Sustainability, ESG, and Accounting:
Implications for the Academy and the Profession
Speakers
Joe Allanson
Joe Allanson is Executive Vice President, salesforce Finance ESG (September 2021 to present) and previously, Executive Vice President, salesforce Chief Accounting Officer and Corporate Controller
Joe Allanson joined salesforce in August 2003, which was four years after salesforce was founded in 1999. He is the company’s finance executive responsible for its ESG reporting practices and the integration of ESG and finance within the organization. This executive role was added in September 2021. Prior to that, he served as their Chief Accounting Officer and Corporate Controller from July 2011 and as the company’s Corporate Controller from July 2007 to July 2011.
Until August 2022, Joe served on the board of directors of the Value Reporting Foundation (VRF), which was the governing organization that was responsible for the Sustainable Accounting Standards Board (referred to as the SASB) and the Integrated Reporting Framework. The VRF completed its merger with the International Financial Reporting Standards Foundation. Joe continues to serve on two VRF merger transition committees to support the acceleration of the work in developing a comprehensive global baseline of sustainability disclosures for the capital markets.
Joe also serves as a member of the board of trustees of the University of San Francisco, a Jesuit Catholic university serving 11,000 students, and is a member of the advisory boards of the University of Southern California's Leventhal School of Accounting and the accounting program at Santa Clara University's Leavey School of Business. Joe is an alum of Santa Clara. Shortly after graduation, he spent 11 years in Arthur Andersen's audit and business advisory practice, and after that he spent several years in key accounting and finance positions at Chiron Corporation and Autodesk.
Christine Ann Botosan
Christine Ann Botosan was appointed to the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) on July 1, 2016, later reappointed to a second term that extends to June 30, 2026. Prior to joining the FASB, Ms. Botosan was a professor of accounting at the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah.
An award-winning professor and researcher, Ms. Botosan has a broad knowledge of accounting issues, with particular expertise in the areas of financial statement analysis and valuation.
Ms. Botosan served in a variety of roles during her tenure at the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah including as a leadership fellow in the office of the vice president, as the George S. and Dolores Dore Eccles Presidential Chair in Ethical Financial Reporting and as the associate dean of graduate affairs.
Prior to joining the University of Utah in 1999, Ms. Botosan was an assistant professor of accounting at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Previously, she served as a lecturer at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario.
Ms. Botosan has served the academic community in numerous ways including as president of the American Accounting Association from 2014–2015.
A chartered professional accountant of Canada, Ms. Botosan received her Ph.D. in business administration from the University of Michigan and received a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada.
Anita Chan
Anita Chan is an audit partner based in Los Angeles, currently on rotation within KPMG’s National Office. Anita has over 14 years of experience in auditing large public and private manufacturing and consumer product companies, in both the Los Angeles and New York offices of KPMG. In her current role, Anita focuses on complex auditing and accounting issues and provides ESG reporting and attestation services to clients.
Anita was a Professional Accounting Fellow within the Office of the Chief Accountant (OCA) at the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from July 2020 through July 2022. During her time at the Commission, Anita was an active member of the rulemaking team that drafted the Enhancement and Standardization of Climate-Related Disclosures for Investors proposal.
Anita earned her undergraduate degree in Accounting and her Master of Accountancy at the University of Southern California. Anita is a licensed CPA in California and New York and is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.
Catherine Ide
Catherine Ide is a Managing Director in the PwC National Quality Office, focused on building trust in the quality of corporate reporting through shaping and advocating strategic and technological change in the reporting ecosystem. She brings over 25 years experience in advancing stakeholder confidence in corporate reporting, focusing on ESG reporting for the last 6.
Catherine brings deep expertise in ESG regulatory and policy matters and experience engaging with capital markets stakeholders to promote innovative solutions to market challenges, which is crucial in the evolving ESG reporting landscape. She has developed a global network across the corporate reporting landscape, routinely engaging with US and Global regulators, boards of directors, investors, preparers and auditors on ESG-related matters. Her dual focus on audit quality and public policy bring a unique skillset to companies interested in providing accurate, reliable and comparable ESG reporting.
Richard F. McMahon, Jr.
Richard McMahon is Senior Vice President, Energy Supply and Finance, and Chief ESG Officer for the Edison Electric Institute. In this capacity, he leads the two groups within EEI, the Energy Supply Group and the Finance, Tax and Accounting Group.
Mr. McMahon leads the industry activities on ESG sustainability, energy supply including natural gas, renewable energy, energy storage and distributed generation. He also directs the industry’s finance and Wall Street activities including SEC, CFTC and tax issues.
In this role he has testified before the United States Congress as well as federal and state regulatory agencies. He has written extensively on electric generation, power markets and industry finance topics. He is a guest lecturer at Georgetown University on these topics.
He received an MBA in Finance from The George Washington University and a BA from Duquesne University. He has completed the Executive Program in Leadership at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
Denise N. Naguib
Global Vice President, Sustainability and Supplier Diversity
Global Operations at Marriott International, Inc.
Originally from Cairo, Egypt, Denise graduated from the University of Oregon with a Bachelors of Science in Geography with an emphasis on human impacts on the environment. Denise became involved with Jean-Michel Cousteau’s Ocean Futures Society, implementing environmental education programs. A decade later, Cousteau’s program took her to the Cayman Islands then eventually to Washington, DC as a member of Marriott International’s global operations team. Denise and her team lead the strategy, program implementation, and reporting for both sustainability and supplier diversity for Marriott’s 8000+ hotels around the world. Naguib currently serves as Chair of the Board for WEConnect International, the global organization supporting women businesses around the world. She is also on the Boards of The Conference Board’s Sustainability Center, The Ocean Foundation, Arbor Day Foundation, and Sheridan School.
Kevin Rabinovitch
Kevin Rabinovitch is the Global VP Sustainability and Chief Climate Officer for Mars, Incorporated. In his role his team leads the corporate strategy for the Healthy Planet portion of Mars’ Sustainable in A Generation Plan. This covers not just their carbon, water and land targets but associated policies and external engagement with expert stakeholders. This includes directly manages a global portfolio of renewable energy projects. His team leads the assessment of environmental impact for Mars’ entire value chain and the translation of external environmental science into policy and strategy for the business.
Externally, among other roles, Kevin helps lead the CGF Forest Positive Coalition of Action, the High Value Ecosystem pillar of OP2B and frequently speaks externally on behalf of Mars’ sustainability program. He has been with Mars for 27 years, 14 years in sustainability and the first 13 in R&D functions of multiple Mars business segments in the U.S. and Europe specializing in technology development, scale up and intellectual property.
More information about Mars is available at www.mars.com
Leslie F. Seidman
Leslie F. Seidman is an independent corporate director who is committed to providing the investing public and other stakeholders with useful and trustworthy information. Ms. Seidman serves as a member of the board of directors and chair of the audit committees of General Electric Company (GE: NYSE) and Moody’s Corporation (MCO: NYSE). She is also an advisor to idaciti, Inc., a cloud-based analytical platform for structured financial and nonfinancial data, including environmental, social and governance (ESG). She recently completed two terms as a Public Governor for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).
Ms. Seidman is a former Chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), where she also served as a member of the Board from 2003-2013. As FASB Chairman, Ms. Seidman collaborated with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, and other regulators to improve financial reporting in the U.S. capital markets. She helped launch the FASB's Private Company Council, to address concerns about the cost and complexity of accounting for small businesses. Ms. Seidman guided the FASB's joint agenda with the International Accounting Standards Board to converge U.S. and international accounting standards. Ms. Seidman represented the U.S. in the International Forum of Accounting Standard Setters and was an Observer to the International Integrated Reporting Council. During her tenure, the FASB assumed responsibility for maintaining the U.S. GAAP XBRL (digital) taxonomy, which allows financial information to be read by humans and machines
Previously, Ms. Seidman was an auditor with Arthur Young & Co. (now EY), a Vice President of Accounting Policy with J.P. Morgan & Co., and a financial reporting consultant. Ms. Seidman is the original author of Financial Instruments: A Comprehensive Guide to Accounting and Reporting (currently in its 20th edition from Wolters Kluwer).
Ms. Seidman is a 2020 inductee into the Accounting Hall of Fame. She has been named to the National Association of Corporate Directors’ (NACD) Directorship 100™ twice (2020 and 2011), and was named as one of the most influential corporate directors by Women, Inc. in 2018. Previously, she was the recipient of the Distinguished Service Award from the Institute of Management Accountants, for launching and continuing to support the Women’s Leadership Series (2015). She is a member of the NACD, Women Corporate Directors and Financial Executives International, where she previously served on the board.
Ms. Seidman earned a B.A. in English from Colgate University and a M.S. in accounting from New York University Stern School of Business. She is a CPA and is certified in cybersecurity oversight by the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, and in ESG oversight by Competent Boards (GCB.D).
Brad Sparks
Brad Sparks is Executive Director of The Prince’s Accounting for Sustainability (A4S) Project in the United States. He leads the US Chapter of the A4S CFO Leadership Network, supporting Fortune 500 CFOs and their finance teams in embedding sustainability into strategy and business decision-making. He also leads A4S activities across the US, including working with asset managers, asset owners and the wider finance community. Brad previously served as an Executive Director with KPMG focused on ESG issues. Brad is a lecturer at UCLA Anderson and serves as an Executive-in-Residence at Cornell University’s Center for Global Sustainable Enterprise. He lives in Los Angeles.