Cynthia Cooper, best-selling author, consultant and internationally recognized voice for ethical leadership, will speak at Eastern Kentucky University on Wednesday, March 28, and on Thursday, March 29.
Cooper will deliver the inaugural address in the Claude K. Smith Endowed Lecture Series on Accounting at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, March 28, in O’Donnell Hall of the Whitlock Building. The following day, she will speak to students at 9 a.m. in Rogow Auditorium in EKU’s Business and Technology Center. Both events are free and open to the public.
The first female inducted into the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants Business Hall of Fame, Cooper was named one of Time Magazine’s Persons of the Year for her role in uncovering one of the largest corporate frauds in history at WorldCom. She was also featured as one of the 25 most influential working mothers in Working Mother magazine.
Cooper received the Maria and Sidney E. Rolfe Award for her contributions to educating the public about economics, business and finance. She was an inaugural inductee of the Institute of Internal Auditors American Hall of Distinguished Audit Practitioners, and became the first woman to receive the Accounting Exemplar Award from the American Accounting Association.
Her book, “Extraordinary Circumstances: The Journey of a Corporate Whistleblower,” describes her personal experiences as a business executive. She donates profits from the book to further ethics education for high school and university students. She will sign books after her lecture; copies will be available.
Cooper has been featured in national publications such as The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, CFO Magazine and Business Week; served on panels with notables such as Anderson Cooper, Donna Brazile and Grover Norquist; and appeared on many television programs, including Fox Business America’s “Nightly Scoreboard,” “Tavis Smiley” on PBS, NBC’s “The Today Show,” ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” C-SPAN’s “BookTV,” and “The Big Idea with Donnie Deutsch” and “Squawk Box,” both on CNBC.
She serves on the Board of Directors for the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy Center for the Public Trust. In addition, she sits on advisory boards for Louisiana State University and Mississippi State University. She previously served as a member of the Standing Advisory Group of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board and chaired the Board of Regents for the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners.
After working for Deloitte & Touche and Price Waterhouse, Cooper served as vice president for MCI, where she and her team helped the company successfully emerge from bankruptcy.
The lecture series honors the late Claude K. Smith, an EKU alumnus who joined his alma mater’s business faculty in 1964 and was named the inaugural chair of the Department of Accounting two years later. He was one of the first two Certified Public Accountants to be hired at Eastern. He retired in 1989.
The series is designed to provide EKU students with the opportunity to hear, meet, network with and learn from nationally recognized experts in the accounting profession. Events will also be available to members of the accounting profession and the general public.