Deadlines
School of Accountancy Conference 2017
Presenters
Prior to founding Accelerum Advisors, Mr. Benz served as the Chief Financial Officer of EnergySolutions, a $2 billion NYSE company that provides of a full range of integrated services and solutions, including nuclear operations, decommissioning, decontamination, transportation, and research and engineering services across the entire nuclear fuel cycle.
As Chief Financial Officer of MetLife Healthcare, a $3.5 billion revenue health insurer, he was responsible for preparing that company to go public, but after the company made a change in its strategic direction, he was responsible for the due diligence and valuation work that led to the merger of that company with Travelers Managed Care to create one of the nation’s largest healthcare companies.
During his tenure as Chief Financial Officer of FHP International, he took the company public with its IPO, led its financial growth from $270 million to over $2.2 billion in revenue, raised $175 million in additional capital through follow-on common stock offerings, and developed a comprehensive financial modeling and forecasting system to help manage the company’s operations.
As Chief Financial Officer of Western Digital, he re-listed the company’s stock on the American Stock Exchange by taking it public again after its bankruptcy reorganization, and raised over $100 million through additional common stock offerings.
Mr. Benz holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences from UCLA and a Masters in Business Administration from California State University Long Beach. He began his career as a portfolio manager and investment analyst managing debt and equity capital at large financial institutions including the Hughes Aircraft Pension Fund before moving into corporate finance as an assistant treasurer at National Semiconductor.
Brandon has 20 years of professional experience and became an EY principal in 2012. He advises clients on federal tax methods, credits, and inventory issues, and is currently assisting clients nationwide with implementation of the new revenue recognition and leasing accounting standards, and potential changes related to tax reform. Brandon served in the US Treasury Department's Office of Tax Policy from September 2007 to January 2012, where he was Associate Tax Legislative Counsel. At Treasury, Brandon was the lead tax policy advisor on a variety of legislative and regulatory matters in the areas of accounting methods (including income recognition, expense recognition, capitalization, depreciation and expensing, long-term contracts, and inventory), accounting periods, the R&D credit, the section 199 manufacturing deduction, the new markets tax credit, the Alternative Minimum Tax, and loss provisions, among others.
In his time at Treasury, he helped publish nearly 75 pieces of formal guidance including the tangible property capitalization proposed and temporary regulations, a number of capitalization safe harbors for specific industries, and several pieces of guidance on tax revenue recognition including guidance on advance payments and proposed regulations on the percentage completion method of revenue recognition. Before joining Treasury, Brandon coordinated Ernst & Young LLP’s national retail and consumer products tax network. Brandon is a frequent speaker at the American Bar Association, Tax Executive Institute, and other professional conferences. Brandon holds an LL.M. in Taxation from the Georgetown University Law Center, a J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law, an M.B.A. from the University of Utah, and a B.S. from Brigham Young University. He is an attorney licensed in the state of Texas. Brandon is also an adjunct professor of income tax accounting at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he has taught since 2007.
Paige Goepfert has over thirteen years of experience in public accounting. Paige specializes in individual, fiduciary, and estate income taxation. As a member of the Private Client Services practice, she serves many ultra-high net worth families, develops and implements multi-generational wealth and estate planning transfers, and is responsible for the overall management of engagements by working directly with family office employees and multiple generations of family members. She also consults with clients regarding a variety of estate planning matters including gifting, private foundations and other charitable vehicles. Paige also works with executors and estate administrators in managing a decedent’s estate.
Paige has previously lectured on estate planning, taxation of trusts, wealth strategies and accounting for the Midwest Accounting and Finance Showcase and a variety of other professional venues. She has also published an article in The Tax Adviser: Important Lessons Regarding Valuation Issues.
Chris Killion is the U.S. Ethics and Compliance Manager at Spirit Aerosystems. He has spent his entire career in the compliance field. Most of his 10-year career has been with Lockheed Martin, where he was an analyst in the government compliance and ethics organizations. He also spent time as a tax analyst for the NovaRad Corporation. Chris graduated with a B.S. in Accounting from Brigham Young University and a J.D. from The George Washington School of Law. He currently lives in Wichita, KS with his wife and three daughters.
Troy Lewis is the Immediate Past Chair of the Tax Executive Committee of the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) in Washington, DC. In this role, he has testified six times before the United States Senate Finance Committee and the House Committee on Small Business.
Mr. Lewis has been active with the AICPA and the Utah Association of CPAs, for over two decades serving in key leadership positions including the President of the UACPA.
Mr. Lewis currently teaches accounting and tax at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. He is in practice as a Manager/Member at Lewis & Associates, CPAs, LLC in Draper, Utah. He also worked in public accounting at Arthur Andersen and for a community bank in St. George, Utah. He obtained his Masters of Accountancy and Bachelors of Science in Accountancy from Brigham Young University. He is also a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and a Chartered Global Management Accountant (CGMA).
Traci Memmott (’90 MAcc Tax) has an extensive background in human resources, payroll operations, tax, accounting and finance
She joined PayPal in January 2017 to lead global payroll operations for the personal payments company, providing payroll services to 18,000 employees in 33 countries. Previously, Traci was Vice President of HR and Payroll Operations at American Express Global Business Travel, where she stood up a state-of-the-art global HR/Payroll business process model anchored on the Workday HCM platform.
Prior to AmEx Global Business Travel, Traci enjoyed 18 years of service at American Express Company, holding positions in both HR and Finance, including Vice President, HR Reporting & Analytics (AmEx Company), Director of Human Resources (AmEx Company),and Chief Financial Officer (AmEx Centurion Bank), among other roles.
Traci lives with her husband and three sons in Nephi, Utah where she enjoys watching her boys in a variety of sports, biking and ATV riding. She is known around town as the ticket office manager and financial clerk for the annual PRCA rodeo hosted in Nephi each July.
Elder Nemrow was born and raised in Southern California where he joined the Church as a convert at the age of 16.
Following high school Elder Nemrow served a full-time mission to Korea and attended BYU completing both his Bachelors and Masters of Accountancy degrees in 1979. Most importantly it was there that he met and married Cindy Clark of Provo Utah in the Provo Temple.
Following graduation he and Sister Nemrow moved to Orange County, California where he practiced as a CPA and was involved in the start-up and ultimate sale of a real estate investment company.
In 1991, Elder Nemrow and his family moved back to Provo where he taught as a professor of accounting at BYU for 19 years before retiring in 2011.
Throughout his career, Elder Nemrow received numerous teaching and service awards. He was twice voted by the BYU graduating class as “The Overall Best Teacher at BYU”. He was also a founding Board member of Habitat for Humanity of Utah County and received the National Points of Light Service Award from President George W. Bush.
Before his sustaining as an Area Seventy in the 2015 April General Conference, he and Sister Nemrow served two full-time missions as Mission President and wife presiding over the Korea Daejeon Mission and as a senior couple serving in the Utah Provo Mission.
Elder and Sister Nemrow are the parents of five children and nine grandchildren.
Tracy Prows spent most of his youth in New Zealand where he gained a love for the sea, for sailing and for rugby. After a mission in New Zealand he attended BYU, graduating in Accounting in 1982. After licensing as a CPA in Utah and practicing in a regional firm, he moved into the microcomputer-based accounting-systems market and spent his career with small companies as a controller and a systems consultant. He currently maintains his tax and accounting practice as an Enrolled Agent. Tracy also has an MBA in International Finance, and is a Merchant Marine Officer with a 100 ton USCG Captain’s License. He is married to Christa (Chivers) who holds a Masters Degree in Outdoor Recreation from BYU and is the heart of the family adventures.
In 1999 he and Christa sold their house and homestead in Bear River City, Utah, and purchased a 60 foot catamaran sailboat which they named “S/V Liahona.” They and their 7 children then embarked for the Caribbean, where they spent the next several years. Their children were “boat schooled” and became an accomplished crew of “swabbies” – skilled at doing everything from boatyard scavenging to steering at the helm. Tracy advised the Port Authority of Jamaica on the building of a new megayacht marina in Port Antonio, a marina which he also ran during its initial 18 months of operation. During this time, “The Liahona” was docked on Navy Island, a 56 acre uninhabited tropical island once owned and developed by Errol Flynn. The Prows’ live in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and are staging for their next voyage across the Pacific Ocean to Micronesia this November.
Dale Rowe is an associate professor at Brigham Young University. He has over 20 years of experience in systems architecture with a variety of industries in multi-national European/US companies. He ran a small consultancy firm in England from 2005 to 2010, providing secure enterprise architecture on both military and commercial satellite communications systems. He believes firmly that keeping personal technical skills current are key to being an effective instructor and maintains these skills by running a large research and training network.
Dr. Rowe received his Bachelors in Computer Systems Engineering and Ph.D. in Biometric Security from the University of Kent, England. Since joining BYU in 2010, he has designed a variety of courses on Information Assurance, Cyber Security, Penetration Testing, Cyber Forensics and Systems Administration. In 2011 he founded the Cybersecurity Research Laboratory at BYU and regularly coaches collegiate cyber defense competition (CCDC) teams.
BYU CCDC teams have competed 12 times taking 1st place seven times. They have taken second and third place at the 2016 and 2017 National CCDCs. As well as compete, Dr. Rowe’s team of students regularly create training simulations and Capture-the-Flag competitions across the region for high-school youths. They also run an annual cybersecurity summer camp for girls.