Tinker Bell sprinkles her pixie dust, Mickey and his pals stand ready, and everything is in place for another magical day at the happiest place on earth. But this day at Walt Disney World promises to be a little different.
Seeing someone swathed in a bright red and yellow Tweedledee costume, no one would ever guess that Disney’s vice president of management audit is the man behind the goofy smile. As part of the company’s leadership training, Matt Owen spent the day in Orlando posing for pictures and signing autographs along with a cast of other administrators disguised as Disney characters.
“Talk about a magical experience,” he recalls. “To have those kids run up to you and want their pictures taken with you—there’s no way you can’t feel good.”
It’s been more than four years since Owen joined the team at the Walt Disney Company, and while his work heading up the internal audit group doesn’t usually have him in costume, the job is a great fit for the BYU accounting graduate (1985) and School of Accountancy Advisory Board member. From the very beginning, the company’s ability to focus on the individual while holding to its core values appealed to Owen.
A Cinderella Story
But Owen didn’t find his “happily ever after” at Disney right away. In fact, he nearly missed the ball.
When Disney’s recruiter received two referrals for Owen in a single day, he quickly passed the name on to the company’s executives, who were searching for a new professional to head up the audit team. But by the time Owen’s name reached the executives’ desks, they had already offered the position to another individual. The recruiter apologized to Owen, but Owen didn’t give up. After seventeen years working for another firm, Owen was ready for a change and was searching for a company that shared his values.
In true fairy-tale fashion and with a twist of fate, the original candidate turned down the job and Owen actively pursued the position.
It wasn’t long before he was sitting in an interview with Disney’s CFO. Just when it seemed like the interview was coming to an end, the CFO asked him one final question.
“Can you do good business with bad people?”
It was clear that this was the most important question of the interview. Owen took a deep breath and answered, “You probably could, but I wouldn’t want to.”
The CFO replied, “Matt, there are just too many good people in this life to deal with the bad ones.”
And since accepting the position at Disney headquarters in California, Owen says he’s worked with the best and brightest in the business world.
“People here want to create great content to make life enjoyable for others. While we don’t necessarily want creativity on the accounting side,” Owen smiles, “it is a fun company.”
From ESPN and ABC to the motion picture studios and parks and resort group, Owen and his team of professionals conduct financial and operational audits within the company. Though the work is usually made up of “zip-a-dee doo-dah” days, there is a downside.
While Disney strongly emphasizes ethical behavior among its employees, Owen’s team does occasionally turn up discrepancies or misuse of company funds. According to Owen, dealing with these situations is the worst part of his job.
“It’s hard when you realize that someone has done something wrong, and they will lose their job as a result of their actions. You know it will have a major impact not only on their work life but also on their personal life. That’s never easy.”
But along with the difficulty involved in auditing a major corporation comes the perks. Owen has visited every Disney park in the world, sat on the set of SportsCenter, and has taken his family on a Disney cruise. Owen knew his work was worthwhile when his son exclaimed, “Dad, when you retire tell your boss that I want your job!”
Once upon a Time
Long before Owen landed the job at Disney, he was an aspiring young accountant growing up in North Salt Lake with his two sisters and brother. Part of the first graduating class at Woods Cross High School, Owen participated in wrestling, golf, and baseball and served as seminary president. He excelled in math but took time out from his other interests to dabble in a journalism course.
Pouring over his work, the journalism teacher wielded her pen with exactness and, as Owen described it, used “endless amounts of ink” correcting his stories. In time, his work improved and he gained confidence. Owen considers his writing teacher, Billye Edgar, one of the people who had the greatest affect on his future.
“I doubt she even knows her influence. So much of what I do today is editing documents and preparing reports. The need to effectively communicate is an underappreciated part of auditing and accounting,” Owen says.
When he enrolled at BYU, Owen knew accounting would be his field of study. As a young man he aspired to work with numbers.
In fact his first accountancy job came when he was just twelve. His parents handed him the responsibility of balancing the books as his family embarked on a cross-country road trip.
Not only did he get his first experience in the world of accounting, but the trip also afforded Owen a remarkable surprise. His family arranged a special visit with Owen’s childhood hero, Carl Yastrzemski, in the dugout at Fenway Park.
“I didn’t even know what to say,” Owen says. “He was bigger than life. The fact that he would take two seconds to shake my hand and sign something for me meant a lot. I still have his autograph.”
Owen keeps those childhood memories alive through an annual adventure he and his oldest son take to the first round of the NCAA tournament.
The Bare Necessities
Spending time with his wife, Leslie, and their children is Owen’s favorite pastime. Between driving his daughter to early-morning seminary, cheering for his kids at sporting events, and going on Scout campouts, he takes time to enjoy the little things.
It’s fitting that Owen’s favorite Disney character is Baloo, the big, lovable bear from Disney’s The Jungle Book. Baloo finds meaning in the bare necessities—that’s a principle Owen can stand behind.
“There are times when work needs to be the most important thing. There are times when family needs to be the most important thing. And there are times when a church calling needs to be the most important thing,” he says. “On a daily basis you’re probably out of balance, but if you look at it during a period of two or three months, you need to be in balance.”
It’s all part of a juggling act Owen learned many years ago from one of his mentors, Don Livingstone, who became a Marriott School instructor and director of the Center for Entrepreneurship.
On a business trip to California, Owen worried about keeping balance in his life and asked Livingstone for advice. He told Owen something he’s never forgotten: “Matt, you’ve got to juggle. In life there are glass balls and rubber balls. Catch the glass balls because the rubber ones will bounce back up.”
To Korea and Beyond
Never were Owen’s management skills more tested than when he landed a three-year advisory position in Korea during the 1997 Asian economic crisis. Owen and his team provided relationship management to international companies as well as conducted training for accounting firms and government officials in multiple Asian cities, including Seoul, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, and Jakarta.
The sixteen-hour days were grueling, but the experience yielded remarkable opportunities, with Owen testifying before a Korean government finance committee on economic reform and co-authoring a paper on transparency in accounting in an effort to improve the integrity of the financial system in Korea.
Amid the stark realities of an economic tailspin, it was difficult for people to grasp the failure of high-powered companies. Even more difficult to believe was that a comeback was possible.
The road to economic recovery required both changes to internal policy and help from outside investors. Owen and his firm worked on both.
“I remember working with many companies wanting to invest in Korea for the first time but not wanting to really understand the uniqueness of the culture and the way business was conducted,” Owen says. “Basically they were hoping for a fast buck without having to pay the price.”
While the outsiders’ offers could have been helpful during the critical financial situation, they were very low. To their credit, Owen says, the Korean companies “kept a long-term focus” and waited for investors with better offers, which they eventually got. That determination, to wait it out, proved to be a turning point for Korea.
By 1999 many companies recovered, and the economy began to stabilize. The turnaround came as no surprise to Owen as he watched Koreans put their country and businesses before personal interests.
Owen returned to the United States, bringing with him a wealth of experiences to draw upon during the burst of the dot-com bubble and again in the current global economic crisis.
The most important lesson learned: “Never underestimate the resiliency of people to rise to the challenge before them,” Owen says.
Jiminy Cricket!
For Owen that resiliency stems from a foundation of personal integrity. In fact, one of Owen’s personal maxims is: never give anyone reason to question your integrity.
Unlike Pinocchio, who often ignored the advice of his quick-witted, cricket conscience, Owen believes you have to constantly go back to your ethical foundation to succeed.
“It’s how you conduct yourself every day,” Owen says. “I think many BYU grads worry too much about the different standards of the world and how they’ll have to deal with them, instead of realizing that if they live their life the right way, it never really becomes a question.”
Once when interviewing for a job on the East Coast, the interviewer asked Owen if he knew Dallin Oaks. Caught off guard, Owen answered that he knew who he was but didn’t know him personally. The person conducting the interview explained that he had known Dallin Oaks in law school and was impressed with the integrity he exuded.
“It was assumed by association that my integrity was of the highest level,” Owen recalls. “Having BYU on my résumé also creates an expectation of unfaltering integrity.”
Even still, hard choices have come, trying Owen’s beliefs.
During his time in Korea, Owen experienced one of the greatest tests of his career. As the lone foreigner in the office, Owen was faced with challenging the accounting disclosures on a foreign debt offering for one of the largest companies in Korea. He feared that doing so would end his expatriate assignment early, but he knew what he had to do.
“Ultimately my firm backed me up, and no friendships were lost in the local office,” he says.
The experience serves as a modern-day fable: while the high road may be steeper, it’s infinitely worth the effort to avoid the pitfalls of the seemingly easier path.
Happily Ever After
In many ways Owen’s career has reflected the magic of his current employer. Owen’s dream to work with numbers came true. He helped shape the future of business in Korea, forged new frontiers professionally, and found adventure along the way. He proved Walt Disney’s statement true: “If you can dream it, you can do it.”
While he has consistently focused on making the right choices, Owen chalks his achievements up to being surrounded by great people and the ability to learn from them.
And there’s also that Tweedledee costume.
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Article written by Megan Bingham
Photography by Alisia Packard
