143: Forensics, Education, and Making Movies – An Interview with Kelly Richmond Pope

Kelly Richmond Pope, CPA, Associate Professor at DePaul University, and movie producer (!) joined us for this episode of Life In Accounting, the Where Accountants Go podcast.

Straight through to PhD

Kelly knew at an early age that she was interested in accounting.  She took an accounting class in high school and just seemed to understand how it worked.  Fast forward a few years and she was obtaining her bachelors, masters, and then doctorate degree all in accounting.  After working a short internship with General Electric and then a couple years with KPMG in forensic accounting, she knew she wanted to go deeper and therefore became a professor.

Producing a movie

As we discuss in the audio interview, Kelly is the first individual we’ve had on the show that has produced her own movie, and it’s even related to forensics!  “All The Queen’s Horses” is a documentary that tells the story of the largest municipal fraud in history.  In total it was over $50 million dollars, and happened in a town of only about 16,000 people.  The movie took about 5 ½ years in total to research and produce.  Although the movie is widely distributed and easy to find, particularly for a documentary, you can find additional details on it by clicking here.

Red Flag Mania

As if that wasn’t enough, we also get into talking about Kelly’s latest venture near the end of the program.  She has created a video—based ethics game that falls into the ‘edutainment’ area.  Red Flag Mania is a game that can be utilized in college classes to expose students to ethical issues and help them to develop a deeper understanding of such dilemmas.  You can find out more about Red Flag Mania at https://www.redflagmania.com/.

For other shows on forensics that may peak your interest, please check out these episodes:  Michele Heyman and Rubik Yeriazarian

To listen in on this interview with Kelly Richmond Pope, please click the player below: