In the beginning, an entrepreneur’s journey is often very lonely. Even if two or more entrepreneurs are working as a team to coordinate their ideas, they need some additional perspectives, including mentoring, advice, and guidance. An entrepreneur should seriously consider creating an advisory board to help them with outside views, bounce off ideas, find an early customer or a technology partner, and much more. This webinar will address essentials of creating and sustaining an advisory board. It will also provide important Do’s and Don’ts.

Presenter:

Sandra Richtermeyer, Ph.D., CMA, CPA (inactive), is dean of the Manning School of Business at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. She works actively with a variety of professional organizations and is a frequent speaker on professional development, governance, risk management, internal control, and anti-corruption. Her teaching and research interests are in the areas of corporate governance, accounting information systems, and nonprofit and governmental accounting. She has authored many articles in academic and practitioner publications. Her research publications have featured many topics including technology enablement, enterprise systems, nonprofit accounting, and professional issues for accountants.

In addition to her academic background, she worked as a CPA for many years in Denver, Colorado, with a practice focus on compliance, assurance, and systems implementation. Prior to becoming dean at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, she was professor and chair of accountancy and associate dean of the Williams College of Business at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. Prior to that, she was an assistant and associate professor at the University of Wyoming, where she also completed her B.S. degree. She is proud to be a fourth generation Wyomingite, as well as a “Triple Buff” as she received her M.S., MBA, and Ph.D. from the University of Colorado.

Richtermeyer has held many leadership roles in a variety of organizations over the past 20 years. She is an active board member in a variety of organizations and regularly consults with and provides training for boards on governance best practices and leadership challenges. In addition, she coaches CEOs with an emphasis on improving working relationships and communications between board members, the CEO, and their senior management teams.

Over the past 20 years she has held many roles at IMA® (Institute of Management Accountants) at the local, regional, national and global level. She continues to serve as a director on the IMA global board where she served as Global Chair from 2010-2011. From 2012-2018 she represented IMA® on the Committee on Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO). She also currently serves on IMA’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee and Volunteer Leadership Board Committee. She is currently a member of the Board of Directors for the Massachusetts Society of CPAs and also the Educational Foundation for Women in Accounting. She previously served as chair of the Ohio Society of CPAs Executive Board (2017-2018), President of the American Accounting Association (AAA) Accounting Program Leaders Group (2016-2017)