Thank You for Attending the 2023 ACFE Women's Summit

Andi McNeal, CFE, CPA, is the Director of Research for the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, where she oversees the development and production of educational materials related to the prevention, detection, and investigation of fraud. McNeal is co-author of the ACFE Report to the Nations, a biennial report on the costs and effects of occupational fraud, as well as the ACFE In-House Fraud Investigation Teams Benchmarking Report and Anti-Fraud Technology Benchmarking Report. She has also authored numerous articles on anti-fraud topics for publications such as the Journal of Accountancy, CPA Journal, Internal Auditor, and Fraud Magazine.

Diana B. Henriques, the author of “A First-Class Catastrophe: The Road to Black Monday, The Worst Day in Wall Street History” and the New York Times bestseller “The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust,” is a contributing writer for The New York Times, which she joined in 1989. She was previously a staff writer for Barron's magazine, a Wall Street correspondent for The Philadelphia Inquirer and an investigative reporter for The Trenton (N.J.) Times.

In 2005, she was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize and won a George Polk Award, the Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Reporting and Harvard’s Goldsmith Prize for her 2004 series exposing insurance and investment rip-offs of young military consumers. She was also a member of The New York Times team that was a Pulitzer finalist for its coverage of the 2008 financial crisis.

In May 2011, HBO optioned “The Wizard of Lies” and in May 2017 released its film-length adaptation of the book, with Robert De Niro starring in the title role and Ms. Henriques playing herself.

Henriques is also the author of three previous books: “The Machinery of Greed,” “Fidelity's World” and “The White Sharks of Wall Street.” She is currently at work on a new book for Random House focusing on the New Deal’s pioneering regulation of Wall Street.

Ms. Watkins is the former Vice President of Enron Corporation who alerted then-CEO Ken Lay in August 2001 to accounting irregularities within the company, warning him that Enron ‘might implode in a wave of accounting scandals.’ She has testified before Congressional Committees from the House and Senate investigating Enron’s demise. TIME magazine named Sherron, along with two others, Coleen Rowley of the FBI and Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom, as their 2002 Persons of the Year, for being “people who did right just by doing their jobs rightly.”

Watkins now lectures on leadership and ethics as the Executive-in-Residence at the McCoy College of Business at Texas State University and as Professor of the Practice at Kenan-Flagler at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Contact her at sherronwatkins@txstate.edu. Watkins is co-author of Power Failure, the Inside Story of the Collapse of Enron, (Doubleday, 2003).

Christie Hayne, PhD, is an accounting professor in the Department of Accountancy in the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois. Christie conducts qualitative field studies to examine management accounting and corporate governance topics. Christie earned her PhD from Smith School of Business at Queen’s University in Canada and she is also a Chartered Professional Accountant. Christie has published her research in several premier accounting journals including Accounting, Organizations and Society, The Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting Research and Contemporary Accounting Research.

Leah Lane, CFE, has more than 30 years of combined public and private sector investigation and fraud examination experience. She began her investigative career as a U.S. Customs Service agent — a position she held for more than seven years before moving to the private sector. During her career, she has assisted, conducted and managed hundreds of investigations globally involving alleged Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations, multifaceted internal and external fraud, and employee misconduct cases.

Lane is the Texas Instruments (TI) director of global investigations responsible for managing a group of investigators in the U.S. and Asia with global investigative responsibility. Prior to joining TI, Lane served as JCPenney’s first audit fraud manager. She also worked for more than a decade in several security and investigative positions at Hewlett-Packard (formally Electronic Data Systems), at which she was responsible for the investigation and management of complex financial fraud and computer forensic investigations.

Lane is a Certified Fraud Examiner and holds a Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice from the University of Southwestern Louisiana. She served on the ACFE Board of Regents for 2016 and was Chairman of the Board for 2017. Leah is also an active ACFE faculty member and serves on the ACFE Advisory Council and the ACFE Board of Review.

Linda Miller, a principal in Grant Thornton LLP’s advisory services practice, leads the Fraud & Financial Crimes group.

Miller has over 15 years of experience and is a nationally recognized expert in fraud risk management. Prior to joining Grant Thornton, Miller was a senior executive in federal government, including serving as Deputy Executive Director of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC), an oversight body responsible for preventing and detecting fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement $5 trillion in pandemic response funds. Her experience includes developing leading practices that guide the federal government and private sector, assisting in drafting antifraud legislation and serving as an expert witness. She led the development of the Framework for Managing Fraud Risks in Federal Programs and helped draft the Fraud Reduction and Data Analytics Act, as well as serving on the task force that developed the COSO Fraud Risk Management Guide.

Jala Attia is the founder and president of Integrity Advantage, a professional services organization that supports health plans and vendors to fight healthcare fraud, waste and abuse (FWA). With more than two decades of experience in healthcare FWA detection, investigation and program oversight, Jala has held a number of investigative and leadership positions at state health plans and vendor organizations where she was responsible for investigations and FWA operations.

Jala establishes best-in-class FWA teams, programs and regularly speaks at industry conferences on a variety of topics related to healthcare FWA, leadership and compliance. She has served as a board member for the National Healthcare Anti-Fraud Association (NHCAA) and participated on several committees to promote awareness of anti-fraud education and initiatives.

Jala is an adjunct faculty member at University of New Haven, where she creates new courses for healthcare fraud investigations and instructs undergraduate and graduate students. She serves as Vice-Chair for the ACFE Foundation board, a non-profit organization that encourages students to pursue careers in fraud examination and provides resources for research on the detection and deterrence of fraud. Jala earned her BA from Rutgers University and an MBA from Georgian Court University. She is an Accredited Healthcare Fraud Investigator (AHFI), a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE) and is Certified in Healthcare Compliance (CHC).

Tasheika Hinson is a senior attorney with over 15 years of experience in litigation, internal investigations, leading investigative teams, and providing legal and compliance guidance in the technology industry, financial service industry, and public sector.

She currently serves as Senior Counsel, Compliance and Ethics, at Zoom Video Communications, Inc., a leading global technology firm. Her practice focuses on providing pragmatic and actionable legal guidance in a hyper-growth technology firm. She previously served as the Head of Investigations at The Vanguard Group, Inc., a leading financial services firm with over $8 trillion in AUM. Tasheika is a former Assistant United States Attorney in the Northern District of Georgia (Atlanta) and the District of the Virgin Islands. At the Department of Justice, she investigated and prosecuted violations of federal criminal law, with a focus on public corruption, white collar crime, and economic crime. Prior to public service, she was an Associate in the Corporate Criminal Investigations and Litigation practice groups at Jones Day, a global law firm.

Tasheika is a graduate of The University of Michigan Law School and Temple University. She previously served on the University of Michigan Law School’s Advisory Board on Race and Racism. Tasheika is a Certified Fraud Examiner and enjoys mentoring new entrants to the fraud field.

Takara Small is a gifted multitasker. She appears on CBC Radio’s Metro Morning as a technology columnist, discussing the latest tech trends, breaking news and more. Additionally, Small is heard on “I’ll Go First,” a podcast which she hosts, and co-produces with the Globe and Mail. “I’ll Go First,” was named Canada’s No. 1 tech podcast in 2018. In 2021, Small debuted “A Death in Cryptoland,” which debuted as the No.1 true crime show and the only Canadian show on Apple’s top 10 in its debut.

Before her radio and podcast success, she was the contributing editor for Fortune magazine and a staff writer at Metro News Canada. Small also acted as a production assistant for Much Music. Much of her freelance work can be found in Chatelaine, Mic, Toronto Star, CP24, Refinery29 and more.

Before her radio and podcast success, she was the contributing editor for Fortune magazine and a staff writer at Metro News Canada. Small also acted as a production assistant for Much Music. Much of her freelance work can be found in Chatelaine, Mic, Toronto Star, CP24, Refinery29 and more.

Her expertise has taken her across the globe to speak to audiences at major events such as Collision, Elevate, Social Media Week, DisruptionByDesign, the International Women in Tech summit and more.

A longtime advocate for technology, Small founded and oversees VentureKids Canada, an award-winning nonprofit that provides free coding classes and startup workshops to youth living in low-income or underserved communities.

Mary Breslin is the founder of Verracy, formerly Empower Audit Training & Consulting, and specializes in internal audit transformations, operational and financial auditing, fraud auditing and investigations, and corporate accounting.

Breslin’s career spans over twenty years in internal auditing, management, and accounting for companies such as ConocoPhillips, Barclays Capital, Costco Wholesale, Jefferson Wells, and Boart Longyear. With significant international experience, she has managed audit programs in more than fifty countries. Most recently, Breslin held the title of Vice President and Chief Audit Executive where she transformed a checklist audit function into a value-add audit department that regularly delivered measurable business results through the use of risk-based auditing, data analytics, continuous education, and skill development for her leadership team and staff.

Breslin was an early adopter of analytics for audit and has been using data analytics in her career in both audit and fraud work for over 15 years. She has transformed the capabilities of audit functions using data analytics programs using ACL, IDEA, and Arbutus Analyzer. Through her expertise and guidance, she has helped large global organizations leverage analytics to significantly increase coverage, automate continuous auditing and monitoring, and actively fight fraud. Additionally, Breslin has extensive fraud audit and investigation experience and has conducted major fraud investigations on multiple continents including large-scale federal cases domestically. She has developed and implemented fraud auditing programs in various industries focused on both accounting and operations.

Kathy Lavinder has more than 20 years’ experience in executive search. In that time, she has worked with multinational corporations, financial institutions, professional services firms, academic and healthcare institutions, family offices, and non-profits in the U.S. and around the globe to identify specialized talent in the investigations, business intelligence and security arenas.

Lavinder founded her search firm, Security & Investigative Placement Consultants LLC, in 2000 after working in investigative roles and broadcast journalism. In a career that has bridged these worlds, Lavinder brings a unique perspective on risk management and career issues.

As an investigator, Lavinder was associated with a prominent investigations boutique in Washington, D.C. She served as the head of the firm’s headquarters office where she recruited and managed a team of investigative, research and security specialists. Prior to her work as an investigator, Lavinder was with ABC News in New York. Lavinder obtained her undergraduate degree from the University of South Carolina and a master’s degree from Georgetown University.

Nicole Babnick is a licensed attorney with over nine years of labor and employment law investigations experience. With the technical expertise of an attorney and the practical experience gained from working in the private sector and government.

Babnick has a unique ability to ensure legal compliance while meeting business needs. She has also presented at the ACFE Global Fraud Conference on the topic of emotional intelligence in investigations and empathy in workplace investigations.

Raoul Ménès is an advisory partner at KPMG LLP and the Québec leader for governance, risk and compliance services. For more than 26 years, he has helped national and international organizations in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors enhance their internal audit activities, while managing critical business risks.

Raoul has supported multiple initiatives and led projects to optimize operational and financial controls and restructure internal audit, accounting and finance departments. In addition to his business process evaluation and reengineering experience, he has extensive knowledge in fraud risk assessment and detection, interviewing and interrogation, investigation and forensic audit, and employee theft examinations.

Raoul is the author of numerous thought papers and global speaker on fraud risk management, internal audit, enterprise risk management, ethics, governance, regulatory compliance and leadership.

His leadership skills, technical know-how, professionalism and his excellent overall reputation were recognized by his peers with the Fellow Chartered Professional Accountant (FCPA), Fellow Certified Management Accountant (FCMA) and Fellow Certified Management Consultant (FCMC) designations intended to formally recognize his outstanding achievements in his career.

Imagine what it would be like to live as a different person with a different name, identity and background. For months at a time, you’re pretending to be a drug dealer, and your success depends on building trust and detecting deception. That’s precisely what Pamela Barnum did for years, working undercover in the Canadian Drug Enforcement Section. She learned real-world techniques for building trust and interpreting body language. When Barnum left policing, she accepted a position as a federal prosecuting attorney, spending countless hours in the courtroom, perfecting her techniques in body language and deception detection. Following a successful 20-year career in the criminal justice system, Barnum studied corporate negotiations in graduate school. Now, she shares her expertise with others, teaching them how to improve their communication skills to increase trust. Barnum has been a featured trust strategist and body language expert, contributing to print media, radio and television news programs. Her TEDx Talk, “What Drug Dealers Taught Me About Trust” was viewed more than 200,000 times in the first six months.