Speakers

Nate R Adler, EY
Professional Experience Summary

Nate Adler is a Senior Manager within EY’s Business Consulting practice in the Northeast region. Nate joined the firm’s Risk group in October 2014 after completing the ITRA internship and Emerging Leaders program offered in the previous summers. His experiences have largely focused on third-party reporting, specifically SOC 1 and 2 engagements. Nate is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Nate graduated from the Robert H. Smith School of Business from the University of Maryland, College Park with a dual-degree in Accounting and Information Systems. While at Maryland, Nate was selected to participate in the Quality Enhancement Systems & Teams (QUEST) Honors Program, which focuses on multidisciplinary teams to foster research, innovation, and teamwork. Nate also enrolled in five global immersion programs ranging from London and the European economy to Dubai, Singapore, China and the Asian markets.
Engagement Experience

Nate’s experiences in attestation reporting include System and Organization Controls (SOC) for Service Organizations (SOC 1, 2, and 3) and government compliance engagements for a variety of Fortune 500 companies, primarily focusing on technology and IT outsourcing clients. Nate has also worked on several business development SOCR pursuits. His experiences in attestation work spread across student loan processing, toll/transportation processing, claims processing, benefit enrollments, and a wide-range of technologies and systems. Nate has experience with Mainframe, AS400, Midrange, SQL, Oracle, Sybase, Windows, and Linux-based infrastructures. Nate has broad experience in assessing risk and providing improvement recommendations for business and IT processes and controls.

Nate’s project roles consist of managing and executing fieldwork, supervising local and foreign talent resources, and assisting in the report writing process for several clients within the technology and healthcare sectors. Nate has served as a main point of contact and manager for EY Global Delivery Services resources for significant SOC testing audit procedures.

On top of his client work, Nate is a well-known member of the Boston Consulting group due to his involvement in various events aimed at developing our teams and increasing people engagement. Nate has assisted with the firm’s Entrepeneur of the Year (EOY) program, serves on the East SOCR Champions group, and organizes the annual Boston Consulting flag football game each fall, as well as helps manage other co-ed intramural teams within the Boston office community.


Kaylee Crowley, KPMG

Kaylee is a senior tax associate with KPMG in Boston.  She is currently on rotation with our International Tax practice but worked in the Corporate Tax service line for the past two years. She graduated from UMass Amherst and now lives in the Boston area. She is really passionate about mental health, is a KPMG culture champion, and is an active participant in recruiting oriented events.


Lauren Dusse, Grant Thornton

Lauren is an audit senior associate out of the Boston office who excels in managing and executing audits of large public and private clients across a range of industries (including manufacturing, consulting and higher education). She has a strong skillset in project management and clear communication, which facilitates helpful dialogue and ease of interaction throughout the audit process. Lauren is well versed in AICPA, PCAOB, and Uniform Guidance Standards as well as SOX internal control testing. She brings a passion for high quality service delivery and thrives in developing strong relationships with her teams and clients. In addition to being a licensed CPA in the state of Massachusetts and a member of the American Institute of Certificated Public Accountants, she enjoys serving as a member of the Recruiting and Training Committees in the Boston office.


Damaris Fynn, EY

Damaris Fynn is an Executive Director in our consulting practice with over sixteen years of experience. She focuses on helping clients to define their analytics strategy, to understand their pain points and use insights from data to anticipate, resolve or avoid them.

She has spent the last decade and half enabling the 2nd and 3rd line of defense to achieve their mandate of being valued business advisors. Damaris has extensive experience infusing technology, data and analytics into Risk functions such as internal audit, compliance, third party risk and cyber. She has led high performing teams build and implement various bespoke solutions using automation, digitization and various advanced analytics techniques.

She is currently our America’s Risk Analytics lead responsible for enabling RISK with technology and analytics across the region.
Damaris leads our Women in Technology initiative that empowers women with tools and resources to confidently navigate their career and foster a sense of community and trust amongst our women.

Living the values of my faith and help others achieve their fullest potential so they can inspire others to do the same. 


Ellen Glazerman, Ernst & Young Foundation

Ellen Glazerman is the Executive Director of the Ernst & Young Foundation, and Director of University Relations, Americas for EY (formerly Ernst & Young). She also supports a variety of initiatives within the firm's Office of Public Policy and Recruiting teams. Ellen is an Executive Coach and is trained in design thinking and virtual facilitation. Formerly the Americas Director of Campus Recruiting for EY, she joined Ernst & Young LLP in May of 1993 as the Director of the Ernst & Young Foundation.

In 1996, Ellen assumed responsibility for the firm's campus recruiting efforts. As the Americas Director of Campus Recruiting, her responsibilities included providing strategic direction, focus, and infrastructure support for campus recruiters firmwide until spring, 2001. During her tenure, Ellen helped to create the first global recruiting brochure for the firm, the first Intern Leadership Conference and the first formal internal network of recruiters. She reprised this role on an interim basis between 2014 and 2015. Ellen took responsibility for beginning the analysis of corporate giving throughout the U.S. firm until the firm formed its CR initiatives in 2003.

Ellen is a member of the Leventhal School of  Accounting  Board of Advisors, the Goizueta Business School Dean's Advisory Board, and the BYU School of Accounting Board of Advisors. Ellen is a member and Past-Chair of the Forte Foundation Board of Directors, a not-for- profit dedicated to "inspiring women business leaders." She is a member of the American Management Association's Advisory Board for the Certified Professional in Management and Wiley's Strategic Advisory Board. She is also a member of the AACSB's Accounting Policy Committee. She was a Commissioner for the profession's Pathways in Accounting initiatives. She is also a past Board member of AACSB, the AAA Executive Committee, the Ross School at the University of Michigan, the APLG (twice), the AICPA Education committee, the Center for the Public Trust, Wesleyan University's President's Council, Gina Gibney Dance Company, T-Zone (Tyra Banks' charity is support of women and girls), Beta Alpha Psi, and the North Carolina Chapel Hill Accountancy Program. She is the proud recipient of the AAA, Lifetime Service Award.

She   speaks   frequently    and    has    written    on    fundraising    and corporate philanthropy. Prior to joining EY, Ellen spent nine years as a development officer, raising private money for several universities.


Greg Hodlin, KPMG

Greg is a senior manager in the KPMG Ignition tax practice with over 9 years of experience providing tax compliance, provision, and planning services to clients. He specializes in tax process automation with a focus on ONESOURCE Income Tax and ONESOURCE APIs.


Pete Irwin, KPMG
Principal, Lighthouse Digital & Analytics

Background
Pete is the leader of the Decision Science & Machine Learning team with KPMG’s Lighthouse, focused on helping clients apply advanced analytics and AI to make better decisions and improve business performance. With over 20 years of analytics, IT, and business systems consulting experience, Pete leads teams that leverage data to develop and implement solutions in the areas of predictive analytics and decision intelligence. He is responsible for creating KPMG’s Intelligent Forecasting solution, and has delivered multiple machine learning projects leveraging KPMG’s Signals Repository and Ignite Artificial Intelligence platform. Pete is also the head of KPMG’s Insights Centers in the US, which help our clients explore the art of the possible in advanced analytics and emerging technology.

Pete is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) with a background in computer engineering, who also has extensive experience with large-scale project and program management, ERP implementation, BI/reporting, IT risk management, and process and controls design and review.

Relevant experience
Intelligent Forecasting – Led the design and roll-out of an advanced machine learning forecasting capability and solution, which more accurately predict revenue and earnings for large enterprises. Delivered for over 10 clients, who have seen forecast accuracy improve significantly as a result, along with new insights and transparency.

Predictive Analytics – Led multiple predictive analytics projects built on the foundation of KPMG’s Signals Repository. Examples include predicting student success at a major university, predicting demand of new locations for an international restaurant chain, and predicting customers that are likely to fade for an online retailer.

Decision Intelligence (Resource & Asset Optimization) – Delivered several projects that combine operations research capabilities and simulation techniques, including improving the schedule completion time of a major telco construction project, optimizing the revenue of one of the world’s largest convection centers, and generation of improved schedules for sports leagues, police departments, and other work forces.

Automated Data Extraction/Cognitive Document Management – Developed and implemented AI systems for clients that extract unstructured data and text from raw contract files (PDF or Word) in order to derive meaning and classify results for purposes of identifying value leakage, managing risk, realizing contract terms, maximizing supplier value, or improving overall automation and speed.
Data & Analytics Strategy and Design – Served as Operations Lead for KPMG’s D&A Center of Excellence. Included oversight for all aspects of building and delivery of a new D&A practice, including planning, budgeting, staff management, training, reporting, marketing, integration, and working closely with leadership on development and execution of the overall D&A strategy. D&A team doubled in size during each of the 2 years in this role.


Dr. Nicholas Nicoloudis, PwC
Nicholas is a passionate technologists who has been architecting and developing market leading software applications for the past 22 years. During his career, he has been a founder of several start-up companies, worked with several multinational organisations and held numerous roles in development, research and management. 

Nicholas’s research has led to numerous publications, patents and awards in exposing web services from business applications to data mining and processing on mobile devices.  Nicholas regularly presents at universities and conferences on digital transformation and disruptive technologies.  Nicholas is on the TinyML Strategic Partner Board to grow the adoption of EndPoint AI in Industry 5.0 scenarios.  Nicholas has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Monash University.


Twinkle Patel, Deloitte & Touche LLP

Twinkle Patel is a Manager within Deloitte’s Risk and Financial Advisory Digital Controls – Cloud Risk Offering with over 5 years of experience specializing in Technology Risk. For the past 3 years, she has been giving all her attention to performing cloud assessments and audits to help companies navigate the cloud environments securely and quickly, specifically for the Microsoft Azure (Azure) cloud platform.

Previously, Twinkle has worked on Assurance projects, supporting external financial statement audits, SOC1 engagements, and audits in the federal government that are aligned to NIST 800-53 and 800-37. Currently, she is working on internal audits and projects with a focus on IT security and cloud computing related technologies in the consumer and retail industry.
In addition to supporting financial audits, Twinkle has focused on leveraging her knowledge of IT controls and risk to help serve companies in an advisory capacity, specializing in risk and control assessments, pre and post implementation reviews. Twinkle is also currently serving as the project manager on an internal audit project for another publicly listed retail and healthcare company.


Dawn Pawlowski, Deloitte & Touche LLP

Profile
With a strong educational background in accounting and finance, Dawn primarily supports Life Sciences & Health Care M&A clients. She enjoys both pre- and post-merger Finance integrations and Day 1 readiness, including key subfunctions of Payroll, Treasury, Supply Chain, Accounting & Reporting. Prior to her M&A work, Dawn was involved with business process design engagements and ASC842 (lease accounting) implementations. Dawn is a licensed CPA in the state of Massachusetts and a member of the AICPA and MSCPA.

Certifications
•              Licensed CPA in Massachusetts
Education
•              Bentley University, M.S. Accountancy
•              Bentley University, B.S. Corporate Finance & Accounting


Timothy M. Persons, Ph.D., PwC
Digital Assurance & Transparency / P&S East

Tim Persons is Principal, Digital Assurance and Transparency of US Trust Solutions. In this role he leads the development of innovative assurance solutions for PwC clients in artificial intelligence/machine learning, data, algorithms, and other digital transformations to best help them build and maintain trust with their customers and stakeholders. As Principal, Tim is responsible for addressing sector-specific digital assurance problems of today and tomorrow in coordination with stakeholders, policymakers, and oversight bodies – all based on design thinking and the development of a proper understanding of the opportunities, challenges, and risks.

Tim brings a proven track record of leadership in innovation, strategy, and results-oriented execution in digital transformation and services (i.e., AI/ML, data analytics, cybersecurity) and myriad science and technology issues. He is a member of or serves on various Councils and Committees of multiple U.S. National Academies.

Previously, Tim was a Managing Director and Chief Scientist at the US Government Accountability Office in Washington, DC where he focused on providing assurance for oversight mechanisms in critical areas to help build trust in our institutions. During his career in public service, Tim gained a unique perspective and established relationships and credibility inside many of the US government agencies and external constituencies in the technology, cyber, AI, data science, and analytics industries. Tim holds a PhD in Biomedical Engineering and an MSc in Computer Science from Wake Forest University as well as an MSc in Nuclear Physics from Emory University.


Danh Pham, Grant Thornton

Danh has over 6 years of auditing and accounting experience. He is a member of the Grant Thornton Digital Assets Practice Group and serves as a technical instructor for audit-related topics. Danh has extensive experience in digital asset existence testing, blockchain verification, stablecoin reserve attestation and agreed-upon procedures, and crypto-focused accounting policy reviews. Danh managed the audit and monthly attestation procedures for a major financial technology company as part of its IPO readiness.


Kevin O’Connell, PwC

Kevin serves as PwC’s US Trust Solutions ESG Leader. With his team, he helps design enterprise-wide, forward-looking sustainability strategies that enable clients to assess, manage and communicate progress on their ESG initiatives. He has 30+ years of experience in third party assurance, information governance, and internal controls reporting—helping our largest financial services clients manage complex risks and controls.


Michela Ottati, Grant Thornton

Michela is a Manager on the Innovative Growth Solutions Team, a division of Grant Thornton’s National Office. Michela leverages four years of audit experience to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the firm’s audit execution by developing and supporting automations and audit data analytic tools. Michela began her career with Grant Thornton, where she worked with a variety of clients within public and private industries, focusing on companies with global operations. In this role, Michela gained significant experience coordinating and supervising substantive and internal control testing procedures as well as coordination of audit procedures with IT, Valuation, Tax, and Human Capital Service specialists. Michela also has experience working closely with Internal Audit to develop and execute an integrated audit approach that best leverages work performed by Internal Audit, to ensure optimal audit efficiency and avoid duplication of efforts.