Brian Foote, KMPG
Future Directions of the Profession
Friday, October 29, 2021, 10:10 am–11:10 am CST

Brian Foote graduated with a master’s and Bachelor’s degree in Accounting from Brigham Young University in 2014. He is now a Senior Audit Manager in KPMG’s San Antonio office. Over the last seven years, Brian has gained broad industry experience including the Energy, Insurance, Manufacturing (aerospace, commercial, food & beverage, shipbuilding) and Retail industries. Brian also has extensive experience auditing under PCAOB standards and US GAAS. He has assisted clients with business acquisitions and dispositions, debt and equity security offerings, bankruptcy, and transitioning to KPMG from predecessor auditors. His clients range from large international SEC filers to small private entities with only a few employees.

In addition to serving clients, Brian serves as an audit national instructor for internal KPMG trainings and has helped KPMG develop national trainings for new audit professionals. He is actively involved in his local office recruiting and mentoring efforts and maintains involvement with the local community as the audit committee chair for a local non-profit organization helping to preserve and protect the beautiful Texas Hill Country.

Brian enjoys spending time with his wife Janet and 3 ½ month old son Matthew. Additionally, Brian enjoys wade fishing along the Texas Coast.

Michael Jenkinson, KMPG
Future Directions of the Profession
Friday, October 29, 2021, 10:10 am–11:10 am CST

Michael Jenkinson graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Finance from the University of Texas at San Antonio. He currently works as a Senior Associate at KPMG in San Antonio. Michael began his career in private lending credit analysis at Presidential Healthcare and later in Wells Fargo’s business lending group. Michael transitioned to accounting at Sturm CPA and began supporting litigation audit work as well as tax compliance.

At KPMG Michael’s industry experience has spanned Retail, Energy, Biomedical, and Professional Services. Michael has extensive experience both with federal, state, and international tax compliance as well as supporting various consulting projects. Michael services as a Local Office Champion for BTE, KPMG’s proprietary tax workpaper and is a representative of the San Antonio office within KPMG’s Diversity and Inclusion group.

One of Michael’s professional highlights is helping others learn and develop. As such, Michael is actively involved as a resource within the tax team and is always looking to build up new hires and interns in the group, and also is an active participant in KPMG’s campus recruiting.

Outside of the office, Michael enjoys spending his time with his wife, 4 year old son, and 2 year old daughter reading books, walking through the woods, rock climbing, and discovering more of San Antonio together.

James Powell, KPMG
Future Directions of the Profession
Friday, October 29, 2021, 10:10 am–11:10 am CST

James is a KPMG audit partner and serves as the office managing partner in the Minneapolis office. He has more than 29 years of experience providing financial statement audits and internal control audit services to clients in the Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Atlanta, Nashville and Minneapolis offices.

James has provided professional audit services to a wide variety of entities, from small private companies to large multinational, multibillion-dollar corporations, specializing in consumer goods, retail, transportation, pharmaceutical, and life sciences. His audit experience ranges from private companies to SEC filers and he has experience in coordinating with international KPMG offices to serve multinational organizations. He has a thorough understanding of SEC rules and regulations and has been involved in several debt and equity offerings.

James has been the National Partner in Charge, University Talent Acquisition since 2017. In this role, he is responsible for KPMG’s national recruiting strategy and execution, including faculty relations. James is a board member of the KPMG U.S. Foundation, Inc. James was a member of KPMG’s Inclusion & Diversity Executive Council and served as a nominating committee member for KPMG’s Board of Directors. He is a member of KPMG’s Chairman’s 25 Class of 2017.

James holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from California State University in Fresno. He is a member of the AICPA and is a licensed CPA in California, Georgia, Minnesota and Tennessee.

Rebecca Pope-Ruark, Georgia Institute of Technology
Beating Burnout
Friday, October 29, 2021, 9:00 am–10:00 am CST

Rebecca Pope-Ruark is the teaching and learning specialist for the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL). She works with faculty interested in improving their teaching practices through classroom action research, evidence-based teaching methods, and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). Rebecca earned her Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Professional Communication from Iowa State University. Prior to joining the CTL team, she served for 12 years on the faculty of Elon University, teaching professional writing and rhetoric in the Department of English and, most recently, spearheading design thinking initiatives for Elon College, the College of Arts and Sciences. Rebecca is the author of Agile Faculty: Practical Strategies for Managing Research, Service, and Teaching (University of Chicago Press, 2017), a faculty development book that adapts the Scrum project management framework common in software development for faculty work. Her co-edited collection, Redesigning Liberal Education: Innovative Design for a Twenty-First-Century Undergraduate Education, (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020) is now available.

Her research interests include adapting Scrum for student collaboration and faculty development, programmatic innovation in liberal education, and faculty wellbeing and burnout. At Georgia Tech, Rebecca works with faculty in the Hesburgh Teaching Fellows and Provost Teaching and Learning Fellows programs, co-editing the Teaching at Georgia Tech faculty guidebook, co-faciliating professional development workshops on teaching topics, and managing CTL communications.