Deadlines
School of Accountancy Conference 2016
Presenters
Alex Brosseau is a Senior Manager in the Tax Policy Group of Deloitte Tax LLP’s Washington National Tax office. In that capacity, he monitors tax policy developments in Congress and the White House on behalf of the firm and its clients.
From 2012 to 2015, Alex served as Senior Analyst for Tax Policy on the U.S. Senate Budget Committee where he was the primary tax adviser to the committee’s two previous chairpersons, Senator Patty Murray of Washington and Senate Finance Committee member Kent Conrad of North Dakota.
Prior to his time on the Budget Committee, Alex worked in client service at Deloitte Tax LLP, focusing primarily on clients in the financial services and real estate industries.
Alex is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA). He received his Master of Science in taxation from American University (Washington, DC) and his Bachelor of Arts in accounting and economics from the University of Saint Thomas (Saint Paul, Minnesota)
Derek E. Brown currently serves as Deputy Chief of Staff to United States Senator Michael S. Lee, where he is part of the Senator’s Washington-based advisory team, and also oversees all of the Senator’s Utah staff and offices. Prior to accepting this position in early 2014, Derek was a member of the Utah House of Representatives, serving as Vice Chair of the House Rules Committee and also Vice Chair of the Professional Licensing Review Committee. He also served on the Higher Education Appropriations Committee, the Business and Labor Committee, and the Law Enforcement Committee.
A graduate of Brigham Young University, Derek later graduated from Pepperdine School of Law, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Pepperdine Law Review. Derek clerked for Judge Ruggero Aldisert of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and then practiced law in the Washington, D.C. office of Sidley Austin LLP as part of the Constitutional and Appellate Law Group. Derek later left this position when asked to serve as Chief Counsel to United States Senator Robert F. Bennett. Upon relocating to Utah, Derek served for several years as Legal Counsel to United States Senator Orrin Hatch.
Derek has been Of Counsel with the Utah-based law firm Pia Anderson Reynard Dorius Moss LLP, and was President of Two Little Hands Entertainment. He has also taught as an Adjunct Professor of Communications Law at Brigham Young University since 2007. Until 2014, he served as Board President of the Utah Connections Academy, and currently serves on the Board of Trustees for Intermountain Homecare and Hale Center Theater. In 2012, Derek spent two weeks teaching law classes in four separate law schools in Western Ukraine.
Derek is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Public Administration and Political Science at the University of Utah. He and his wife, Emilie de Azevedo, have four children.
Michael Drake is an Associate Professor of Accounting and PwC Fellow in the School of Accountancy at Brigham Young University. He earned bachelors and masters degrees in accounting at BYU and his doctorate in accounting at Texas A&M University. Prior to joining the Marriott School in 2011, he was on faculty at the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University. Before that, he worked as an auditor for Arthur Andersen and Ernst & Young.
Michael currently teaches the core financial reporting course in the MBA and eMBA programs, financial statement analysis in the Masters of Accountancy program, and an empirical research seminar to pre-doctoral students. He also engages in executive education with Goldman Sach's Global Investment Research group.
Michael's research is focused on understanding how financial information impacts capital markets and has been published in various top-tier academic journals including the Journal of Accounting Research, the Journal of Accounting and Economics, The Accounting Review, and Management Science. He has been invited to present his work at premier research institutions such as Wharton, Stanford, Duke, and Notre Dame.
Michael and his wife McKenzie have three sons and a daughter -- Gavin, Abbie, Quentin, and Max. Michael played intercollegiate soccer at BYU as an undergrad and still enjoys playing sports and spending time outdoors with his family
Steve Larsen is the Senior Compliance and Ethics Liaison at ON Semiconductor, a publicly-traded, ~$4B company named by the Ethisphere Institute as one of the 2016 World’s Most Ethical Companies®. He also chairs the ON Semiconductor corporate New Product Development Steering Committee. Steve graduated from BYU with a BS in Computer Science, holds a Project Management Professional (PMP) credential and is a Certified Compliance and Ethics Professional (CCEP). He is happily married to Sherry. They have four adult children and two grandchildren. Steve lives and works in Pocatello, Idaho, where he enjoys myriad avocations including fishing, hunting, and riding a tandem mountain bike with Sherry. Fun fact: Steve and Sherry are eager debt avoidance advocates and have been completely debt-free for over 12 years.
David has 29 years of experience in various aspects of international banking, foreign exchange and assisting clients in managing their global treasury. David is regularly a contributor to articles in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Business Week and Bloomberg as well as being a regular guest commentator on CNBC’s Worldwide Exchange. In addition to managing the Corporate FX desks in the US and Europe, David has extensive experience in structuring hedging strategies, multi-tiered transactional exposures, utilizing a multitude of derivative products to meet clients’ exposure as well as accounting requirements. He has specialized in assisting companies develop comprehensive foreign exchange policies to consolidate and more efficiently manage their international cash flows. Additionally, David has spent many years in strategic consultation with corporate clients to develop more efficient structures for their hedging strategies, and methods of payment. David is a passionate teacher and advocate for helping companies implement best practices in their global management of FX risk.
Sikahema attended Brigham Young University, where he played football and earned his degree in Broadcast Journalism. He is a member of BYU’s Hall of Fame and is a 2013 inductee into the Philadelphia Broadcast Pioneer’s Hall of Fame. He has earned two Emmys for his work in local television. Vai Sikahema joined NBC10 in 1994. He can currently be seen co-anchoring NBC10 News Today weekday mornings, and also serves as NBC10’s Sports Director.
Sikahema’s career in broadcasting began when he was with the NFL. He worked at KSAZ in Phoenix while he was with the Cardinals, and was with WFRV in Green Bay, Wisconsin during his stint with the Packers. He ultimately ended up in Philadelphia as an Eagle from 1992 to 1994. He was a running back and kick returner for the team, and is ranked first among the NFL's all-time career leaders in number of punt returns and second in punt return yardage. He is also a two-time All-Pro and was twice named the NFL Alumni’s Kick Returner of the Year.
Tyler Sloat has more than twenty years of experience in finance and operations roles for payment, software and hardware technology companies varying in size from startup to Fortune 500. Tyler has been the CFO of Zuora for the past five years. In that role, he has helped the company grow ARR ~20x, raised over $200M in capital and at times has managed all G&A, commercial sales, technical operations and sales operations.
Prior to Zuora, Sloat was the Chief Financial Officer for Obopay, where he was integral in raising well over $100M in investment and strategic capital, forming global commercial relationships with the likes of Nokia, MasterCard, and Societe Generale, and deploying Obopay's mobile payment service in four countries spanning three continents. Before Obopay, Sloat was the Controller of the Emerging Products Group at Network Appliance, Inc., a position he was promoted to after the successful acquisition of Decru by NTAP. Previously, Sloat ran finance for the OnDemand division of Siebel Systems and was the Controller for POET Software, playing a key role in their IPO in the late 90’s. Tyler started his career in the Computer Assurance Services group at Coopers & Lybrand, later transferring into audit.
Sloat is a registered (inactive) C.P.A. in the State of California, has an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a B.A. from Boston College. Sloat also currently sits on the Board of Directors for Oanda, Inc. and Compass Professional Health Services, Inc.
Jacob is a Director in Connor Group’s Technical Accounting and IPO Services practice. Jacob leads clients through IPO preparation and filings, acquisition accounting, audit readiness, and other complex transactions. Jacob has extensive experience with revenue recognition, debt and equity financings, share-based compensation, acquisitions, consolidations and Excel modeling under both US GAAP and IFRS.
Prior to joining Connor Group, Jacob was a Manager in PwC’s Financial Markets group, and a Postgraduate Technical Assistant at the Financial Accounting Standards Board. Jacob is a licensed CPA in New York.
Liz Wiseman is a researcher, executive advisor, and speaker who teaches leaders around the world. She is the author of three best-selling books: Rookie Smarts: Why Learning Beats Knowing in the New Game of Work, Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter and The Multiplier Effect: Tapping the Genius Inside Our Schools. Liz is a former executive from Oracle Corporation. She writes regularly for Harvard Business Review and Fortune and her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Entrepreneur, Inc. and Time Magazines. Liz has been listed on the biennial Thinkers50 ranking for 2013 and 2015, and named as one of the top 10 leadership thinkers in the world.