The American Accounting Association has announced that five new members will be inducted into its Accounting Hall of Fame this August during the organization’s Annual Meeting in Atlanta.
Started at Ohio State University in 1950, the Accounting Hall of Fame has inducted 101 members since its inception. Bruce Behn, past president of the AAA and current chair of the Accounting Hall of Fame Committee, noted that this year’s class of inductees represents a "diverse group of accounting thought leaders from a breadth of practice and educational backgrounds." Nominees are selected by members of the Accounting Hall of Fame, the AAA and other professional accounting organizations.
The 2020 AAA Hall of Fame inductees include:
- Victor Zinn Brink (1906-1992): Key to the foundation of internal auditing and co-founder of the Institute of Internal Auditors in 1941, Brink penned the first major textbook on internal auditing in 1941, Brink’s Modern Internal Auditing, which is still used today. Over his career, Brink held numerous executive positions with Ford Motor Co. and authored over a dozen books and more than 180 articles in professional journals.
- Robert Mednick: A leader in tort reform initiatives, accounting and auditing standards and the expansion of the audit function, Mednick has spoken about the future of accounting and the role of professionals in an evolving world. Mednick served as worldwide managing partner of professional and regulatory matters at Arthur Andersen/Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) for more than five years before retiring in 1998. He also served as chairman of the AICPA from 1996 to 1997, having previously served on its Auditing Standards Board, the Financial Accounting Standards Advisory Council and the SEC Practice Section Executive Committee. Mednick is the only professional to have received both the International Federation of Accountants' lifetime achievement award and the AICPA Gold Medal of Distinction.
- Leslie French Seidman: She currently serves as a board director for General Electric and Moody’s, where she chairs the audit committee of both companies. Seidman was also the founding director of the Center for Excellence in Financial Reporting at the Lubin School of Business at Pace University. She is a past chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, where she also served as a member of the board from 2003 to 2013. She has received numerous awards, including the IMA's Distinguished Service Award for launching the Women’s Accounting Leadership program.
- Shyam Sunder: The James L. Frank Professor of Accounting, Economics and Finance at the Yale School of Management and a professor in the economics department, Sunder is an accounting theorist and experimental economist. His research covers the areas of financial reporting, information in security markets, statistical theory of valuation, social norms and regulation. He is the author of 10 books and more than 220 articles and is the past president and director of research of the AAA and former director of Yale’s Millstein Center for Corporate Governance and Performance, among other titles.
- Doyle Zane Williams: Dean emeritus of the University of Arkansas, where he also served as dean of the Walton College of Business for 12 years, Williams' work is featured in the AICPA Education Statistical studies, which he developed, and were published from 1967 to 1993. He is a past president of the AAA (1984 to 1985) and past chair of the board of directors of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (2004 to 2005). Working with KPMG's Atlanta office, Williams founded the Financial Reporting Roundtable, which includes the 20 largest companies headquartered in Georgia. Williams was the founding dean of the School of Accounting at the University of Southern California, served as the accounting area coordinator at Texas Tech University and was a senior scholar at Kennesaw State University. He was also the fifth educator to receive the AICPA's Gold Medal for Distinguished Service in 2002.
For more on the Hall of Fame and the 2020 inductees, head to the AAA's
aaahq.org
