As a student at Hasselt University in Belgium, Belinda Buvens wanted to combine her studies with her passion for playing competitive table tennis. What she experienced ultimately set the stage for a three-decade career with Procter & Gamble (P&G).
Buvens holds a master’s degree in business engineering. “When I came to the United States, I realized that people were scratching their heads and wondering, ‘What does that mean?’ Essentially, it’s business economics that includes engineering skills,” she says. “You use math and data analytics to help companies with business process analyses and improvements, but the degree also incorporates learning in science and languages. It’s considered a tough course of study but provides lots of diverse work opportunities.” It was an honor, she adds, to be recruited by P&G.
From Europe to the US
Buvens started with P&G as a finance and cost accountant in Brussels, then became an SAP (systems, applications, and products in data processing) implementation leader, with projects that required her to travel throughout Europe.
Buvens has held several positions since then and has seen an evolution not only in her career but within P&G. “In my early years, P&G had accounting and finance departments for every country,” she says. “After restructuring, we consolidated our financial service centers. In Europe, the center was in Newcastle. Thus, a lot of the work that I was doing at the time required a move to the United Kingdom.
“I hadn’t considered that my career would take me far from home. Nobody in my family has ever done that—many of them lived very close to where my grandparents were. It was a big jump, but my husband—who has been with me for thirty years—was very encouraging.”
In the United Kingdom, Buvens and her team were responsible for filing all the indirect tax reporting for P&G’s European legal entities. “We still had corporate tax involved,” she says. “They were doing the review and the sign-off, but my team was responsible for pulling the data out of the system, doing the first analysis, and identifying the first errors. That assignment was how I got into tax compliance.”
After working in the United Kingdom, Buvens returned to Brussels. Among her numerous roles in the ensuing years, Buvens led a project team tasked with creating indirect tax centers of excellence and ensuring governance levels across different countries. The team included individuals in corporate tax and those with experience in tax compliance. “Part of that effort included implementing tax engine software to have the same levels of indirect tax controls and processes in place across the globe,” she explains. Buvens also achieved designation as an expert in European value-added tax.
Now in Ohio, Buvens and her team handle sales and use tax, withholding taxes on purchasing, property tax, credits and incentives related to business expansion, and dealing with some countries’ plastic tax levies. She is also a lead in P&G’s tax technology plan and in upscaling the organization by identifying areas for process improvement.
Enter TEI
Buvens says that before she moved to the United States, she knew very little about TEI. That has changed. “When I explored the organization and its mission, I saw a lot of similarities to what P&G is trying to achieve, in terms of our purpose, values, and principles,” she says. “It’s very much in line what TEI is striving for as a platform for taxpayers. P&G seeks tax certainty in order to achieve predictable and sustainable financial outcomes that positively impact our stakeholders. P&G is recognized as a transparent and low-risk taxpayer, and we do not pursue aggressive tax planning.
“Working for a big multinational corporation, it’s common for individuals to feel confident in their knowledge and believe they have little left to learn. However, I personally take a different approach. I value the opportunity to expand my knowledge and skills, remaining open-minded and receptive to new ideas and perspectives,” she adds. “No matter the size of the company, having that opportunity to talk with people who are in the same space and do the same type of work that you do helps me tremendously. Having an opportunity to network with, talk to, learn from, and lean on other TEI members energizes and inspires me.”
Buvens also commends TEI’s educational events, noting, “They really bring all the big players from diverse backgrounds, facilitating valuable in-person exposure to the latest happenings in tax.”
Life in the American Midwest
Buvens says that moving to the United States was not in her plans. “I thought, well, we are in Belgium. We bought our forever home. Then, P&G asked me to come to Cincinnati, initially just for two weeks, but then invited me to relocate as an expert assigned to lead a team. And I like solving problems and exploring new paths,” she says.
“In three months’ time, we moved to the US because my two teenage daughters had to begin school,” she adds. “The plan was to be here for two years, then go back to Belgium where my older daughter would start college. But I really enjoyed my work, and my family really appreciated the experience. My oldest graduated college last year in the States, and my youngest starts her senior year in college, so here we are.”
Outside of work, Buvens is very active. Although she no longer plays table tennis, she goes to the gym six out of seven days a week. “I also decided that it was’’ the right time in my life to start learning how to play golf. My husband and I take lessons,” she says. “Even as a beginner, I really like it.”
She adds that she’s also learning how to play piano through a phone app. “Unfortunately for my family, I can’t use a headset because the app needs to listen to me—good or bad—to give me feedback!”
