Making Connections in New Spaces

As chief operating officer and deputy chair for KPMG U.S., Laura Newinski, ’94 MBT, knows from firsthand experience how important physical space is to professional and personal growth. 

That’s one of the key reasons why she has made a four-year pledge to support the design and construction of the Connecting Carlson project. 

Eight years ago, Newinski was charged with reimagining the employee training program for KPMG, where she has spent her 37-year career. Before she took on this project, the firm had been conducting training in various rented spaces. “We wanted to make our in-person learning more impactful,” Newinski says. To do so, KPMG built its own central learning facility, called KPMG Lakehouse, in Orlando, Florida, which opened in 2020. 

Newinski calls the project’s return on investment “enormous.” Much of that, she adds, is due to the design of the Lakehouse facility, which includes numerous spaces that allow KPMG employees participating in training to meet, share ideas with, and learn from people throughout the organization at various levels of leadership. These informal or accidental meetups are “more likely to create dialogue about what you’ve just experienced or are going to be experiencing,” Newinski says. These interactions and connections can lead to mutual professional benefit. 

Around the time she was wrapping her work on Lakehouse, Newinski heard about Connecting Carlson, another project involving physical space and how it influences experience and connection, through her role as a member of the Carlson School’s Board of Advisors. “It was very exciting for me to think of my alma mater going through the same journey,” she says. The crossover encouraged her to raise her hand to help. She was further inspired when Marilyn Carlson Nelson made the lead gift to the project. 

Newinski made her first gift to Connecting Carlson in 2024, proud to support “the special way Carlson connects with the business community.” 

She says she’s also excited for the opportunity for students and faculty to collaborate informally in the space. She believes that, as at Lakehouse, these spaces will help promote experiential learning and create connections that extend beyond the classroom. 

“My graduate-level experience at the Carlson School was about connection,” Newinski says, noting that, while serving as partner-in-charge of tax for the Midwest, many of her clients and team members had ties to the Carlson School. She has valued those connections throughout her career, both in recruiting talent and adding clients, as she has moved from local to national roles at KPMG. 

Through her support of the Connecting Carlson project, she hopes to help other Carlson School students grow their network and build similar partnerships.