Anne L. Christensen, AAA President, Montana State University-Bozeman
Friday, January 12, 2018, 7:00 AM - 8:15 AM
Pathways to a Sustainable Future

Anne L. Christensen is a Professor of Accounting in the Jake Jabs College of Business & Entrepreneurship at Montana State University, where she has served as Director of the Master of Professional Accountancy Program, Director of the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program, a member of the Graduate Council, and on the University Service Learning Advisory Board. She was previously a member of the faculty at Portland State University. Anne earned her Ph.D. from The University of Utah.

Anne has published in a number of peer-reviewed journals including Issues in Accounting Education, The Journal of the American Taxation Association, ATA Journal of Legal Tax Research, Advances in Accounting Education, Journal of Business Ethics, Financial Accountability and Management, and Advances in Taxation. She has served on Editorial Boards for Issues in Accounting Education, Accounting Horizons, Journal of the American Taxation Association, and Journal of Accounting Education.

Anne is currently serving as the President of the American Accounting Association (AAA). In the past she served as the AAA Director-Focusing on Segments and on AAA’s Sharpening Our Vision Taskforce I and II. She is a member of AAA’s ABO, ATA, and TLC Sections. During her career she served on AAA Council and as President and Program Chair of the Western Region, as President, Vice President, and Trustee of the ATA, as Chair of ATA’s Publication Committee, ATA/Deloitte Teaching Innovation Awards Committee, Accreditation & Curriculum Issues Committee, Awards Committee, and Nominations Committee. She has served on the AAA Strategic Region Leader Committee as Co-Chair, and as a member of the Council Committee on Awards Committee,Deloitte Wildman Award Committee, AAA Journals Task Force, and AAA Nominations Committee.

Anne has twenty-eight years’ teaching experience and has received twelve awards for academic excellence including Montana State University’s President’s Excellence in Teaching Award and President’s Award for Excellence in Service Learning; the College’s Distinguished Faculty Award and Dean’s Award for Outstanding Performance in Service, and the ATA’s Ray M. Sommerfeld Outstanding Tax Educator Award and the ATA Outstanding Service Award.

Bob Kittell
Friday, January 12, 2018, 12:30 PM – 1:45 PM
Think smarter. Think differently.

Bob Kittell has inspired over five million nationally and internationally to think differently, to think smarter, and to live better.  He has spoken in packed arenas and stadiums at motivational and educational events, touring with George Bush, Bill Clinton, Terry Bradshaw, Donald Trump, and many other notable, political, motivational, and sports celebrities. 

Bob began his speaking career training memory improvement strategies to tens of thousands of college students at over one hundred major universities. Bob is the Brigham Young University Athletics memory expert, teaching all incoming freshman his techniques for recall not only to gain instant control of game strategies but to excel in school so they can stay in the game.

Raj Raghunathan
Friday, January 12, 2018, 8:30 AM – 9:45 AM
If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Happy?

Description: Author of “If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Happy?”, Raj will speak on the topic of “What does it take to be happy and why is being happy important?”

Raj Raghunathan, Ph.D., is a Professor of Marketing at the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. He is interested in exploring the impact that people’s judgments and decisions have on their happiness and fulfillment. Raj’s work has appeared in top journals, including The Journal of Marketing, The Journal of Consumer Research, The Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Information Systems Research, and The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. His work has also been cited in several mass media outlets, including The Atlantic, The New York Times, Fortune, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Inc, Fast Company, and The Los Angeles Times.

Raj writes about his views on happiness, creativity, and leadership on his popular Psychology Today blog (with over 1 million page views), Sapient Nature. His six-week long Coursera course on happiness (titled, A Life of Happiness and Fulfillment) currently has over 170,000 registered students from 196 countries, and was recently voted the Top MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) of 2015 and one of the Top 50 MOOCs of all time. Raj’s book (titled, If you’re so smart, why aren’t you happy?) was released in the Spring of 2016 in the US, UK, and India and is slated to be released in 11 other languages in 2017.

Eugene Soltes
Saturday, January 13, 2018, 8:30 AM – 9:45 AM
Why They Do It:  Inside the Mind of the White-Collar Criminal

Summary: Author of “Why They Do It: Inside the Mind of the White-Collar Criminal”, Dr. Soltes will discuss insights from his groundbreaking study on white-collar criminality. His investigation draws on more than seven years of interaction with nearly fifty of the most high-profile former executives. His findings refute popular explanations of why seemingly successful executives engage in fraud and shows that most executives make decisions the way we all do―on the basis of intuitions and gut feelings.
As Dr. Soltes will discuss, the trouble is, these gut feelings are often poorly suited for the modern business world and often lead to the harmful acts that we so often read about in the news.

 Eugene Soltes is the Jakurski Family Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School where his research focuses on corporate misconduct and fraud, and how organizations design cultures and compliance systems to confront these challenges. He is the recipient of the Charles M. Williams Award for outstanding teaching and author of the bestselling book Why They Do It: Inside the Mind of the White-Collar Criminal. Professor Soltes’ research has been widely cited in the media including in The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The New York Times, NPR, and The Economist and he is regularly invited to speak to regulatory bodies including the Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the United States Treasury. Prior to joining the faculty of the Harvard Business School, Professor Soltes received his PhD and MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and his MA in statistics and BA in economics from Harvard University.