Board Members
Center for Professional Accounting Practices
Danielle Gallagher is a managing director at Deloitte with more than 16 years of public accounting experience providing audit and advisory services to clients ranging from technology start-ups to complex, multinational SEC registrants in the financial services industry. Danielle has significant experience serving fast-growing companies from initial audit through the IPO process including advising clients on Sarbanes-Oxley readiness and implementation. She currently co-leads Deloitte’s fintech audit practice in the Greater-Tri-State region. Danielle’s experience also includes a two-year rotation in Deloitte’s national office responding to regulatory, legislative, and professional issues.
Danielle has a BS in accounting from Fordham. She is a CPA and a member of the American Institute of CPAs and New York State Society of CPAs. Danielle was also a Deloitte representative on the AICPA Revenue Recognition Task Force for the securities industry from 2014 through 2018.
Timothy Hedley is an executive in residence at the Gabelli School of Business, responsible for the ESG Literacy programs and initiatives, and an adjunct accounting faculty member. He teaches courses in sustainability reporting, business risks in a digital global economy, forensic accounting, managerial accounting, accounting fundamentals, and business ethics. Tim is active in the Connecticut Society of CPAs, where he is the Chair-elect of the Society and founding chairman of its ESG Committee. He is a retired partner from a Big Four accounting firm where he served as the global lead partner for fraud risk management services. He currently provides his consultancy clients with a wide range of services to prevent, detect, and respond to governance and integrity issues. He has worked extensively across industries, including automotive, retail, food and beverage, consumer products, manufacturing, financial services, information services, utilities, defense, waste, energy, and telecommunications.
A CPA, Certified in Financial Forensics, and a Certified Fraud Examiner, Tim has a BBA from Siena College and both his MS in Accounting and PhD in Public Management (Accounting and Control) from SUNY Albany.
Ned Kleinschmidt is the founder and executive director at RPA Advisors, LLC, a financial consulting and advisory firm specializing in corporate turnaround services and bankruptcy matters. His consulting experience includes strategic planning, business plan analysis, mergers and acquisitions, interim management and fiduciary roles, cost reduction strategies and forensic and fraud investigative services.
Ned has spent the last two decades advising on corporate restructurings, including dozens of commodity-related and hard asset industries. He has served as a member or chairman of the board of directors of over a dozen companies, encompassing industries such as telecom, energy, financial services, automotive and manufacturing. Prior to founding RPA Advisors in 2011, Ned had been an executive director of other financial advisory firms, held chief financial officer and controllership positions and was an audit manager with EY.
A CPA, Ned has a BS in accounting from Fordham and an MBA in Finance from Pace University. He has been qualified as a Certified Insolvency and Restructuring Advisor. He is also a member of the Association of Insolvency and Restructuring Advisors, the Turnaround Management Association, the American Institute of CPAs and the New York Society of CPAs. He is recognized as an expert on restructuring and energy issues and has presented, written and been called upon to provide expert testimony in these areas.
Brad Koehler is a global client service partner in the Strategy and Transactions service line at Ernst & Young, LLP (EY US). For nearly 30 years, he has provided assurance and transaction advisory services to financial sponsor clients—largely private equity funds—and multinational corporate clients in numerous sectors, including industrial product manufacturing, consumer products and health care, food and beverage, and technology. Koehler currently serves some of the EY organization’s largest private equity clients, providing transaction advisory services and coordinating customized solutions to support their portfolio value creation efforts. He assists his clients on both the buy-side and sell-side of transactions. His specific transactional experience focuses on quality of earnings and net assets, identification and assessment of financial risk areas and exposures, adequacy of working capital levels, purchase and credit agreement reviews, and carve-out transaction implications. In addition to his more than 24 years of transaction experience, he spent nearly six years in the EY audit practice. Throughout his EY tenure, Koehler has worked in New Jersey, Brussels, and New York, where he is currently based. He earned a B.S. in Accounting from the University of Richmond. He is a CPA licensed in New York and New Jersey, and is a member of the American Institute of CPAs.
Michael Kraten specializes in the analysis of business opportunities and risks with complex factors and highly uncertain outcomes. He is the Director of Accounting Program Initiatives at the University of Houston, where he designs and teaches Sustainability / ESG content, and also designs and supports programs that address the "pipeline" challenge of attracting students to the Accounting profession.
After a career in assurance and consulting at Deloitte, he served as a Consulting Partner at BDO, and then co-founded a series of boutique management consulting practices. He maintains functional specialties in valuation, enterprise risk management, business modeling, decision analysis, forensic analysis, educational gaming, and strategic planning.
His innovative approach to ESG / Sustainability, as codified in the award-winning business case and educational game "Save The Blue Frog," involves the integration of strategic, operating, and financial practices while balancing economic outcomes with social and environmental considerations. He now has a Texan version called "Save The Bats."
Michael previously served as professor at Houston Baptist University, Providence College, Sacred Heart University, Suffolk University, and the Universities of Connecticut and Massachusetts, along with Maastricht University in the Netherlands. He has authored or co-authored 30 peer-reviewed articles in the Journal of Banking and Finance, the International Journal of Accounting, Research in Accounting Regulation, the CPA Journal, the Journal of Financial Planning, Accounting and the Public Interest, and elsewhere. He has also authored more than 500 blog posts and numerous book chapters, newsletters, and podcasts, along with a book on Business Planning and Entrepreneurship. Michael also serves on the TXCPA Leadership Council and the Editorial Advisory Board of the CPA Journal.
Michael earned a Ph.D. in Behavioral Accounting from the University of Connecticut, a MPPM in Public and Private Management from Yale University, and a BBA in Public Accounting from Baruch College, CUNY. He is a licensed Certified Public Accountant.
Christine Lowney is a partner in the financial services assurance practice of EY, focusing primarily on the wealth and asset management sector. Christine has more than 18 years of accounting and advisory experience serving a number of clients within the financial services industry, including hedge funds, private equity funds, investment banks and broker-dealers. Christine serves as the global client service partner on several large global investment advisors.
Christine has a BS in accounting from Fordham and an MBA from Columbia Business School. A CPA, she also is a member of the American Institute of CPAs and New York State Society of CPAs.
Francis J. O’Brien has worked for more than 50 years in public and corporate accounting and management. He is a financial management consultant concentrating on acquisition due diligence and financial-accounting compliance.
Frank started his career in the audit practice of Arthur Young (Ernst & Young after the 1989 merger) and served a large number of clients in diverse industries in New York, Stamford, Paris, and also Los Angeles, as west region director of accounting and auditing. After retiring from EY in 1994, he joined ICU Medical, a publicly held designer and manufacturer of medical devices, as CFO, secretary and treasurer, responsible for all financial management, acquisitions, investor relations, and legal matters and most administration. After retiring from ICU in 2008, he joined Z-Medica Corporation, a privately held designer and manufacturer of hemostatic medical dressings, as CFO, secretary and treasurer, responsible for all financial management, acquisitions, and administration until 2011.
A CPA, Frank is a graduate of Fordham and is a member of the American Institute of CPAs and the California Society of CPAs. He has served on the AICPA accounting standards executive committee and a number of other AICPA committees and task forces. He is currently chair of the accounting subcommittee of the accounting principles and assurance standards committee of the CSCPA.
Michael O’Neill is the alternative funds national tax leader tax partner at PwC. He has more than 25 years of experience servicing alternative asset managers and advising clients in the capital markets arena. He specializes in securities taxation and tax planning related to both domestic and offshore hedge and private equity funds and the related investment-management entities. Michael’s clients include many of the largest and most complex investment managers in the marketplace. Michael is a well-known thought leader in the industry and regularly speaks at conferences in relation to current tax issues facing the alternative investment community. Within PwC, Michael serves as a national technical resource for PwC clients with respect to capital-markets taxation issues and is the leader of PwC’s alternative funds national tax practice.
A CPA, Michael has a BS in accounting from Fordham and is a member of the American Institute of CPAs and the New York State Society of CPAs.
Marco Pace is a Principal at KPMG LLP and serves as the Global Lead Tax Principal on several multinational companies, with a focus on companies in the Technology and Media sectors. With over 20 years of experience, Marco has assisted clients with a broad range of tax matters and has significant experience with domestic and international tax. Marco focuses on clients undertaking outsource/co-source compliance arrangements, tax department transformations, tax planning, controversy, and tax technology projects. Marco is a member of the American Bar Association and the New York State Bar Association and received both his JD and BS from Fordham.
Barbara Porco is the executive director of the Center. Click here for information on Barbara Porco.
Jeff Rojek is a partner at KPMG with more than 25 years of experience. He is the global lead partner on a number of KPMG’s most significant private equity client relationships. Jeff’s experience at KPMG includes lead partner roles on KPMG’s global banking clients, four years of living in Asia leading KPMG’s large financial-services relationships, and two years in KPMG’s national office. In 2008, Jeff joined GLG Partners, a NYSE-listed alternative asset manager with $26 billion in assets under management, as its CFO. After successfully selling GLG to the Man Group in 2011, Jeff rejoined KPMG in 2013.
A CPA, Jeff has a BS from Fordham and an MBA from Columbia University.
Sandra Sicilia is currently the Chief Audit Executive at Jefferies Group LLC, a global full service investment banking and securities firm. Sandra has more than 25 years of financial services industry accounting and finance experience working in a variety of senior roles for major Wall Street banks. Sandra is also a CPA and started her career in public accounting at Ernst & Young LLP. Sandra also serves as an adjunct professor of accounting at the Gabelli School of Business.
A CPA, Sandra has a BS from Fordham University and MBA in Finance and International Business from New York University.
Ed Stroz is the founder and co-president of Stroz Friedberg, an Aon company and global leader in investigations, intelligence, and risk management. Ed oversees the firm’s growth and client development while ensuring the maintenance of its distinctive culture. He also provides hands-on strategic consulting in investigations, intelligence, and due diligence, plus cyber and physical security. Before starting the firm, Ed was a special agent with the FBI, where he formed its computer crime squad in New York. Trained as a CPA, he has extensive experience in investigations of white-collar crime including bank fraud and securities fraud and has testified in court numerous times as an expert witness.
Ed is a trustee of Fordham University, where he earned his BS and serves as an advisor to the Center on Law and Information Policy at Fordham Law School. Ed sits on the board of directors of the Crime Commission of New York City, an independent nonprofit organization focused on criminal justice and public safety policies and practices and is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers. He also served on the New York State Courts System e-discovery working group, established to provide ongoing support and expertise to the New York State Judiciary in the area of e-discovery.
Past Board Members
- Gina Marie Greer
- Maureen McGetrick
- Haim Mozes (chair of Accounting and Tax Area until June 2022)