Practice Management Conference - Speaker Biographies
May 29, 2024 | Webcast and at Dallas DoubleTree Hotel-Love Field
Marcus Burnside/Senior Associate/Chamberlain Hrdlicka/Houston
Marcus Burnside partners with clients to guide them through the often-confusing process of implementing best practices and legal management in the full scope of cybersecurity and data privacy law. This work is guided by a commitment to meticulously understanding the nuance of each client's business to tailor legal strategies that align with their unique objectives. Through my intellectual property work with clients who are inventing new technologies in the cybersecurity and cloud services space, I have a deep understanding of how the technology works along with an understanding of how non-technology businesses should engage with this technology from both a technical and legal standpoint.
Mackenzie Childs, MS/Owner/Blink & Company/Houston
No, I do not organize things for a living - although I hear people make a decent amount of money doing that. Instead, I have a foot inside both the organizational development and consumer psychology aspects of business. Whether it be talent optimization or human capital - my product is bringing humanity to the workplace. It helps that I am obsessed with efficiencies around communication, organizational structure and design, emotionally intelligent leadership, and strength-based conversations. It brings me joy to be the “human tool” that allows leaders to be stress free about choosing, training and keeping their talent. Through storytelling and remarkable facts, I always find ways to relay concepts that matter with sensitive insight on tough issues - defusing tensions and catalyzing collaboration. To be succinct, I truly seek to create a space for transparency, acceptance, a little bit of grit, and a little bit of grace. Blend them all together and I have the perfect recipe for showing others their true growth potential. At the end of the day, I want you to know what I know and believe strongly that sharing knowledge creates the high tide that raises all boats. And couldn’t we use more of that?
Steve Conwell, CVB/CEO & Partner/Final Ascent/Dallas
Steve Conwell is an accomplished entrepreneur with over 25 years of business advisory and financial consulting experience. Steve is passionate about helping business owners creatively tackle their biggest challenges and successfully grow their business and their enterprise value to a lucrative and successful exit. Throughout his career, he leveraged public accounting, internal audit and controls experience with Fortune 500 and middle market companies, always returning to his entrepreneurial roots.
Nolan Duck, D.Min., M.A.R.E., M.Div., BCB, CEPA, CVB/CEO/DBG Advisors/Richardson
Dr. Nolan Duck focuses on helping business owners determine, build and get full value for their companies when they sell. He is the CEO and founder of DBG Advisors, a D/FW based M&A advisory. For over 19 years, Nolan has provided essential guidance to business owners who are looking to increase the value of their business to ensure a lucrative exit. Whether they plan to sell now or 10 years from now, his goal is to help them be prepared to sell if someone comes calling. His firm guides business owners through both the exit planning process and the sale of their company.
Terri Hornberger, CPA/Terri Moss Hornberger CPA/Dallas
Terri Moss Hornberger has been in the accounting field for over 40 years. She opened her firm in 2001. For the last six years, the firm's focus has been tax, including federal, payroll and franchise. Her clients include a wide range of industries as well as individuals. Terri is a past chair of TXCPA Dallas and is still active in TXCPA. She has been a consultant and speaker for local groups and was featured on KXAS for several tax slots.
Jerry Spence, CPA/Firm Owner/JSpence CPA PLLC/Corpus Christi
Jerry Spence has been a licensed CPA for 37 years. He is highly invested in technology for use in serving accounting and tax clients and is growing his client advisory services. He has been a member of the practice management group Southern & Western Accounting Group (SWAG) for 20+ years and is a past chair of TXCPA.
Lei Testa, CPA, CGMA/Owner/Testa CPA, LLC/Fort Worth
Lei Testa is a CPA and CGMA and graduate of the University of Texas at Arlington. She began her career with Deloitte and after several years in public accounting, moved into the health care field. Lei also obtained her licenses to provide investment advice and sell securities and began a new practice focus as a financial advisor with Averett Financial, LLC. In late 2022, she and her partners dissolved Averett Financial, and she branched out on her own as Testa CPA, LLC providing bookkeeping services to small and medium businesses.
Lindsey Kennimer, CPA/Partner/Snow Garrett Williams/Weatherford
Lindsey Kennimer is an Audit Partner at Snow Garrett Williams, a local public accounting firm in Weatherford, Texas. Lindsey has over 18 years of experience performing audits of local governments, specifically audits of Texas independent school districts, including extensive experience in single audits and was awarded AICPA’s Advanced Single Audit Certificate. Lindsey also serves as a team captain and team member for peer reviews of other CPA firms throughout Texas through AICPA's peer review program and as a subject matter expert performing enhanced oversight reviews of Government Auditing Standards/Single Audit engagements reviewed during a firm's peer review for the AICPA Oversight Task Force. Lindsey serves as a contractor for the AICPA Center for Plain English Accounting (CPEA) to assist with technical inquiries by providing answers to inquiries on various GASB, Yellow Book and Uniform Guidance accounting and auditing topics. She is currently serving on TXCPA’s Texas School District Accounting and Auditing Conference Committee, as well as the Government and Single Audit Conference Committee, Peer Review Committee, Professional Standards Committee, Peer Review Committee, the GFOA Special Review Committee, TASBO Accounting Research Committee, and the AICPA Government Audit Quality Center (GAQC) Executive Committee.
Isreal Miller, JD, LLM, CPA, CFP/Partner/Atwood McCall, PLLC/Dallas
Isreal Miller is a partner at Atwood McCall in Dallas. He focuses his practice on tax and estate planning. He advises clients on how to minimize estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer taxes, as well as how to implement and administer complex estate planning structures. Isreal is Board Certified in Tax Law and Estate Planning and Probate Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, a CPA, a Certified Financial Planner™ practitioner, and a Personal Financial Specialist.