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Curated Collection Of The Best Interviews From Our Sandy Springs Studio





Jack Phillips with ROI Institute

ABRJack Phillips, Ph.D/ROI Institute

Dr. Jack J. Phillips is a world-renowned expert on accountability, measurement, and evaluation. Phillips provides consulting services for Fortune 500 companies and major global organizations. The author or editor of more than fifty books, he conducts workshops and presents at conferences throughout the world.

Phillips has received several awards for his books and work. On three occasions, Meeting News named him one of the 25 Most Powerful People in the Meetings and Events Industry, based on his work on ROI. The Society for Human Resource Management presented him an award for one of his books and honored a Phillips ROI study with its highest award for creativity. The American Society for Training and Development gave him its highest award, Distinguished Contribution to Workplace Learning and Development for his work on ROI. His work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, and Fortune magazine. He has been interviewed by several television programs, including CNN.

His expertise is based on more than 27 years of corporate experience in the aerospace, textile, metals, construction materials, and banking industries. Dr. Phillips has served as training and development manager at two Fortune 500 firms, as senior human resource officer at two firms, as president of a regional bank, and as management professor at a major state university.

Dr. Phillips regularly consults with clients in manufacturing, service, and government organizations in 60 countries in North and South America, Europe, Africa, Australia, and Asia.

For the past 20 years, Phillips has been in the consulting business. He created one firm, Performance Resources Organization, and sold it for several million dollars. He created another company, ROI Institute, which now operates in 60 countries. The ROI Institute provides a variety of services in the human capital analytics area.

Dr. Phillips has undergraduate degrees in electrical engineering, physics, and mathematics; a master’s degree in Decision Sciences from Georgia State University; and a Ph.D. in Human Resource Management from the University of Alabama. He has served on the boards of several businesses—including two NASDAQ companies—and several nonprofits and associations, including the American Society for Training and Development, the National Management Association, and the International Society for Performance Improvement. He is chairman of the ROI Institute, Inc., and can be reached at (205) 678-8101, or by e-mail at jack@roiinstitute.net

Special Edition: Georgia Society of CPAs

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Jim Hart/Lightfoot Group LLC Linkedin

James “Jim” Hart provides business valuation services for use in business purchases and sales, estate and gift tax purposes, and litigation, such as stockholder disputes and divorce. Jim and Lightfoot Group also perform financial investigations, fraud examinations and internal investigations. Additionally, they prepare commercial damages and lost profits analyses, and provide bankruptcy / insolvency services. Jim regularly serves as a court-appointed receiver, auditor, and special master.

Jim is a past Chair of the Georgia Society of CPAs Forensic and Valuation Services Section and a past Chair of the Georgia Society of CPAs Litigation Advisory Services Committee. He is also a past President, Treasurer and Emeritus Board Member of the Atlanta Chapter of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. He has received the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners 20-year pin. His American Institute of CPA affiliations include: CFF Champion, 2013 CFF Champion of the Year, CPA Ambassador, former ABV Mentor, and member of the CFF Credential Exam Development Task Force.

Jim has taught business valuation, fraud and bankruptcy courses for national and local conferences sponsored by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), the Association of Insolvency and Restructuring Advisors (AIRA), the Georgia Society of CPAs and the Georgia Chapter of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE).

Joel Pascaner/Stephen M. Berman & Associates Linkedin

Joel L. Pascaner is a tax partner specializing in high net worth individuals, privately held entities, partnerships, S corporations, estates and trusts, not-for-profit organizations, and state and local tax matters. He also has extensive experience representing taxpayers before the IRS as well as numerous other taxing jurisdictions.

Joel is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants, and The Leaderhship Team of the Tax Section of the Georgia Society of Certified Public Accountants. He has been an at-large member of the GSCPA Council. In addition, he has served as the Chairman of the Tax Section of the GSCPA as well as both the Federal Tax Legislation and the Georgia Tax Legislation Subcommittees of the GSCPA Tax Section, where he was involved in the drafting and introduction of proposed legislation. He is also a Past Chairman of the Depreciation Committee and the Tax Accounting Problems Committee of the NYSSCPA. Mr. Pascaner was a member of the GSCPA 2006 Tax Forum Planning Committee and served as Moderator at the Forum’s Luncheons with Georgia Tax Commissioner Bart Graham. He was awarded “2006 Distinguished Section Leader” by the GSCPA and served on their Task Force on Employment. Joel is a member of the Atlanta Tax Forum and the Atlanta Estate Planning Council. He is a graduate of the Philanthropic Advisor Leadership Institute and was awarded the “Best in Client Satisfaction Wealth Manager” by Atlanta Magazine for years 2009, 2010, and 2011.

Joel has authored numerous articles in professional and industry publications including the CPA Journal and the Taxation for Accountants.

He has served on the Board of Directors of the Interfaith Disabilities Network and is currently on the Board of Trustees of Georgia Shakespeare.

Prior to joining Stephen M. Berman & Associates, L.L.C., Joel practiced as a tax professional with Laventhol & Horwath and Peat Marwick.

Joel is a CPA and received his Bachelor of Science in Accounting at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania as well as his Masters of Science in Taxation at the Long Island University.

John Masters, CPA, PC Linkedin

John Masters earned his Bachelor of Science degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1969, followed by his Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business in 1975, and finally his Doctor of Jurisprudence degree in 1979. During this period he was employed eight years in the Computer, Aerospace, and Electronics industries. During 1979 he was admitted to the Georgia Bar and received his certificate to practice as a Certified Public Accountant in Georgia and Alabama.

John has been active in professional, civic, and political activities throughout his career. He presently serves on the Georgia Society of Certified Pubic Accountants Professional Ethics Committee, and recently completed his term as Chairman of the Georgia Society of Certified Public Accountants Tax Section. He has served as a SBA Score/Ace Volunteer Consultant, taught in the Junior Achievement Program and been a Future Business Leaders of America sponsor. He administered the “Call the Expert” on taxation program for 21 years at WGST News Radio where he also appeared as Tax Series Guest/Host. He has participated in various other radio and television tax related programs, testified at administrative hearings including the Georgia Special Council on Taxation, and held positions in other organizations.

John has taught courses at Oglethorpe University, Clayton Junior College (now Clayton State College) and the Becker CPA Review Course. For the last several years he has been an active member of the Dekalb Peachtree Squadron, Georgia Wing, of the Civil Air Patrol where he currently holds the rank of Major, and has been an active member of the Northside Atlanta Jaycees and the Decatur Dekalb Kiwanis Club. His is currently a member of the American Bar Association, American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, Georgia Bar Association, Georgia Society of Certified Public Accountants.

John practices in Atlanta, Georgia principally in the areas of taxation and accounting, taxpayer representation before administrative bodies and tax tribunals, and related fields.

Ashish Thakur with TiE Atlanta

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Ashish Thakur/TiE Atlanta LinkedinTwitter

Ashish Narayan Thakur is a recovering banker, had a failed startup and successful non-profit entrepreneur. Ashish is currently Executive Director at TiE Atlanta, a global non-profit that fosters entrepreneurship through mentoring, networking & education. Ashish has raised over $750k and rose to a chapter rank of #4 from #40 for TiE Atlanta in the past 4 years. Previously, he spent over 12 years in sales and management roles with the globe’s largest financial institutions: Deutshce Bank, Merrill Lynch, Invesco & Bank of America.

Ashish is a board observer on 5 privately held companies and a non-profit, equity investor in the public markets & volunteers his time mentoring at risk youth at Usher’s New Look Foundation, The Nicholas House, Raksha and GA Pacific’s Young Entrepreneurs Atlanta program. He is a past Oglethorpe University Young Alumni Award winner & VP of Career Services on the OU Alumni Board for the past 4 years where he has assisted over 300 OU students in career related mentoring. His hobbies include running, yoga, public speaking, juggling and mentoring youth around the world.

Mark Dvorak with GolinHarris, Austin Dickson with Literacy Action and Dick Jones with Jones Simply Sales

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Mark Dvorak/GolinHarris LinkedinTwitter

Mark Dvorak, APR, Fellow PRSA, is an executive director in the Atlanta office of GolinHarris. His 23-year career has spanned agency, government and nonprofit – including stints as chief marketing officer at the United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta and a public information officer for the City of New Orleans. During his career Mark’s teams launched United Way 2-1-1 – the nation’s three-digit phone number for community services and involvement – and helped drive a resumption of consumption of peanuts following a 2009 salmonella outbreak.

Mark served as president of the Georgia Chapter in 2002, leading the creation of special interest groups to provide more industry-specific programming and networking for members. He is currently an assembly delegate for the chapter. Nationally, Mark has been a member of both the Universal Accreditation Board and the Task Force for the Business Case for PR. He earned a master’s degree in journalism administration from the University of Memphis and a bachelor’s degree in communications and history from Loyola University New Orleans.

Austin Dickson/Literacy Action

Austin Dickson is the executive director of Literacy Action, the oldest, largest, and leading adult basic education nonprofit in the Southeast. There he leads management, fundraising, and advocacy efforts for the 45-year old organization. Literacy Action is a grassroots driver of economic development and provides various levels of educational services to advance adults towards employment, better wages, technical college, and the University System.

A Texas native and TCU graduate, Austin earned master’s degrees in religion from The University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and Emory University. He also holds a Master of Public Policy from Georgia Tech. Austin has taught philosophy at Clayton State University since 2008.

Austin is deeply engaged in community work. He currently serves in a leadership role at the East Lake Family YMCA and at several startup nonprofits, including the Atlanta Music Project, L’Arche Atlanta, and Community Farmers Markets – operating the Grant Park, East Atlanta Village, and Decatur farmers markets. He calls bingo every month at the senior center in his East Atlanta neighborhood.

After his tenure as the president of the East Atlanta Community Association (2010-2011), the community received DeKalb County’s Ernest Prather Neighborhood Award, which recognizes best practices in community development. Austin is a member of Leadership Atlanta’s LEAD Class of 2012 and the Leadership DeKalb Class of 2013. He was named to Georgia Trend magazine’s 2013 “40 Under 40: Best and Brightest” and named a 2014 “Young Gamechanger” by GeorgiaForward.

Dick Jones/Jones Simply Sales, LLC FacebookLinkedinTwitter

Dick Jones is the Founder & President of Jones Simply Sales, LLC. As a 4th generation sales professional, he has over 30 years of experience advising, coaching, consulting and working with small business owners.

He started his business career in 1980 with IBM where he spent the majority of his time working with small businesses in sales, sales management and management consulting positions. He joined Deloitte in 1996 where he was responsible for national sales operations and managing a 300-person sales force, and also held several senior business development and relationship management roles.

In 2012 Dick founded Jones Simply Sales to help small business owners to grow revenue by leveraging the power of technology tools and management systems.

Dick grew up in Massachusetts and graduated from Brown University before stepping into the business world. He has resided in the metro Atlanta area for the past 23 years, is an avid marathon runner, and when he is not working or training he enjoys spending time with his family and friends, and volunteers his time working with local nonprofit organizations.

 

Kennesaw State University The Center for Accountable Leaders

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Kennesaw State University’s The Center for Accountable Leaders (TCAL) is committed to recording the life experiences of men and women who have lived lives of integrity while contributing to the success of their organizations and communities.

Their goals are to videograph and digitally archive the life-memoirs of 500 proven leaders from all walks of life and to make their memoirs available through the internet for all to enjoy and to learn. Facebook

Victoria Campbell

Leader: Robert “Bob” Ratliff

Bio: Victoria is a senior at Kennesaw State University and will graduate with a degree in Organizational Communication, with a certificate in leadership in May. She works for the Undergraduate Admissions Office at Kennesaw State University. Victoria is from Alpharetta, GA, love the outdoors and Georgia football!

Victoria Gable

Leader: James “Jim” Copeland

Bio: Victoria’s major is Integrative Studies with focuses in GWST and Leadership. She is set to graduate Spring 2014. She currently works for a home health company, Guardian. Victoria’s hope is to stay with this company but to get promotions. Her future goal is she wants to utilize her major and the experience that she has learned from Guardian and open a non-profit for children with auto immune diseases (one day). Lastly, Victoria is also considering getting her masters but is still unsure what her area of focus would be.

Betsy Marshall

Leader: Rick Richardson

Bio: Betsy Marshall is a senior at Kennesaw State University majoring in Integrative Studies in the areas of Management and Communication. She is also earning her certificate in the Joel A. Katz Music and Entertainment Business Program. She is currently interning at Sixthman with the SPARK – PR, Sales, and Marketing team. She is currently employed at Jim Ellis Volkswagen of Kennesaw and Marietta working Special Ops. She also works with Live Nation at various shows around Atlanta.

Richie Ziets

Leader: Tom Bell

Caleb Buxton

Leader: Arthur Blank

Daisy Graham

Christie Leverette

Leader: Bob Artemenko

 

Roz Lemieux with Attentive.ly, and Mike McCarthy and Mark Fonseca with Pragmetrix

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Roz Lemieux/Attentive.ly Facebook Linkedin Twitter

Roz Lemieux is CEO at Attentive.ly and co-founding Partner at its sister company, Fission. Roz served as the Executive Director of the New Organizing Institute (NOI) – the premiere training institute for tech-enabled grassroots organizers. NOI grads serve in the White House, are New Media Directors of several federal agencies, lead the digital teams at a number of major national nonprofits, and played a major role in Obama’s 2008 victory. Roz was a core member of the MoveOn.org team through the 2004 and 2006 election cycles – serving as a coordinator between their organizing and technical teams. Prior to joining MoveOn, she operated an independent consulting business, conducting online campaigns for progressive candidates and causes. She got her start in online advocacy in 1999, serving as the Feminist Majority Foundation’s web team director.

Roz has spoken at dozens of conferences about the power of technology and social media for empowering individuals and groups to make positive change in the world. She has won several awards for her work, including the 2009 Women’s Information Network “Young Women of Achievement” award and recognition from Planned Parenthood for the Feminist Majority’s trailblazing online campaign in support of women and girls in Afghanistan (2003). Roz brings a background in PHP/MySQL, .NET/MSSQL, Ruby on Rails, and HTML/CSS/JS, as well as 10 years of technology training experience to bear in her current role as CEO.

Mike McCarthy and Mark Fonseca/Pragmetrix Linkedin Linkedin

Special Edition: TiE Atlanta

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Sandra Hofmann/Emerge Scholarships Twitter

Sandra Hofmann is an innovative and inspiring executive who understands and drives the value of alignment across the enterprise. Sandy’s broad management experience, including 14 years with IBM, has enabled her to effectively guide teams to realize goals and deliver desired results. Particularly adept at addressing issues associated with acquired and merged businesses, Sandy has frequently been recruited to address the most difficult and challenging environments.

Sandy has repeatedly demonstrated her exceptional strength of character and leadership, as well as her ability to serve as a change agent. She led the transition activities for one of the first application spin-offs from IBM. As Vice President of Technical Services, she faced the unique challenge of breaking the gender barrier at Simplex, while concurrently transforming the way service was delivered. She joined MAPICS, their first woman to be a member of the executive team, as the Vice President and General Manager for a newly acquired business unit and was then a lead participant in the company’s re-engineering as a functional organization. She then stepped into the unique dual role of CIO and Chief People Officer.

Sandy’s management philosophy, leadership characteristics and business results have been acknowledged by numerous industry recognitions: Georgia CIO Leadership Association (GCLA) selected Sandy as the Georgia CIO of the Year in the 2003 regional category and in October 2010 Sandy received the organization’s first Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2003 she was selected as one of five finalists for Woman of the Year in Technology by Georgia Technology Association and again in 2004 she was one of seven finalists. Articles highlighting Sandy’s results have been published in CIO and CFO Magazine, CIO Insight, CIO Quarterly, Workforce Management, Human Resource Executive, and PINK Magazine.

Ashish Thakur/TiE Atlanta LinkedinTwitter

Ashish Narayan Thakur is a recovering banker, had a failed startup and successful non-profit entrepreneur. Ashish is currently Executive Director at TiE Atlanta, a global non-profit that fosters entrepreneurship through mentoring, networking & education. Ashish has raised over $750k and rose to a chapter rank of #4 from #40 for TiE Atlanta in the past 4 years. Previously, he spent over 12 years in sales and management roles with the globe’s largest financial institutions: Deutshce Bank, Merrill Lynch, Invesco & Bank of America.

Ashish is a board observer on 5 privately held companies and a non-profit, equity investor in the public markets & volunteers his time mentoring at risk youth at Usher’s New Look Foundation, The Nicholas House, Raksha and GA Pacific’s Young Entrepreneurs Atlanta program. He is a past Oglethorpe University Young Alumni Award winner & VP of Career Services on the OU Alumni Board for the past 4 years where he has assisted over 300 OU students in career related mentoring. His hobbies include running, yoga, public speaking, juggling and mentoring youth around the world.