Management Conference Speakers
Chris Kuehl
Dr. Chris Kuehl is a Managing Director of Armada Corporate Intelligence. He provides forecasts and strategic guidance for a wide variety of corporate clients around the world. He is the chief economist for several national and international organizations – Fabricators and Manufacturers Association, National Association of Credit Management, Finance, Credit and International Business and the Business Information Industry Association.
Brian Maturi
Brian Maturi, MBA, FCA has over 35 years’ financial management experience in the UK and US, including five years with Deloitte Touche and over 20 years with BorgWarner, Inc. where he was a divisional VP-Finance and Corporate Director of Risk Management. His favorite topics include ERM, management accounting and currency, commodity and interest rate hedging. Brian holds a bachelor’s in Economics, an MBA and is an English Institute of Chartered Accountants fellow.
Kelsey Joy
Kelsey is a risk-taking, socially poised, and motivating team builder. She is also an accomplished violinist and singer having performed in front of audiences as large as 20,000. She has given hundreds of presentations on preventing burnout, leadership skills, and behavioral assessments. She has a strong passion for training and development. Also, as a former corporate recruiter, she conducted over 2,000 candidate interviews. And through her experience, she uncovered the fact that many people are disengaged in their jobs. Kelsey’s goal is to help leaders discover ways to improve employee retention and create more ways for teams to promote healthy, work-life balance.
John Higgins
Meet John, the visionary behind Higgins Advisory, LLC. Specializing in guiding CPAs and CFOs through digital transformation. Blending strategic advice, education, and coaching, John aims to not just navigate but master today’s digital landscape. He has founded and sold two CPA technology advisory startups in his career and now focuses exclusively on helping accounting professionals understand and apply emerging technologies.
Jay Heflin
Legislative Director
Jay brings more than two decades of legislative experience to his job as Assistant Director of Tax Legislative Affairs in Eide Bailly’s Washington D.C. office. In his current position, Jay provides political intelligence and tax legislative guidance to the firm on the progress of tax legislation on Capitol Hill. Prior to joining the firm, he was a director at the tax lobbying shop Federal Policy Group, LLC, where he tracked tax legislation in Congress and participated in lobbying efforts to amend tax legislation. Before joining the Federal Policy Group, he was a Congressional reporter for several news organizations where his beat was tax policy. Prior to becoming a reporter, Jay worked as an accountant where he prepared several tax returns. He graduated from Butler University with a B.S. in Accounting.
Dr. LeAnn Brown
Dr. LeAnn Brown, SPHR, SHRM-SCP, is a leadership development coach, consultant, and Associate Professor of Management at Fort Hays State University. She and her husband co-founded The Well-Center for Hope, a non-profit organization and coffee shop dedicated to improving mental health in Western Kansas. LeAnn has held various leadership, human resources, and organizational development roles in higher education and industry. She is a certified leadership and mindset coach, as well as a certified HR professional. She earned her Ph.D. in Global Leadership, a Master of Science in Adult Education and Training, and a Bachelor of Science in Organizational Leadership. LeAnn and her husband, Jerod, reside in WaKeeney, Kansas, and have two children, Caden (age 19) and Morgan (age 16).
George Campbell
George Campbell is a Hall of Fame Speaker, published author, and in his rebellious youth, an award-winning stand-up comic, appearing on stages with the likes of Jerry Seinfeld and others way more famous that himself. His work on countless corporate stages brought him to the attention of 60 Minutes, the LA Times, and (more embarrassingly), the game show, To Tell the Truth. And then, he stumbled across a question so compelling that it changed the direction of his career and his life: How is possible for smart, capable people to be completely aware of a few simple actions, that done consistently, would result in tremendous positive changes, and yet be unable to generate that ongoing behavior? George spent the next four years researching the neuroscience surrounding this behavior. That work culminated in his bold new project, The Consistency Chain.
Boz Bostrom
First and foremost, I am a teacher – namely, a professor of accounting and finance at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University. Teaching, advising, and mentoring college students is what I’ve devoted my life to for the past 18 years. I speak nationally on ethics, leadership, and a variety of other topics. I do this through continuing education courses, trainings, and keynote speeches.
I am also an author. My first white-collar crime novel, The New Start, was released in the fall of 2021. My other commercial publication, A Legacy Unrivaled: The Story of John Gagliardi, was about my first college football coach, who happens to be the most winning college football coach of all time. I enjoy promoting accounting through my ACCOUNTING shirts. I serve on the Board of Directors for the Minnesota Society of CPAs and am active as a CPA.
Richard Karwic
Richard A. Karwic, MBA, has served as a management consultant for the most recent 10 years, after serving for 15 years as Chief Financial Officer for several diverse businesses in a wide variety of industries. Mr. Karwic also served as Vice President of Mergers & Acquisitions for a mid-cap investment banking firm. Richard has worked in over 100 businesses, including divisions of Fortune 1,000 companies such as Stanley – Black & Decker, Parker Hannifin, Pfizer, and Linatex Corporation of America, where he also served on the Board of Directors. Mr. Karwic has been leading seminars since 1999 and has lectured at Western New England College. Richard’s business practice is based in Wethersfield, CT.
Mike Gregory
Mike works with accountants, attorneys, and businesses that want to grow their businesses faster, be more productive and overcome conflict with others by enhancing collaboration. Mike also works with meeting planners looking for an engaging, relevant, customized presentation and a speaker that is easy to work with and flexible. As background, Mike has run an organization with 1,200 employees in his career and completed over 2,500 mediations, negotiations, and facilitations. As a result of his collaborative approach clients have saved hundreds of millions of dollars. It has been his pleasure to give over 600 presentations in the U.S. and internationally based on the 12 books and over 35 articles he has written over the last 10 years.
Mike is an Accredited Senior Appraiser in Business Valuation with the American Society of Appraisers (ASA), a Certified Valuation Analyst with the National Association of Certified Valuers and Analysts (NACVA) and a Qualified Mediator with the Minnesota Supreme Court. Mike has served on the ASA Business Valuation Committee and the NACVA Valuation Credentialing Board. Mike currently serves as the chair of the NACVA Ethics and Oversight Board and on the Minnesota State Bar Association Alternative Dispute Resolution Board. Mike has served on over a dozen boards. Mike has a BS from Valparaiso University, a MS from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an MBA from DePaul University. On a personal note, he has the pleasure to see two little granddaughters at least twice a week.
Jim Lindell
Jim Lindell is President of Thorsten Consulting, a strategic and financial consulting firm that offers professional speaking, training, and executive coaching. Over the past two decades, Jim has delivered over 5,000 hours of C-suite executive coaching. His professional experience includes Chief Financial Officer, VP-Finance, Corporate Controller, and Corporate Assistant Controller. Industries include manufacturing, healthcare, not-for-profit, distribution, and food processing. Jim is a CPA and has received the Certified Speaking Professional designation, the highest earned designation from the National Speakers Association. Jim is the author of Controller as Business Manager, Controllers Annual Update (Best Seller,) Analytics and Big Data for Accountants, and many other courses on strategic and financial leadership. Jim has been published by the AICPA and Wiley. Jim is a twelve-time recipient of the AICPA’s Outstanding Discussion Leader Award. Also, Jim is a member of the Irish rock/folk music group Deep Pool and is unwilling to admit that he may have played his last rugby match.
Tommy Stephens
Thomas G. (Tommy) Stephens, Jr., CPA, CITP, CGMA, shareholder at K2 Enterprises, authors and presents continuing professional education courses to accounting and finance professionals. He has presented more than 3,100 educational sessions to over 78,000 participants throughout the U.S. and Canada. Previously in his career, Tommy worked as an auditor and technology consultant for an Atlanta-based public accounting firm, lead an internal audit staff and managed a cost accounting team for a Fortune 500 company, served as a CFO for an international engineering organization, and founded and managed his own public accounting firm.
Jim Olson
Professor Olson received his law degree from the University of Iowa in 1969. He is a Senior Lecturer at the Bush School, where he teaches courses on intelligence, national security, and international crisis management. He served for over 30 years in the Directorate of Operations of the Central Intelligence Agency, mostly overseas in clandestine operations. In addition to several foreign assignments, he was Chief of Counterintelligence at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
Professor Olson has been awarded the Intelligence Medal of Merit, the Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal, the Donovan Award, and several Distinguished Service Citations. He is the recipient of awards from the Bush School and the Association of Former Students for excellence in teaching. Professor Olson is the author of Fair Play: The Moral Dilemmas of Spying, published by Potomac Books in 2006.
