Featured Speakers

Michelle Hanlon is the Howard W. Johnson Professor and is currently the Deputy Dean for Faculty and Research at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Professor Hanlon's research focuses on taxation and the intersection of taxation and financial accounting. She has published in the top accounting and finance journals, among others. She has won several awards for her research including the American Accounting Association Distinguished Contribution to the Literature Award and the Outstanding Manuscript Award for the American Taxation Association. She was named a Presidential Scholar of the American Accounting Association in 2020. In addition, she was an editor at one of the leading accounting research journals, the Journal of Accounting and Economics, for 15 years.

Michelle has taught introductory and intermediate financial accounting; her primary teaching at MIT Sloan is the Taxes and Business Strategy class. She is a co-author on three textbooks. She has won several awards for her teaching including the Sloan Outstanding Teacher Award, the MIT Teaching with Digital Technology Award, and the Jamieson Prize for Excellence in Teaching.

Michelle has testified in front of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee and the U.S. Senate Finance Committee both twice. She worked as an Academic Fellow at the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee for part of 2015. She also served on the Tax Expenditure Commission for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Eva Labro is the Michael W. Haley Distinguished Professor of Accounting and Accounting Area Chair at the Kenan-Flagler Business School of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research interests in management accounting interface with other business disciplines and span multiple methodologies. She is specifically interested in costing systems. She has published extensively in top journals, including The Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Management Science, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management and Production and Operations Management. She is an editor at The Accounting Review, an associate editor at Journal of Accounting Research, and a senior editor at Production and Operations Management (POM) for its POM-Accounting Interface. She is a past senior editor of the Journal of Management Accounting Research. She serves on the editorial boards of Contemporary Accounting Research, European Accounting Review and Management Accounting Research.

For her research, she received the Impact on Management Accounting Practice Award thrice and the Notable Contributions to the Management Accounting Literature Award twice. She also received the 2024 inaugural Bredrup Faculty Excellence Award, the 2018 Bullard Award for Research Impact as well as the 2022 Weatherspoon Award for Distinguished Research. She has received research funding from CIMA and IMA. She teaches the core Strategic Cost Analysis & Performance Management course in Kenan-Flagler's various MBA programs, as well as a PhD seminar, and has won Weatherspoon Awards for teaching in both programs, as well as the 2024 Teaching Excellence Award from the inaugural Charlotte-based Executive MBA cohort. A dual American-Belgian national, she has worked on both sides of the Atlantic. Before she joined UNC, she was an associate professor at the London School of Economics. She received her PhD from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium.

Mark W. Nelson is the S.C. Johnson Family Professor of Management and Professor of Accounting at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. He received his BBA degree from Iowa State University and his MA and PhD degrees from The Ohio State University.

Mark teaches corporate financial reporting, intermediate financial accounting, auditing, and judgment and decision making in accounting. He has received twelve teaching awards, including the AAA's inaugural Cook Prize for graduate teaching excellence. He is a coauthor (with Spiceland, Thomas and Winchel) of Intermediate Accounting. Mark's research uses experimental and survey methods to address issues in financial accounting and auditing. His research has been published widely in accounting and psychology, and has been acknowledged with the AAA's Notable Contribution to Accounting Literature Award, the AAA's Wildman Medal, and AJPT's inaugural Best Paper Award.

Mark recently completed a seven-year term as Johnson's Ann and Elmer Lindseth Dean, responsible for Johnson's ten MBA, EMBA and MS programs, overseeing the activities of Johnson's faculty and staff in Ithaca and NYC as well as strategic partnerships with other academic institutions, and serving on the leadership team of Cornell's SC Johnson College of Business. Mark's external service includes three terms as an editor of the Accounting Review, four years on the FASB's Financial Accounting Standards Advisory Council, and membership on the board of the Boyce Thompson Institute.

Richard Sloan is a professor of accounting, finance and business economics at the University of Southern California. He has also served on the faculties of UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, University of Michigan's Ross School of Business and University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. While at the University of Michigan, Professor Sloan was the founding director of the John R. and Georgene M. Tozzi Electronic Business and Finance Center. From 2006 to 2009, Sloan was a managing director in equity research at Barclays Global Investors (since acquired by Blackrock). Professor Sloan is a pioneer in the field of quantitative investing and has served as a consultant to numerous firms in the investment management industry.

Professor Sloan's research focuses on the role of accounting information in investment decisions. His research has received numerous awards, including the American Accounting Association's Seminal Contributions to the Accounting Literature Award (2016), the American Accounting Association's Distinguished Contributions to the Accounting Literature Award (2010) and the American Accounting Association's Notable Contributions to the Accounting Literature Award (2001, 2009). He is a coauthor of the textbooks Equity Valuation & Analysis (with Russell Lundholm) and Business Sustainability Reporting & Analysis (with Patricia Dechow). He is also an editor of the Review of Accounting Studies and a member of the Financial Accounting Standards Advisory Council. Professor Sloan holds a PhD in Accounting and Finance from the University of Rochester and a BCom (Hons) from the University of Western Australia.

Dana R. Hermanson is Dinos Eminent Scholar Chair of Private Enterprise and Professor of Accounting at Kennesaw State University. His research primarily addresses issues in fraud, corporate governance, auditing, and accounting education. Dana is one of the most prolific contributors to academic accounting journals, accounting education journals, and practitioner accounting journals. His over 500 publications include over 70 letters to the editor in The Wall Street Journal. Dana's research has been cited approximately 20,000 times. He has coauthored two COSO-sponsored studies of fraudulent financial reporting, as well as related auditing monographs for the CAQ and AICPA.

Dana has received the Outstanding Auditing Educator Award and the Deloitte Wildman Medal from the AAA. He was founding co-editor of Current Issues in Auditing and co-editor of Accounting Horizons. Dana has served on 20 dissertation committees, and he has coauthored 60 publications with Kennesaw State University students and graduates.

Dana received his undergraduate degree from the University of Georgia and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. He worked as an auditor for Ernst & Whinney in Atlanta.