EY Accounting and Public Policy Symposium Day 1

Welcome back, future accounting superstars! I just came back from an amazing week with my classmates in Washington, D.C. During ACC 695, better known as the EY Accounting and Public Policy Symposium, the Ross MAcc class is hosted by The Washington Campus for a whirlwind week learning about how business, accounting, and public policy intersect.

The program is one week, Monday - Friday, and I highly recommend going to DC the weekend before it starts to do some sightseeing! A few other MAccs and I visited the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Smithsonian museums of American Art, National Portrait Gallery, Hirshhorn (modern art), National Air and Space, American History, Natural History, and the Renwick Gallery. We also saw The White House and many of the monuments. My favorite quote I saw was this one from the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial.

Day One started with Professor Cathy Shakespeare and Professor Kathryn Hauser giving a welcome and introduction. We then had talks with Dr. John Fortier from The Bipartisan Policy Center, Dr. James Thurber from American University, Michael Fitzpatrick from GE, Julie Erhardt and Dr. Pevzner from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and Eric Hylton from Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Criminal Investigation (CI).

This was an incredible lineup of speakers. Dr. Thurber is considered one of the world’s leading experts on American government, Michael leads GE’s lobbying group and formerly served in the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, and Eric leads the IRS’s international criminal investigations.

We received a great introduction to the American system of government, how power is divided between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, and what some major government agencies do. I think this was an excellent way to start the program, since most of my government education comes from a short high school class and School House Rock videos. It was also very helpful for our international students, who are more unfamiliar with the American system of government.

I really enjoyed our last speaker of the day, Eric. As a part of the IRS’s CI division, he investigates criminal violations of the tax code and other financial crimes like money laundering and wire fraud. I wrote about IRS CI in my review of The Accountant movie with Ben Affleck, as FinCEN was incorrectly portrayed as the law enforcement arm of the Treasury Department.

Eric was a particularly engaging speaker who just had an incredible amount of energy and charisma about him. He peppered his PowerPoint presentation with a preponderance of personal parables (that was fun) and made us all laugh. Eric has worked in field offices all over the US and done some incredible international assignments for the IRS.

The rest of the week was very eventful too! Stay tuned for more in upcoming blog posts. Best of luck as you prepare your applications and GO BLUE!