Speaker Biographies

SEFTON BOYARS, CGFM

Until his retirement in October 1996, Mr. Boyars had been the Department of Education's Regional Inspector General for Audit in Regions IX and X for sixteen years. During his 35­year career, Mr. Boyars worked for a variety of federal government audit agencies and a California county.

Mr. Boyars is active in his profession. He is a member of the California CPA Society and was a long­time Chair of his chapter’s combined committee on Accounting Principles and Auditing Standards and Government Accounting and Auditing. He served on the Qualifications Committee of the California State Board of Accountancy for three years. Mr. Boyars is a Certified Public Accountant, a Certified Government Financial Manager, a Certified Fraud Specialist and a Certified Internal Auditor.

He is a past Chair of the Western Intergovernmental Audit Forum and often served as chair or co chair of its subcommittees and roundtables. Mr. Boyars is a past President of the San Francisco chapter of the Association of Government Accountants. He continues his active participation in his local Chapter.

Mr. Boyars is an experienced trainer and has taught for numerous organizations, including federal, state and local governments, professional associations (such as the Association of Government Accountants, the Institute of Internal Auditors and state CPA societies), the USDA Graduate School and Management Concepts, Incorporated. He received AGA’s National Education and Training Award for 1998. Mr. Boyars is the primary author of the Association of Government Accountants’ study guide for Course 3 of the Certified Government Financial Manager: Governmental Financial Management and Control. The study guide was issued in the summer of 2004.

DAVID R. HANCOX, CGFM, CIA

Mr. Hancox is a Director in the Division of State Government Accountability in the NYS Comptroller’s Office. He is currently leading an effort to measure the performance of state agencies’ financial management practices to guide future audit efforts and to increase the effectiveness of agency operations. Previously, he was Director of State Expenditures. He headed up a 115-person unit responsible for auditing more than $70 billion in transactions a year, with more than 100,000 transactions a day coming through the system. He has transformed this unit from a labor-intensive, clerical audit operation to a modern, risk-based professional audit unit, using the latest audit techniques to find fraud, waste, and improper transactions. He also revamped the approach to auditing Medicaid payments. In 2005 and 2006, this audit unit identified more than $250 million in savings.

Mr. Hancox and his audit teams have also helped change the way New York State operates. His team’s recent audit of sex offenders getting Viagra on the Medicaid program received international attention and brought about change at the national and state level. Prior audits found fraud and waste in other major programs that resulted in significant savings to the taxpayers when the problems were corrected – just one example was revamping the way inmates are fed in the State’s prison system.

He is co-author of two books: Government Performance Audit in Action and State and Local Government, Program Control and Audit: Handbook for Managers and Auditors. He is on the faculty of Siena College and the Government Audit Training Institute - Graduate School, USDA.

He is an international speaker and in frequent demand in the government audit and financial management community on audit and management-related topics. He is past regional vice president of the Association of Government Accountants and a past president of the New York Capital Chapter of that organization. He is currently on the National Emerging Issues Committee. He is also past president of the Albany Chapter of the Institute of Internal Auditors and a past member of the International Government Relations Committee and current member of the Emerging Issues Committee and the Financial Management Standards Board Committee. Mr. Hancox contributes articles to various professional journals that challenge the traditional audit approaches that have failed to find the frauds in major organizations. He's listed in Marquis's Who's Who in the World, Who's Who in America and Who's Who in the East. He is a Certified Internal Auditor and a Certified Government Financial Manager.

In 2005, he was selected as the Educator of the Year and in 2007 he received the National President’s Award from the Association of Government Accountants.

Speaker Biographies

DR. JANET KELLY, CGFM, CIA, CPFO

Janet Kelly is an educator and private consultant to local governments and nonprofits. She specializes in performance auditing, with particular emphasis on developing leadership skills that set the tone for the organization’s control environment.  She was trained by faculty from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in the case method of executive education and leadership development. She has facilitated hundreds of cases in executive leadership programs for the public, nonprofit and private sectors.

She is a case writer, teacher and editor. Her case, “Rural Democracy” is available through Harvard’s Case Library, and is used in the executive education programs in Public Policy and Management at the Kennedy School of Government. She recently authored the Association of Government Accountants 2007 National Case Challenge, used by students of government accounting in the United States and Canada.

Since 2004 she has served on the editorial board of the nation’s largest peer-reviewed teaching case library, The Electronic Hallway, at the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs, University of Washington. She was among the founding faculty of the South Carolina Executive Institute in1995 and has served there since.

She holds a Bachelor’s degree from the College of Charleston, an MPA from the University of South Carolina, and a Ph.D. from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. She is a nationally recognized expert on performance measurement.

She is a Distinguished Lecturer in Public Administration at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she teaches graduate seminars in public finance, nonprofit finance and executive leadership in the MPA program.

DAVID BEAN, CPA

David R. Bean is the director of research and technical activities for the Governmental Accounting Standards Board.  He assigns and provides oversight to the GASB’s research, technical, and administrative activities.  In addition, David advises the GASB chairman on operating and project plans and task force establishment and appointments.  David also is a member of the International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board.  Prior to joining the GASB, David worked in public accounting and government.  He was the lead author on the 1988 Governmental Accounting, Auditing and Financial Reporting and was the founder of the GAAFR Review.  He was the last director of the National Council on Governmental Accounting before the formation of the GASB in 1984.  David is a member of the Government Finance Officers Association, the Connecticut and Illinois Government Finance Officers Associations, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the Illinois CPA Society, the Association of Government Accountants, the National Federation of Municipal Analysts, and the Municipal Analysts Group of New York.