Keynote Speakers

Rick Davis is a pursuit expert. He has designed and implemented innovative business development and marketing approaches for hundreds of leading professional services firms. He collaborates with executive teams and service professionals to sharpen their competitive strengths and reach their client development goals.

Before starting Athens Partners, Rick worked for many years with Ernst & Young. He played a key role in leading the culture change that enabled the accounting giant to strengthen client relationships, grow revenues, and gain a significant advantage over their competition.

Rick has achieved recognition as a thought leader in growth strategy development, sales process innovation, and pursuit team coaching.

Angie Grissom serves as President of The Rainmaker Companies and previously served as the Director of Consulting for The Rainmaker Companies for several years.

Consistently named by Accounting Today Magazine as “one of the Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting” and listed as a 40 Under 40 in the Accounting Industry by CPA Practice Advisor, Grissom is a frequent presenter at national conferences, Angie is renowned for her influence in and passion for the industry. She brings all this to her role at The Rainmaker Companies, striving to share her proven knowledge and know-how to transform the lives of clients through consulting, coaching, training and developing accountability within accounting firms.

Prior to joining Rainmaker, Angie worked in organizational management, sales and human resources. She has served as the Vice President of the American Society of Women Accountants Music City chapter, and an active member of the CPACA Alliance for accounting industry consultants, the National Speaker’s Association and the Association for Accounting Marketing. She contributes to and authors practice management articles for trade journals including Accounting Today, CCH Practice Management Report and the CPA Leadership Report, as well as state society newsletters and other publications. Angie is the “She” in the regular published column in Accounting Today known as “He Said, She Said” which highlights and debates topics and issues in the accounting industry.

Angie earned her BS in Business Administration with an emphasis in Marketing at Middle Tennessee State University and is currently working on her MBA with an emphasis in Management from Middle Tennessee State University. When not helping accounting firms make rain, Angie can be found spending time with her husband and two sons, visiting family and friends far and wide, traveling to new places or enjoying the outdoors or photography.

Christopher Marston, Esq. is the founder and CEO of Exemplar Companies, an innovative multi-disciplinary knowledge firm combining the first law firm in America to abandon hourly billing in favor of fixed, value-based pricing, with a fixed, value-based tax/accounting firm, FINRA-Member Broker-Dealer investment Bank, and business advisory. With 5 offices nationally and headquarters in Boston, Exemplar is quickly growing as the market leader representing Revolutionaries, Game-Changers, and Impact Businesses nationwide. In addition to leading Exemplar, Mr. Marston serves clients across the legal and capital markets spectrum for the firm’s leading revolutionary customers. Mr. Marston also serves as a Fellow in the VeraSage Institute, an economics think-tank dedicated to changing the economic model of the professions.





 

Thomas H. Mattox is Commissioner of the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance.

The Department’s core mission is to efficiently collect tax revenues in support of state services while acting with integrity and fairness in the administration of the tax laws of New York State. Balancing efforts to promote voluntary compliance—the cornerstone of the state’s system of taxation—with the duty to enforce New York’s tax laws is a focal point of the department’s management strategy. The Department administers more than 40 state and local taxes and fees which require the annual processing of 24 million tax returns and the collection and accounting of $90 billion in annual state and local revenue; other responsibilities include the state’s treasury function. The Department’s workforce of 5,400 employees is based in Albany and district offices across the state, and its annual budget is $485 million.

Mr. Mattox previously worked at Goldman Sachs & Co., where he served as a Managing Director and Global Head of Operation Risk Management, and Chief of Staff in the Controllers, and Finance and Resources Divisions.

Before joining Goldman Sachs & Co., Mr. Mattox was Senior Vice President at Chase Manhattan Bank where he led merger integration and business development initiatives in the Management Consulting Center and the Capital Market Fiduciary Services. He also served as a consultant at Monitor Company.

He is a graduate of Harvard University, and holds an M.B.A. from Stanford University.

Joseph Conley is the Attorney-in-Charge of the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office Tax Crimes Unit. The Tax Crimes Unit consists of lawyers, investigators and auditors assigned to investigate and prosecute violations of the New York State Tax Law. In his ten-year career at the SCDAO, Mr. Conley served in several investigative bureaus including Economic Crimes and the Labor, Insurance and Revenue Crimes Bureaus. Mr. Conley helped create the Tax Crimes Unit in 2005 leading to the prosecution of hundreds of defendants for wide-ranging violations of the New York State Tax Law resulting in the recovery of millions of dollars in lost revenue every year. Working with a dedicated staff, several initiatives have resulted in prosecutions for the evasion of sales/use tax on the purchase of personal luxury yachts, trafficking of untaxed cigarettes, and a 2006 initiative that exposed significant abuse of the STAR property tax program. The Tax Crimes Unit has also partnered with the Internal Revenue Service and successfully prosecuted dozens of individuals and companies for evading payroll taxes. The efforts of the Tax Crimes Unit have resulted in the recovery of over twenty million dollars in lost revenue to date.

Mr. Conley worked at the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance as the Deputy Attorney-in-Charge of the Manhattan Special Investigations Unit from 2010 until rejoining the SCDAO in 2011. Mr. Conley represented the Department at administrative hearings, helped lead a proactive unit in the investigation of criminal and civil violations of the Tax Laws and developed training programs for auditors and investigators. Mr. Conley was also cross-designated as an Assistant District Attorney for Queens County to prosecute preparer fraud cases.

Mr. Conley holds the rank of Captain in the New York Army National Guard serving in the Judge Advocate General’s Corp. While deployed to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, CPT Conley served as the Command Judge Advocate to Training Assistance Group VII and Chief Legal Mentor & Trainer to Afghan National Security Forces at the Kabul Military Training Center. CPT Conley has held positions as defense counsel for Trial Defense Services, earning special recognition for his zealous advocacy of clients and as Trial Counsel for the 42nd Infantry Division and Combined Joint Task Force Phoenix VII.

Mr. Conley is also a lecturer for the New York Prosecutors Training Institute.

He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Keuka College and a Juris Doctor degree from St. John’s University School of Law.

Jacques Jiha, Ph.D. was appointed Commissioner of New York City’s Department of Finance by Mayor Bill de Blasio on April 8, 2014. In August, Mr. Jiha was also appointed by the Mayor to serve on the board of the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission.

Prior to becoming Commissioner, Mr. Jiha was the Executive Vice President / Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer of Earl G. Graves, Ltd., a multi-media company with properties in print, digital media, television, events and the internet. A staunch advocate of public service, Mr. Jiha served on a number of government and not-for-profit boards. He was a board member of the Ronald McDonald House of New York, a board member of Public Health Solutions and a trustee of the Public Health Solutions Retirement Trust, a member of the Investment Advisory Committee of the New York Common Retirement Fund, and he was also the Secretary of the board of the New York State Dormitory Authority – one the largest issuers of municipal debt in the country on behalf of public and private universities and medical institutions, and the State of New York.

Previously, Mr. Jiha served as Deputy Comptroller for Pension Investment and Public Finance in the Office of the New York State Comptroller. As the state’s Chief Investment Officer, he managed the assets of the New York State Common Retirement Fund (CRF) – then the nation’s second-largest pension fund valued at $120 billion. He also oversaw New York’s College Savings Program, with assets of $2 billion, and the state’s short-term investment pool of $5 billion. He was also in charge of all activities related to the issuance of New York State general obligation bonds, bond anticipation notes, tax and revenue anticipation notes, and certificates of participation. Mr. Jiha was also the Co-Executive Director of the New York State Local Government Assistance Corporation (LGAC) in charge of the sale of refunding bonds, the ratification of swap agreements, and the selection of financial advisors and underwriters. Prior thereto, Mr. Jiha was Nassau County Deputy Comptroller for Audits and Finances. He also worked for the New York City Office of the Comptroller in increasingly responsible positions: first as Chief Economist and later as Deputy Comptroller for Budget. Earlier, Mr. Jiha served as Executive Director of the New York State Legislative Tax Study Commission and as Principal Economist for the New York State Assembly Committee on Ways and Means.

Before joining Goldman Sachs & Co., Mr. Mattox was Senior Vice President at Chase Manhattan Bank where he led merger integration and business development initiatives in the Management Consulting Center and the Capital Market Fiduciary Services. He also served as a consultant at Monitor Company.

He holds a Ph.D. and a Master’s degree in Economics from the New School for Social Research and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Fordham University.