously. Her attention to detail is unmatched, enabling her to deliver unprecedented value for her clients. During one IRS audit for a client, she noticed something small in its analysis that didn’t line up. She dug into the error and defended her findings to the IRS, leading to a reversal of a nine-figure income adjustment in favor of her client.
Michelle’s meticulous approach is unmatched. When the IRS introduced new reporting rules, Michelle was one of the first to recognize that they would have adverse privacy-related impacts on her tax-exempt clients, such as universities and hospitals. She rallied on their behalf, holding discussions with the IRS to clarify and formalize the new reporting standards. As a result, her clients had clear, unambiguous guidelines on which to stand up their reporting strategy. When they engage her, Michelle’s clients gain access not only to an unquestioned subject matter expert with a track record that speaks for itself, but also to someone who will not rest until their needs are met and their problems addressed.
Contact Michelle
LinkedIn Email: michecd (at) gmail.com
Email hello@trovecommunity.com or contact us for an introduction.
