At the 2024 edition of the North American Finance Executive Summit series we sat down with Dr. Kelly Richmond Pope, a professor at DePaul University and a national instructor with Becker Professional Education, to talk about fraud. Senior executives working in Finance need to understand fraud, both because they are their organizations’ best line of defense against it, and also because so often the opportunities for fraud are connected to their roles and responsibilities. In this wide-ranging interview with a forensic accountant, author, and award-winning documentarian we explore motivations and examples of fraud that the attendees of NAFES24 need to understand, as well as how Becker helps Finance professionals educate themselves and even receive certification for expertise on the issues of fraud. Give this episode a listen!

Dr. Kelly Richmond Pope

Professor, Author, Documentarian,

and National Instructor for Becker

Kelly Richmond Pope is a forensic accountant, a professor at DePaul University, and a filmmaker who analyzes corporate crime. Her 2017 documentary on Rita Crundwell's embezzlement from the city of Dixon, Illinois, All the Queen’s Horses, won the HBO Spotlight Award for Best Documentary at its World Premiere in 2017 and the Golden Laurels Award at the 2018 Beloit International Film Festival. In 2023, her book Fool Me Once: Scams, Stories, and Secrets from the Trillion-Dollar Fraud Industry was published by Harvard Business Review Press.

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Becker, known for more than 60 years as the leader that people trust for the best in CPA Exam Prep, has over the years invested in an extensive library of CPE courses, designed both for credentialed and non-credentialed accounting and finance professionals. With more than 700 On Demand courses available for streaming 24/7, and 100+ scheduled Webcasts per month, Becker has you and your team covered. Also, as a strategic partner of the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA), we’ve enhanced every aspect of our CMA Exam Prep to be as close as you can get to the exam. Becker remains fully committed to CPA Exam Prep, with over 1 million candidates and counting! We are proud to share that the top 100 accounting firms and an expanding clientele of corporations, rely on us for their staff’s exam preparation.

www.becker.com

At the 2023 edition of the Biomanufacturing World Summit series we sat down with Diluks De Silva to talk about one of the most important topics everyone working on the future of medicine today is facing: If the next generation of Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products really is everything we think it is going to be, where are we going to get all the skilled technical operations experts and senior leaders we will need as our specialized and relatively niche part of the larger pharmaceutical manufacturing industry takes center stage? This is not a small challenge, and it is not one with an easy solution. A lot of people are needed with very specific skillsets that currently only relate to a small and little-understood part of an industry that has always had to compete for young people against other business sectors. What can be done, what is being done, and what still needs to be done to meet the demands CGT and other ATMP manufacturers are going to have now and in the future? Give this episode a listen to learn more. 

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Compliance Architects LLC delivers high-value compliance, quality, and regulatory consulting services to companies directly regulated by the U.S. FDA and other global regulatory authorities. With capabilities ranging from quality systems implementations to audits, inspection readiness, enforcement remediation, and outsourced compliance services, Compliance Architects LLC has the experience, expertise, and delivery capability to significantly improve your company’s business outcomes. Jack Garvey is CA’s founder and CEO, a chemical engineer and a practicing regulatory attorney, and has spent his entire career helping companies navigate the challenges at the intersections of science, engineering, business, and law.

www.compliancearchitects.com

At the most recent edition of the North American HR Executive Summit we sat down with Jessica Jones, the VP of Human Resources & Legal Compliance at Alliance Technical Group. Jessica hosted a themed lunch discussion on culture transfer strategies during mergers and acquisitions, and in this interview she shared some of the key takeaways from that conversation. M&A activity is one of those topics where HR professionals have a lot of important work to do in a tight time frame, but are often reluctant to talk about specifics. One of the great advantages of the themed lunch discussion format is that it’s an hour around the table with people who opted into this specific topic because it’s relevant to their own experiences and expertise. What an opportunity for like-minded people to share best practices and lessons learned on an important but specific and sometimes sensitive topic. Give this episode a listen! 

VP of Human Resources & Legal Compliance at Alliance Technical Group

Jessica Jones specializes in helping companies establish fair policies and procedures that help support employees while protecting the company. With Alliance, she has helped the company with dramatic growth and shifting its HR/business operating strategies. Jessica has redesigned all aspects of the company’s Human Resource structure (on-going project), while ensuring the protection of the Company’s values and building culture. She enjoys all facets of HR from benefits and compensation to employment and labor law. She has extensive experience with greenfield and turn-around projects, HR project management and analytics, acquisitions and culture transfer.

In preparation for the upcoming North American Information Security Summit taking place this June 16-18 in Denver, we spoke with Cynthia Kaiser, a Deputy Assistant Director with the FBI’s Cyber Division who leads the FBI’s cyber threat intelligence, cyber policy, and cyber partner engagement efforts. She offers an overview of how the FBI works with companies to address cybersecurity threats, updates relevant to Chief Information Security Officers, and also offers a preview of some of the content she plans to talk about in her presentation at NAISS24. Don’t miss this episode!

Deputy Assistant Director, Cyber Division at Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

Cynthia Kaiser is a Deputy Assistant Director with FBI Cyber Division, where she leads the FBI’s cyber threat intelligence, cyber policy, and cyber partner engagement efforts.

Cynthia has covered cyber, technology, and counterintelligence issues for almost 20 years for the FBI, served as a PDB Briefer in two presidential administrations, and has led FBI cyber threat analysis and served as an FBI election lead since 2017. In these roles, she has reshaped FBI information sharing and collaboration with the private sector and federal, state, and local government officials to be robust, proactive, and aimed at imposing risks and consequences on malicious cyber actors.

Cynthia is also passionate about increasing diversity in cyber and tech professions. She was named a Women Tech Leader Ambassador by GovCIO in 2022, a Top Government Tech Leader to Watch by WashingtonExec in 2023, and received Cyber Guild’s “Warrior Award” in 2023. She holds a Master’s degree in security policy focused on science and technology and an Executive Master’s degree in leadership.

At the 2023 edition of the North American Supply Chain Executive Summit series we sat down with Steven LaBruzzy, a Value Engineering VP and Supply Chain Expert at Celonis, to talk about how an evolving business landscape offers opportunities for supply chain professionals to rethink and reevaluate their systems and processes, tactics and toolkits. As businesses move from reactive responses to unprecedented disruptions into proactive planning for a less stable working environment with a more diverse range of challenges, what should they be thinking and doing differently? What should they be learning about, and who should they be partnering with? For all this and more, give this episode a listen. 

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Steven is a Value Engineering Vice President and supply chain expert at Celonis.  Steven’s 25 years’ experience as a management consultant and leading technical and value-oriented engineers affords him insights and lessons learned from helping hundreds of companies and operating units improve their business processes.  Today, Steven heads up a team of value engineers focused on finding, framing and fixing valuable business problems in their enterprise processes through process mining.  Steven and his team are proud to have helped nearly 100 diverse manufacturing, energy, automotive and distribution Celonis customers realize over $700M in cost reduction and working capital improvements.

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Celonis enables customers to optimize their business processes. Powered by its leading process mining technology, Celonis provides a unique set of capabilities for business executives and users to continuously find improvement opportunities within and across processes, and execute targeted actions to rapidly enhance process performance. This optimization yields immediate cash impact, radically improves customer experience, and reduces carbon emissions. Celonis has thousands of implementations with global customers and is headquartered in Munich, Germany and New York City, USA with more than 20 offices worldwide.

www.celonis.com

At North American Food Safety & Quality 2023 we sat down with Kim Daniels and Cheryl Alesso of RQA to talk about the power of proactivity in Food Supply Chains, some of the big trends food and beverage manufacturers are facing right now when they look at their operations, and what companies can do when they need specific expertise and extra hands in moments of crisis. This is a wide-ranging conversation that touches on everything from supplier relationships to crisis management to auditing and inspections to the importance of after-action remotes to learn lessons that can be applied moving forward. Give this one a listen!

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Kim Daniels is RQA’s Director, Crisis & Risk Management.  She has more than 20 years of experience in the food and beverage alcohol industry including Quality, Food Safety, Recall, Crisis Management, Supply Chain Management, GFSI Auditing, Governance and Consumer / Customer Care.  Since 2018, Kim has consulted in a variety of consumer products industries including preparing organizations for GFSI audits, conducting 3rd party due diligence audits, training on Recall, Crisis Management, Food Defense and Allergen Cross Contact Prevention, leading global Consumer Care gaps analysis and optimization and supporting organizational program maturity development, design, and strategic talent planning initiatives. Kim was the Director of Quality Excellence at Diageo responsible for Design Quality, Supplier Quality, Manufacturing Quality and Consumer / Customer Quality. Kim was responsible for developing and delivering Global Quality strategy and identifying best practices solutions to improve organizational effectiveness.  She implemented Diageo’s first Consumer Care program for North America and Latin America, developed a Global Consumer Care strategy, completed a 12-month program focused on developing Woman in Leadership for Supply Chain Excellence and received two President Spirit of Supply awards for Brilliant Execution in Global QualityExcellence and Crisis Management. Kim holds an Associates in Science, and an undergraduate and MBA in Organizational Leadership. She is certified in the following disciplines:  Certified CQI & IRCA FSSC Lead Auditor, Implementing SQF Systems, FDA FSMA PCQI for Human Food, Foreign Supplier Verification Program, Intentional Adulteration Vulnerability Assessment, HACCP, Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, Supply Chain Professional, and as an Agile Scrum Master. 

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Founded in 1989, RQA is the global leader in providing quality assurance and food safety consultancy, training and services to the food and beverage industry. RQA offers Retail Quality Audits, Counterfeit Investigations, Consumer Complaint and Product Retrieval, Crisis Planning and Management and Product Recall Services globally. RQA Food Forensics™ is the leading provider of foreign material identification services. FSMA compliance training includes PCQI for Human and Animal Foods, Foreign Supplier Verification Program, and Food Defense Programs. RQA’s consultancy team also assists with the development of these programs.

www.rqa-inc.com

At the 2023 edition of the Biomanufacturing World Summit series we sat down with Yash Sabharwal, the CEO and Co-Founder of QbDVision, to talk about a real opportunity available to companies working in the Life Sciences right now. So many new and exciting things are happening right now as the biopharmaceutical industry prepares to create the next generation of ATMPs like Cell and Gene Therapies —and at the same time most companies are behind the curve on adopting many digital solutions— what if everyone working in this space collaborated together to forge interconnected, interoperable, self-reinforcing systems? In a ‘growing the pie gets everyone a bigger slice’ mindset, service- and solution-providers contributing to a shared infrastructure that speaks the same language, moves data where needed seamlessly, documents and demonstrates compliance, and offers users a shared training base is going to produce a better outcome for everyone without the wasted effort of competition. What would that look like in real terms? Yash and other industry leaders like him are actively building a community approach to how their tools work together to help everyone. Give this episode a listen to learn more!

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Yash Sabharwal

Director, CEO, Co-Founder

Yash Sabharwal is an accomplished inventor, entrepreneur, and executive specializing in the funding and growth of early-stage technology companies focused on life science applications. He has started 3 companies and successfully exited his last two, bringing a wealth of strategic and tactical experience to the team.

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QbDVision is an innovative software company pioneering the development of modern digital solutions for the pharma/biotech industry to accelerate the manufacturing development cycle, increase the probability of technical success, and help get therapeutic breakthroughs to patients that much faster.

For many of the newest therapies being developed, the associated manufacturing processes are complex and the next generation of software solutions need to move the industry away from document-centric and spreadsheet-centric information management. QbDVision has assembled a group of industry veterans with 100+ years of collective experience in process development, tech transfer, pharmaceutical quality, and regulatory compliance to develop the next generation of structured data solutions that will dramatically increase R&D efficiency.

www.qbdvision.com

In preparation for the 2024 edition of the North American Sustainability & Responsibility Summit series we spoke with Craig Stokes of Carbonfuture about the carbon removal market, a topic area that is both little understood, and what most people do know is dated. Carbon removal markets are actually a quickly maturing space that is now taking a major role in many organizations’ Sustainability journeys thanks to effective MRV: Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification. In this conversation Craig gives us some concrete examples of what carbon removal looks like in real terms, what people need to know to make informed choices, and why now is the time to get involved. Give this episode a listen!

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In 2021, Craig became interested in the climate space after learning about the destruction of our oceans and planet due to global warming. As a sailor and scuba diver, it horrified him that his children may never get to swim on a living reef. With over 20 years of commercial experience in sales, business development, and product marketing, Craig is inspired to apply his background and experience to such an important role and go to work each day with a real purpose.

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Carbonfuture is the Trust Infrastructure for durable carbon removal. Today, the Trust Infrastructure consists of two products that seamlessly connect the entire carbon removal lifecycle: Carbonfuture MRV+, the most comprehensive MRV solution for durable CDR, and Carbonfuture Marketplace, the leading marketplace for durable CDR.

At Carbonfuture, we build trust throughout the carbon removal journey with our rigorous, data-driven approach, ensuring unmatched quality and reliability of carbon removal. We empower suppliers by providing the essential project support and finance needed to transform their carbon removal projects into fully certified carbon credits. For corporate buyers, we offer access to portfolios of carbon removal credits adhering to the highest quality standards and provide visibility at each step of the carbon removal lifecycle. We work with some of the world’s most ambitious climate leaders such as Microsoft, Swiss Re, and the World Economic Forum First Movers Coalition.

carbonfuture.earth

In preparation for the upcoming North American Information Security Summit taking place this June 16-18 in Denver, we spoke with Leo Howell, Georgia Tech’s Interim Vice President of Information Technology and Chief Information Officer, about some of the issues that interest, excite, and challenge him most as an IT professional and security expert. Leo will be hosting a themed lunch discussion at the summit revolving around the nexus of cybersecurity, robotic process automation, and Artificial Intelligence, and in this interview we discuss some of what he wants to share with the delegates who sign up to join him in the conversation, as well as some of the things he hopes the group collectively gets into that will be based on their individual experiences with this important and universal subject matter. It promises to be a terrific conversation, and Leo gives a great overview of the topic area as well as offers some insights about how much more there is to say. Give this episode a listen!

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Interim Vice President of Information Technology and Chief Information Officer at Georgia Tech

Leo Howell, a visionary IT leader with over two decades of experience, currently serves as the interim vice president for IT and chief information officer at Georgia Tech. In this role, he provides vision, leadership, and oversight in the development and implementation of information technology. He is also responsible for establishing the strategic direction of how the university handles its information technology resources. He formerly served as the Institute’s chief information security officer (CISO). He previously served as the CISO of the University of Oregon where he showcased his leadership in cybersecurity and information technology. His dedication to leveraging data for decision analytics sets him apart. Leo holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Electronics from the University of the West Indies, and an MBA from NC State University. As a CISSP and CISA, he demonstrates deep knowledge and commitment to cybersecurity. Leo’s distinguished career is marked by strong collaborative leadership and the recognition of data as a strategic asset for decision-making in the ever-evolving information technology and cybersecurity landscape.

At the most recent edition of the North American HR Executive Summit we sat down with Kristen Bailey, Paradox’s VP, Talent Acquisition, to talk about how technology is challenging and changing some of the tried, tested, and true approaches to Talent Acquisition. TA has always been an area of special expertise among HR professionals, and many organizations attribute their success at becoming employers or choice to how they attract and recruit their people in the first place. With that said, traditional methods can be time intensive, repetitive, and vulnerable to conscious and unconscious biases. All of that can be addressed and improved upon using the latest generation of HR tools and technologies. In this discussion we explore what HR leaders need to know about the evolving nature of recruiting. Give it a listen!

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Kristen Bailey
VP, Talent Acquisition
 Paradox

Kristen has dedicated her life’s work to building TA organizations that drive business success. Prior to joining Paradox, Kristen spent 12 years at Amazon, last serving as Director of Talent Acquisition. Now, she is responsible for building the teams, systems, and strategies that help Paradox scale. And yes, that means thinking about how we use Paradox tech at Paradox!

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Paradox Inc.

Paradox is building the world’s leading conversational recruiting software to drive automation with a human touch. Serving global clients with hiring needs across high-volume hourly and high-skilled professional roles, our conversational assistant Olivia does the work talent teams don’t have time for — streamlining tasks like screening, interview scheduling, and more through fast, easy, mobile-first interactions. We just acquired Traitify, adding simple, visual personality assessments to our product offering.

We support some of the world’s largest employers — including Unilever, McDonald’s, CVS Health, Nestle, Lowe’s, and L’Oreal — and have been honored with numerous awards, including Human Resource Executive’s Best HR Product of 2019 and consecutive honors in 2020 and 2021 as one of Forbes Top Startup Employers. Paradox was recently named the 225th fastest growing company in the country in the Inc 5000. To learn more, visit www.paradox.ai.