Speakers
Risha Grant, Founder and CEO of Risha Grant LLC
Plenary Speaker
Permission: Granted to Get Rid of Your BS (Bias Synapse)
Motivated by her passion to correct societal isms like racism, sexism, classism and plain old stupidism, it is Risha’s personal mission to expose the value of Diversity & Inclusion while shining a light on the economic impact it creates. From her race, gender and lifestyle choices, to growing a small business and tackling economic issues, every area of her life intersects diversity.
Founder & CEO of Risha Grant LLC, an award-winning diversity consulting and communications firm, as well as an edgy, educational and motivational speaker, author Risha Grant is an internationally renowned diversity, inclusion and bias expert. She covers these topics as NBC KJRH TV News 2 for You community correspondent and host of the JustUs series, through her Tulsa World column, Risha Talks, as a columnist for Black Enterprise Magazine and in her book, That’s BS! How Bias Synapse Disrupts Inclusive Cultures.
Featured in Forbes, The Financial Times, Off Script, Bloomberg Media, Black Enterprise, Radioactive Radio, Take the Lead Radio and WURD Radio among other podcasts, local and national media. Risha has also been awarded numerous honors such as being named a 2019 Top 100 HR Influencer by Engagedly, a 2018 Inclusive Leadership Award Winner and Entrepreneur of the Year in 2017.
Through her interactive keynotes and deep-dive training sessions, Risha teaches and empowers attendees with D&I tools to increase their bottom line and permission to get rid of their BS.
Michelle Hanlon, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Presidential Scholar
The Possible Weakening of Financial Accounting from Tax Reforms
Michelle Hanlon is the Howard W. Johnson Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. She is currently the Area Head for Economics, Finance, and Accounting at Sloan.
Her research primarily focuses on taxation and the intersection of taxation and financial accounting. Her papers have been published in each of the top accounting and finance journals, among others. She has served as an editor at the Journal of Accounting and Economics for eleven years. She has won several awards for her research and is often quoted in the press.
She has taught introductory and intermediate financial accounting and currently teaches the Scholes and Wolfson Tax and Business Strategy course. She is a co-author on three textbooks.
She has testified in front of House and Senate Congressional Committees about U.S. tax policy three times and worked as an Academic Fellow at the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee for part of 2015. She is currently on a tax commission for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
She earned her PhD at the University of Washington and was an Associate Professor at the University of Michigan prior to moving to MIT. Before entering academics, she was a tax manager at KPMG, LLP.
Douglas A. Shackelford, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Presidential Scholar
Accounting Professor as Dean
Douglas A. Shackelford has served as Dean of the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School since 2014 and a member of the faculty since 1990. Doug is the Meade H. Willis Distinguished Professor of Taxation, has served as the school’s Senior Associate Dean, Associate Dean for its Master of Accounting program, was its founding Associate Dean for MBA@UNC, created the UNC Tax Center, and is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and an International Research Fellow at the Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation. His research and teaching address taxes and business strategy, and he has published widely in accounting, economics, finance, and law journals and testified several times before Congress and other policymaking bodies. He has held visiting professorships at Stanford University, Oxford University, and Universiteit Maastricht. Professor Shackelford has two degrees in business administration--a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and a B.S. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Gregory J. Gordon, Managing Director of SSRN and Knowledge Lifecycle Management with Elsevier
Plenary Speaker
Making Accounting Cool Again
Gregory J. Gordon holds dual roles for the Elsevier’s Research Products division; Managing Director of SSRN and Knowledge Lifecycle Management. SSRN is a leading Open Access multi-disciplinary online repository focused on providing Tomorrow’s Research Today for early stage scholarly research. In May 2016 SSRN joined Elsevier, the world’s leading provider of scientific content and solutions. Since joining Elsevier, SSRN has grown from 20 to 60 discipline based research networks and includes over 900,000 papers from 460,000 researchers and has celebrated its 150,000,000 downloads earlier this year. In January 2019, he expanded his role working across the organization to build trusted relationships with researchers, institutions, funders, and other publishers, and help identify solutions for making the Knowledge Lifecycle more efficient.
Prior to helping Michael C. Jensen found SSRN in 1994, Gregg started his career at KPMG and worked at or founded entrepreneurial companies in technology and health care. Gregg regularly speaks around the world and writes regularly about scholarly research and the changes needed to create innovative research faster. He has written or co-authored several articles including Standards and Infrastructure for Innovation Data Exchange published by Science and The Question of Data Integrity in Article-Level Metrics published by PLOS Biology, and gave a TEDx talk, Trust to the Power of One, in May 2019.
Elaine G. Mauldin, University of Missouri
Plenary Speaker
Be Courageous
Elaine G. Mauldin is BKD Professor at the Robert J. Trulaske, Sr. College of Business at the University of Missouri, having served on its faculty since 1997. She serves as Faculty Coordinator of the SAP University Alliance. Elaine earned her Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska.
Elaine currently serves as Editor for The Accounting Review (2014-present) and has served as Associate Editor of the Journal of Information Systems (2003-08, 2010-14). She has published widely in peer-reviewed journals including The Accounting Review, Accounting Horizons, Journal of Information Systems, Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory, Contemporary Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Journal of Accounting, Auditing & Finance, Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Research in Accounting Regulation, Accounting Organizations and Society, International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, and Strategic Finance.
Elaine currently serves AAA on the Board of Directors and Council as President-Elect. She previously served as Director-Focusing on Intellectual Property (2016-19), and on AAA Council (2012-15 and 2008-09). She is a member of the AAA Intellectual Property Task Force III (2016-present), a member of AAA’s AIS and Auditing (AUD) Sections, previously serving as President of the Accounting Information Systems Section (2008-09).
She has served on the AAA Finance Committee (2009-12), AAA Doctoral Dissertation Awards for Innovative Research in Accounting Education Committee (2015-16), AAA New Faculty Consortium senior faculty presenter (2015), AAA Annual Meeting Program Committee (2012-13), AAA Sharpening Our Vision Task Force II (2013-14), participant at the Deloitte Trueblood Seminar (2012), AAA Doctoral Consortium senior faculty presenter (2010), Bylaws Review Committee Chair (2006-07) and Annual Meeting Co-Coordinator (2004-05) for AIS (2004-05).
Elaine has twenty-two years’ teaching experience, and has received a number of academic awards for excellence including Accounting Horizons Best Paper Award (2014), the AIS Section’s Outstanding Research Paper Award (2007), Best Reviewer Award (2001), and Outstanding Dissertation Award (1998). The University of Missouri has recognized her contributions with the Trulaske College of Business Distinguished Research Award (2017-18), the Winemiller Excellence Award (2018), and the Trulaske College of Business Miller/Smith Summer Scholar Award (2010-19). Elaine served as President of the Missouri Society of CPAs Mid-Missouri Chapter (2003-04).