About Me

Biography 

I am a Texas A&M professor and hold both the Deloitte Foundation Leadership Professorship and the Andersen Students Professorship in Accounting. I earned a Ph.D. in Accounting from the University of Texas, an M.S. in Finance, a B.B.A. in Accounting, and a minor in Psychology from Texas A&M University. I have a CPA license to practice accounting in Texas.  I spend most days immersed in teaching and researching accounting. 

My research focuses on topics with real-world implications that can inform public policy in two interconnected areas: (1) accountability – how legal and market institutions discipline firms and (2) standard setting and disclosure regulation – how reporting rules are made and whether they work.  To date, my interdisciplinary research has resulted in 24 publications in leading scholarly journals in accounting, finance, law, and economics. 

As a teacher, I prioritize critical thinking and real-world application in my classes. I have taught financial accounting to students at all levels, from introductory to advanced to practicing executives. I currently co-teach accounting theory to master's students and a capital markets seminar to doctoral students. 

Before becoming a professor, I worked as a Senior Associate at PricewaterhouseCoopers in their advisory and consulting practice in New York and as a postgraduate technical assistant at the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) in Connecticut. I also have prior audit experience in Texas and New York. I primarily worked with financial services clients. My engagements spanned implementing new standards, structuring transactions to meet accounting and finance objectives, fair value accounting, IFRS conversion, derivative identification, and financial due diligence. 

In my (limited) free time, I love to hang out with my amazing wife, delightful daughter, and our goofy rescue dogs. I am involved in my local church, love to run, and have a voracious appetite for books. While I am generally juggling several different types of books at any time (e.g., historical fiction and nonfiction, fantasy and science fiction, theology, and autobiographies), I am also slowly working through a list of the 100 greatest classical novels of all time, combining several online lists to reduce the influence of idiosyncratic taste functions.