Speakers
Timothy Ryan
PwC
Friday, February 10, 2024
Plenary Session at 8:30 am – 9:45 am
Tim Ryan is PwC's US Chair and Senior Partner with over 30 years of diversified experience serving clients across the globe. A forward-thinking leader committed to driving human-led, tech-powered outcomes to build trust in society and solve important problems, Tim has a proven record in advancing strategy, growth, collaboration, innovation, and upskilling.
He has reimagined PwC for the modern era, leading a complete digital transformation and launching a bold new strategy – The New Equation – to get ahead of the rapid pace of change in the industry bringing the best people, capabilities and technology together to support clients in building trust and delivering sustained outcomes. Recognizing that trust is more important than ever before, he founded PwC’s Trust Leadership Institute to equip tomorrow’s C-suite leaders with the trust-based skills needed to operate in a complex world.
Identifying a need for more explicit conversations around diversity and inclusion in business, Tim opened up a firmwide conversation about race in the workplace at PwC during his first week as Chair in 2016. With equity foundational to Tim’s trust-based leadership, he went on to co-found CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion™– the largest CEO-driven business commitment to advance diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace, with 2,400 signatory organizations – as well as CEO Action for Racial Equity to promote scalable, sustainable policies and corporate best practices to address systemic racism and social injustice. And in 2021, he renewed the firm’s commitment to Access Your Potential, to support a more equitable future for 25,000 Black and Latinx college students through advanced career-readiness training, mentorship, and technology upskilling for the in-demand jobs of today and tomorrow - including 10,000 who PwC US aspires to hire by 2026.
Tim is a member of the Board of Trustees of The Brookings Institution and the Financial Accounting Foundation, where he is Co-Chair of its Standard-Setting Process Oversight Committee. He is also Chair of the Center for Audit Quality’s (CAQ) Governing Board, a non-partisan, non-profit group dedicated to enhancing investor confidence and public trust in the global capital markets.
He is a thought leader and mentor to fellow CEOs, sharing frequent insights on complex issues affecting businesses, community and the betterment of society in the New York Times, Washington Post, Fortune, Harvard Business Review and his LinkedIn newsletter Talking Trust.
Raised in Boston, Tim learned early leadership lessons when he started his first job at age 14 as a grocery store stocker. He joined PwC after graduating from Babson College. He is a certified public accountant in Massachusetts and New York and a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. Tim is a runner and proud father of six children - and a dog.
W. Robert Knechel
University of Florida
Friday, February 10, 2024
Lunch and Speaker at 12:30 pm – 1:45 pm
W. Robert Knechel, PhD is Distinguished Professor and the Frederick E. Fisher Eminent Scholar in Accounting at the University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida. He is currently the Director of the International Accounting and Auditing Center (IAAC) located within the Fisher School of Accounting. Robert holds an appointment at the University of Auckland as a Professor of Accounting Research. He is on the Board of the Foundation for Audit Research in the Netherlands and is a member of the Standards and Emerging Issues Advisory Group (SEIAG) of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB). He has recently complete a term as the Senior Editor for The Accounting Review. He has previously served as the Senior Editor of Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory from 2011 through 2014. Robert’s prior research has been regularly published in several leading journals including The Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting Research, Contemporary Accounting Research, Accounting Organizations and Society, and Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory. He was honored with the 2015 Outstanding Educator in Auditing Award given by the Auditing Section of the American Accounting Association and has received Honorary Doctorates from BI Oslo (Norway) and Nyenrode University (Netherlands).