Amanda Aguillard
Amanda Aguillard decided to become a CPA when she was 16, and never looked back. She started Aguillard Accounting LLC in 2012, committed to running a cloud-based practice from anywhere in the world.
She has been named one of the Top 50 Women in Accounting and a Top 50 Cloud Accountant. She was the Xero Evangelist of the Year in 2016 and used her experience as an instructor of the Xero Certification course to co-found Elefant, a continuing education company for accountants and bookkeepers. She regularly speaks at state CPA societies and industry conferences like Accountex, Clio Cloud Conference and Xerocon. She is the Senior Xero Editor for Accountex and a National Xero Ambassador.
While she holds a Masters Degree in Taxation from the University of Denver, she would much help other advisors leverage technology to build their dream practices. She regularly speaks at state CPA societies and industry technology conferences like Accountex, Clio Cloud Conference and Xerocon. She spends any spare time cooking for her two kids and reading historical fiction. She is slightly obsessed with Penzey’s Spices and Chris Thile.
Aaron Berson
Aaron holds roughly ten “YouTube Diplomas”. Currently, he is studying engineering and mechanics rebuilding his car’s engine.
He enjoys breaking new technologies, reading product roadmaps and FASB guidelines to help him sleep at night.
You will often find him chasing a squirrel or two and attending networking events enjoying nerdy conversation and a glass of Balvenie, neat.
Ray Bigley
In his current position at Avalara, Ray is responsible for Avalara’s strategic relationships with the Accounting community. He has over 25 years of management and organizational experience in technology and software organizations. His wide ranging experience and expertise includes positions in senior management, strategy, sales, and compliance with content and mid-market technology companies after spending fifteen years at Wolters Kluwer-CCH & CT Corporation.
Jim Buffington, CPA
Advisory Services Leader & Customer Liaison, Intuit ProConnect Group
Jim is a CPA and leads the ProConnect Customer Council, supports Intuit’s E-file Security initiatives, and acts as the Customer Liaison for Intuit ProConnect, where he learns best practices from leading firms to share with the profession. Before joining Intuit, he was in public practice for a dozen years as a partner in an East Texas firm preparing oil & gas tax returns.
Jim used Lacerte & QuickBooks software in practice and loves improving processes and technology to drive productivity and better client experiences. Jim’s passion is helping Tax & Accounting Professionals lead with planning and advisory services to help power prosperity for businesses & families. You can find him teaching Tax Pro courses or in TaxProTalk, a video series for ProConnect customers. Jim is an Aggie, he has been with Intuit ProConnect for 17 years.
Additional information:
• Public Practice 1988 – 2000
• Intuit, 17 years
• MBA, University of Texas Dallas
• BBA Accounting, Texas A&M University
• Advisory Services Leader for Intuit ProConnect
• Co-Lead Intuit ProConnect Tax Council
• Co-Lead E-file Security for Tax Professionals
• Co-Host TaxProTalk https://youtu.be/G8h6nYJ9Yw0
Jean Caragher
Jean is an award-winning, recognized industry expert with 30 years accounting marketing experience. Known as a knowledgeable, experienced and tenacious marketing consultant to CPA firms, she uses a practical, relationship-based approach to help CPAs achieve marketing success.
Sheehan Chandrasekera
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Shehan is one of the handful of CPAs in the country who is recognized as a real-world operator and a conceptual subject matter expert on cryptocurrency taxation. He is among 2019 CPA Practice Advisor 40 under 40 accounting professionals to watch and was awarded with the Outstanding Young CPA of the year award by Houston CPA Society for his contribution to the profession.
Shehan is the Head of Tax Strategy at CoinTracker. He is a published author, CPE instructor and a frequent technical contributor to various social media platforms. His article on “Virtual Currency and Tax Ramifications” was featured in “The Tax Adviser” magazine sponsored by the AICPA. He was one of the first CPAs to have a published article on Cryptocurrency taxation. Further, he is a partner at JAGArgueta CPAs and enjoys working as the Associate Director of Houston Blockchain Alliance.
David Cieslak - CPA. CITP, CGMA, GSEC
David Cieslak is a Principal with Arxis Technology, Inc., a computer consulting firm with offices in Southern California, Chicago and Phoenix. He specializes in cloud computing, mid-market ERP accounting software, information security, the Windows operating environment, systems development and project management.
Mr. Cieslak is the past Chair of the AICPA IT Executive Committee and past president of the California CPA Education Foundation. He is an active participant with the CalCPA State Technology Committee. He is past chairman of the CalCPA State Technology Committee, former member of the AICPA Information Technology Practices Sub-Committee and previously served on the Information Technology Alliance board of directors. He is a member of various other AICPA and CalCPA planning committees for courses, conferences and computer shows.
Sean Duncan, CPA
Sean founded SMD on the steadfast belief that small business owners want and need advice and strategy to minimize taxes, increase work/life balance, improve cash flow, and plan for the future. He aggressively pushes SMD forward in new and innovative ways to further add value to the lives of small business owners. That sounds like what adults do, right? However, if you get to know him, he’s also the same guy that will eat 20 cookies, wear a Storm Trooper suit of armor at a charity event, don the Mickey Mouse ears at Disney World, throw temper tantrums when the Chargers lose a game, and occasionally go on 15+ hour video game binges. Anyone that has met Sean knows that he is passionate about a lot of things. While the silly sometimes outweighs the serious, those close to him understand his enthusiasm for helping business owners succeed while still focusing on his first job as husband and dad.
Chris Geno
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Chris joined Saville in 2018 and has over 9 years of experience providing assurance and advisory services. His experience includes serving domestic and international clients of a broad range of sizes and a variety of industries, including manufacturing, retail, distribution and professional services. In addition, Chris has assisted with assurance engagements for employee benefit plans with various frameworks and scopes.
Chris and his wife live in Dallas with their two dogs. In his spare time, Chris enjoys traveling, enjoying the arts, meeting new people, and spending time outdoors.
Tate Henshaw
Tate has always been obsessed with problem-solving. It led him to major in mathematics at the University of Georgia, which led him to Polay+Clark. Whether it's helping design a proprietary royalty database, integrating a cloud-based merchandise fulfillment system for a Grammy-Winner, or running a Net Present Value calculation on a contract proposal for a NBA All-Star, he's yet to come across a problem he can't solve. He brings this love of efficiency to the cloud accounting landscape via custom-curated ecosystem's for his clients. This results in additional free time for his passion in music and quality time with his wife and two young daughters.
Ed Kless
Ed Kless joined Sage in July of 2003 and is currently the senior director of partner development and strategy. He develops and delivers curriculum for Sage business partners on the art and practice of small business consulting including the Sage Consulting Academy, Business Strategy and Customer Experience Workshops. He also facilitated the Sage Leadership Academy, a year-long program designed to assist Sage Software partners develop a continuous process of improvement in their organizations and serves as liaison to the Strategic Leadership Association.
Rachel LeMeiux
Rachel has been practicing in state and local taxes (SALT) since 1985. She is a Certified Public Accountant and a Certified Member of the Institute (CMI) for professionals in state and local taxation. She consults with clients in a broad range of industries on state and local tax issues involving sales and use taxes, gross receipts taxes, income taxes, and other miscellaneous taxes. Rachel serves her clients by digging deep into their business from top to bottom giving them the best answers possible that fit their unique business operations.
Prior to joining Peterson Sullivan, Rachel was the partner in charge of the Seattle office of a worldwide tax consulting firm. Early in her career, she worked for over 10 years at the Washington State Department of Revenue as a legislation and policy specialist. This knowledge and experience enable her to consistently offer solutions to clients with questions on a myriad of issues. Such solutions can involve advising on tax minimization strategies when buying or selling assets, determining when a business is subject to taxation in another state, and minimizing taxes on inter-company transactions.
Gail-Perry Mason
Detroiter Gail Perry-Mason is a respected authority in the financial industry. Add to that bestselling author and founder of Money Matters for Youth and you only get the tip of the iceberg. Her years of experience coupled with her down-to-earth, but also down-to-business style has made her a well-sought speaker and presenter.
Gail is a prolific published writer and has written for local and national media. She has been featured in many publications including: Ebony, Black Enterprise, On Wall Street, CNN Money, Research Magazine, Quick and Simple-Good Housekeeping Magazine, Essence, Jet, Free Press and Detroit News, Signature, Her Magazine, Magazine Post and Associated Press. She has written and published two books: Money Matters for Families and Girl, Make Your Money Grow, written with co-author Glinda Bridgforth.
Gail recognizes the necessity of teaching youth the importance of money management. She founded and directed the original Money Camp for Youth, which has instructed over 6,000 young people in the Detroit-Metro area and mentored over 25 young women who are now professionals in the financial industry. Currently she is conducting a program in the Detroit Public Schools that teaches financial literacy and outlines the steps to entrepreneurship.
Gail has received numerous awards for her community contributions including the Michigan Local Hero Award, the Community Service Award from the Michigan Women’s Foundation and Phenomenal Business Woman of the Year award.
Marty McCutchen, CPA
As a CPA and a Certified Tax Coach, Marty provides proactive tax and financial planning for businesses and their owners. Being an entrepreneur like most of his clients, he understands the issues and difficulties of running a business. Combining his experience as a business owner and almost 20 years of public accounting experience, Marty is able to help business owners achieve their business and personal goals.
Jackie Meyer, CPA
Jackie Meyer, CPA is President and Founder of Meyer Tax Consulting LLC in Southlake, Texas, specializing in tax strategy for Execs that provides a high return on investment. As a Certified Tax Coach, she offers concierge tax and accounting services to assist clients with anything from income shifting strategies to managing a family business in QBO. Her virtual team operates from Texas to Hawaii and the firm stays on the cutting edge of technology working closely with industry leaders like Intuit while also being an international Firm of the Future runner up for 2017. Jackie is a proud participant of the prestigious Intuit ProConnect Tax Council for the 2016-2019 years, while also being a top rated speaker on tax and technology. Jackie's passionate about growing charitable legacies, while spending free time with her two small children, her husband and their two dogs.
Roger Nieman
Roger Nieman is a creative, results-oriented professional with 42 years of progressive experience in the field of human resources. He retired recently as Vice President of Human Resources for Indianapolis-based private holding company, E&A Companies. His range of practice knowledge includes executive level management, strategic program management, employee development, organizational development and employee relations. His scope of industries includes fortune 100 organizations, small private companies, manufacturers, retail, and higher education.
Roger has been recognized in his field for being a trusted advisor, a facilitator for decision makers, intuitive and perceptive, focused on the value of people, and a partner in advancing business goals. He has managed human culture domestically and globally. He holds a Bachelor Degree in Economics from the University of Missouri.
Gail Perry
Gail Perry is a CPA and the editor-in-chief of CPA Practice Advisor magazine. She has been advising the profession for almost 20 years as an accounting journalist in addition to being a well-known public speaker, trainer, and the author of more than 30 books (including Mint.com For Dummies; Surviving Financial Downsizing: A Practical Guide to Living Well on Less Money; and, most recently, The Idiot’s Guide to Introductory Accounting). Gail facilitates two think tanks for the accounting profession – the Accounting Thought Leader Symposium and the Young Leaders Accounting Think Tank. She is also the creator of Ensuring Success, a unique annual conference that brings leaders of the profession together to offer continuing professional education to thousands of accountants from the comfort of their own offices or homes. Gail is a member of the AICPA’s Personal Financial Planning Executive Committee and the creator of a workshop for CPA.com designed to help tax accountants advance their practices to include personal financial planning services. Gail also maintains a small tax practice where she serves real estate agents and performing artists, and she has taught an online financial planning course for more than 10 years. Gail is a graduate of Indiana University where she earned her bachelor's degree in journalism. After returning to school to study accounting at Illinois State University, Gail earned her CPA and worked for Deloitte's Chicago office as a state and local tax specialist. She is a former tax columnist for the Indianapolis Star newspaper, has been a community college adjunct accounting professor, and was on staff for 10 years at the Indiana CPA Society as a computer applications instructor. Gail was the publisher and editor-in-chief of AccountingWEB before joining the CPA Practice Advisor team.
Christina Ricke
As K·Coe Isom’s people strategy leader, Christina Ricke creates a legacy of talent. She champions change in the areas of recruiting, retention, employee relations, talent development, and human resource consulting.
Christina discovers people’s distinct abilities–what a person is best at and loves to do–leveraging one-of-a-kind systems the firm has built and employing tools and resources such as KOLBE and DISC. Then, she helps each person harness his or her passion to boost their career and the firm’s results.
In K·Coe Isom’s brick and mortar and virtual offices from coast to coast, Christina fosters a firm culture of entrepreneurship, continual improvement, and creative destruction that breeds out-of-the-box ideas, innovation, and forward progress.
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In K·Coe Isom’s brick and mortar and virtual offices from coast to coast, Christina fosters a firm culture of entrepreneurship, continual improvement, and creative destruction that breeds out-of-the-box ideas, innovation, and forward progress.
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Originally from an ag community in rural southwestern Kansas, she grew up family farming and custom harvesting. To this day, she lives with farmer’s values and loves her continuing involvement with the food and ag industry.
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Christina discovers people’s distinct abilities–what a person is best at and loves to do–leveraging one-of-a-kind systems the firm has built and employing tools and resources such as KOLBE and DISC. Then, she helps each person harness his or her passion to boost their career and the firm’s results.
In K·Coe Isom’s brick and mortar and virtual offices from coast to coast, Christina fosters a firm culture of entrepreneurship, continual improvement, and creative destruction that breeds out-of-the-box ideas, innovation, and forward progress.
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But devoted to people issues throughout her career, she became increasingly driven to transition to a role where she now creates career opportunities for the firm’s team members. As a member of the firm’s leadership team, she focuses on understanding the exclusive personality traits that enable each unique team member to flourish. And she continually builds and supports the kind of environment that makes it enjoyable for people to stay and grow as satisfied professionals who continually expand their talents.
Cathy Rowe
CPA CA
Director, Product Management
Accounting and Auditing Solutions
Thought Leadership – Cathy has a deep understanding of trends in the profession. She helps firms build a strategic plan to comply with auditing standards, find efficiencies & deliver value to their clients.
Customer Focuses – Interviews and observations from hundreds of auditors and their workflows arm her with knowledge and insight to develop innovative solutions that all sizes define best practices.
Experience – Cathy has been recognized as Top 40 Under 40 thought leaders in the accounting industry (CPA Practice Advisor –2013). Public Accounting – PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young and Small Local Firm, experience in both tax & accounting.
Cathy is passionate about enhancing the audit to create opportunities for both CPA firm & the Client.
Erron Stark
Erron Stark is the Division Vice President of Channels for ADP, LLC, responsible for driving revenue and managing sales operations for ADP’s accountant, bank and client channels. With more than 13 years in the HCM industry, Erron has held many leadership roles at ADP with responsibilities including developing programs and managing teams that help accounting professionals and their clients attract top talent, comply with regulations and achieve their goals.
A native of Staten Island, New York, Erron is an avid golfer when not spending time with his wife Marissa and his three young children, or traveling the globe for ADP. Erron and his wife’s are active fund raisers for their Foundation that benefits Pediatric Heart Disease research.
Brian Swanson
Brian Swanson is the Chief SEO Strategist at FlashPoint Marketing, a digital marketing agency that provides search engine marketing and search engines optimization services. He joined the company in 2008 to manage the company’s SEO and digital marketing programs. He has over 18 years of experience in creating, optimizing and implementing SEO programs for service-based companies.
Through his passion for all thing's SEO, SEM, and Google he has a deep understanding of how to analyze, modify and drive success to digital programs. He also values opportunities to empower clients by educating them on the best practices, latest trends and helping them develop an “SEO” mind.
Brian obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from Northeastern Illinois University and has a Master of Business Administration in Finance from Benedictine University. He is regular speaker to national accounting and marketing association on SEO and SEM trends, strategies and tactics to drive digital lead generation. Brian is a member of the American Marketing Association, Association of Accounting Marketing and involved in several local organizations.
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Irene Valverde
Irene Valverde is currently a Director at Gumbiner Savett Inc. and leads the Marketing, HR, and Recruiting efforts of the firm. In her marketing role, Irene is responsible for the internal and external marketing activities of the firm, including branding, business development, cross-selling services, proposals, advertising, social media strategy, communications and public relations.
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Irene works diligently with firm management to execute the marketing strategies of the firm. Her “team” approach to marketing emphasizes the cooperation of everyone at all levels within the organization. She is also a mentor and trainer to firm staff related to soft skills development.
As director of HR and Recruiting, Irene combines her marketing experience both at mid-sized firms and at the Big 4, with human resources responsibilities to create people programs for retention, recruiting and a stronger bottom line. Most recently, she implemented a new communication based performance management process including goal setting, career development, mentoring and personal and marketing planning. Irene recently spoke to a group of US CPA firm leaders through BKR International on the merits of leveraging marketing with recruiting efforts via social media.
Garrett Wagner, CPA, CITP
As an emerging leader in the CPA landscape and an expert at understanding the new millennial generation, Garrett focuses on monitoring the evolving technologies and best practices in the industry to achieve the highest degree of success without being afraid to break free from traditional methods.
Garrett works with CPA firms across the country helping them to implement lasting change by understanding the unique needs of each organization.
Garrett specializes in corporate taxation and is able to successfully implement ideas and change by using his communication style to get support from key members of the Firm. With his ability to think outside the box, develop procedures, and train staff it has allowed Garrett to have tremendous success in bringing about lasting change.
Garrett believes that the public accounting landscape is under going a tremendous change and that by focusing on developing the next generation of leaders and understanding the shift in the profession to providing value added consulting services, that Firms can obtain long lasting success.
Started the LinkedIn group Innovating Trailblazers to provide support for the next generation of leaders by allowing them to share ideas, frustrations, and support each others growth.
Specialties: CPA, CITP specializing in helping business owners achieve personal and professional success.
Kelly K. Welter
Kelly K. Welter, CPA has worked in public practice since graduating from Oregon State University and Agder Business College in Kristiansand, Norway in 1994 where she received dual bachelors' degrees in Accounting and International Business.
She worked at two local firms in Oregon before moving to Las Vegas in 2002. She then worked as the tax manager at a local firm until going out on her own in 2005 and opened KKW & Associates, Inc. in Las Vegas, Nevada. In 2011, Kelly merged her firm with another local firm, Serl & Keefer CPAs, to form Serl Keefer Welter CPAs, LLP. The firm specializes in individual and business taxation as well as business consulting.
Kelly is a member of the American Woman’s Society of Certified Public Accountants, the Nevada Society of Certified Public Accountants, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the Accounting & Financial Women’s Alliance, the Las Vegas Metro Chamber of Commerce, and the Las Vegas Leaders Chapter of BNI. She also recently joined the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants Women’s Networking Group.
She currently serves on the Women’s Initiatives Executive Committee for the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, is the National Treasurer for Moms In Business Enterprises, Inc., and is the National AICPA Liaison and National VP Communications for the American Woman’s Society of Certified Public Accountants.
In the past, Kelly has served in multiple positions on the National Board for the American Woman’s Society of Certified Public Accountants including National President in 2013-2014. She has also served as the Moms In Business Network Southern Nevada Leader, as Treasurer for Boys Hope Girl Hope – Nevada, as Treasurer for GNJ Family Life Center, and as Treasurer of the Rotary Club Las Vegas Summerlin.
Kelly currently lives in Las Vegas with her husband and four children. She spends most of her free time at baseball games, at dance competitions, playing with her dog, and educating on health and wellness using essential oils.