Speakers
Don Berecz
Friday, March 1, 2024
Lunch: Keynote topic: Teaching Beyond the Traditional Accounting Curriculum
Don Berecz is senior lecturer emeritus in the Parker College of Business School of Accountancy. He had previously served 23 years as a special agent with the FBI. He was agency-certified as a financial investigator, police instructor, and polygraph examiner. During his career he was assigned to the Seattle, Illinois, and Washington, DC, field offices. He was responsible for a wide variety of criminal investigations, and also participated in undercover operations, foreign counterintelligence matters, and recruiting for the FBI.
Mr. Berecz is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA), Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE), and Certified Forensic Interviewer (CFI). He is a licensed and practicing polygraph examiner. He is active in numerous professional organizations to include the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, and the American Association of Police Polygraphists, and the International Association of Interviewers.
Bill Donaldson
Friday, March 1, 2024
Lunch: Keynote topic: Teaching Beyond the Traditional Accounting Curriculum
Bill Donaldson is a Supervisory Special Agent (SSA) currently assigned to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Transnational Organized Crime – Western Hemisphere (TOC-West) Program. In this role, he oversees criminal investigations involving priority targets associated with transnational criminal organizations, including narcotics trafficking, human trafficking, and money laundering. SSA Donaldson previously worked complex financial crime investigations with the FBI, including money laundering, bank fraud, and securities fraud. Prior to joining the FBI, SSA Donaldson served as the Deputy Inspector General for the State of Georgia Office of Inspector General, where he supervised investigations involving public corruption and fraud against the government. He has also previously served in a variety of white-collar crime investigative roles since 2007 in both the public and private sectors. SSA Donaldson holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in Accounting with a minor in fraud examination and a Master of Accounting degree with an emphasis in forensic accounting from Georgia Southern University. He is also a Certified Public Accountant and a Certified Fraud Examiner.
Sri Ramamoorti
March 2, 2024
Lunch: Keynote topic: We Know Smart Contracts Are “Smart” But Are they “Ethical” Emerging Technologies, Emerging Ethical Risks
Dr. Sridhar Ramamoorti, ACA, CPA/CITP/CFF/CGMA, CIA, CFE, CFSA, CGAP, CGFM, CRMA, CRP, MAFF, is an Associate Professor of Accounting at the University of Dayton, Ohio, and since January 2020, was designated a Sustainability Scholar, affiliated with the UD Hanley Sustainability Institute. Previously, he was on the accounting faculties of Kennesaw State University, Georgia, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research interests span corporate governance and ethics, risk management, internal and external auditing, and forensic accounting.
Dr. Ramamoorti has a blended academic-practitioner background with over 35 years of experience in academia, auditing, and consulting. Originally trained as a Chartered Accountant from India, he worked for Ernst & Young (now EY) in the Middle East before obtaining his PhD in quantitative psychology from The Ohio State University. Earlier in his career, he was a principal with Andersen Worldwide (1998-2002), the National EY Sarbanes Oxley Advisor (2004-2005), a corporate governance partner with Grant Thornton (2005-2009), and a principal of Infogix, Inc (2009-2010).
Dr. Ramamoorti is co-author of over 60 papers and articles and 15 books and monographs. He has published in research journals such as Management Science, Journal of Management Accounting Research, Journal of Information Systems, Issues in Accounting Education, Accounting Horizons, and the International Journal of Accounting, as well as practitioner-oriented journals such as The CPA Journal, Strategic Finance, Internal Auditor, Fraud Magazine, and FORTUNE magazine. He has received numerous research grants, and awards for his research as well as for teaching excellence. He is the lead author of the prize-winning book, A.B.C’s of Behavioral Forensics (Ramamoorti et al., 2013, Wiley) that has been presented to the FBI Academy. He also co-authored a 2020 COSO Research Report on “Blockchain and internal Control” sponsored by Deloitte which has received mention in The Wall Street Journal. He recently became Chairman of the Executive Advisory Board of the MMBA Blockchain Academy (www.mmba.io)
Active in the profession, he was until July 2023 a member of the National Board of Directors of Financial Executives international (FEI), remains an Advisor to the NACVA Litigation Forensics Board, as well as Academic Advisor and Board member of the Institute for Truth in Accounting. He has served as a Trustee of the Financial Education & Research Foundation, the Internal Audit Foundation, and as Chairman of the Academy for Government Accountability, among other volunteer leadership roles. From 2014-2016, he was a member of the prestigious Standing Advisory Group of the U.S. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. In the last two decades, he has presented his work at Conferences in 16 countries.