Lori leverages her more than 30 years of public accounting experience to provide her credit union clients with solid business advice and verify sound accounting practices are being adopted in their business and employee benefit plans.
Due to her deep understanding of auditing and industry standards, clients find confidence in her ability to lead their financial statement audit, internal controls assessment and other agreed-upon procedure engagements. Lori’s strong technical acumen combined with her industry knowledge, enables her to easily detect potential risks and offer actionable recommendations to protect her clients and their stakeholders. Her professional experience extends to employee benefit plan auditing, where her intricate understanding of plan operations and regulations allows Lori to navigate clients through the complexities of 401(k) and pension plan reporting required to uphold their fiduciary responsibilities.
An educator at heart, Lori plays a significant role in providing training to assist credit union staff and volunteers to understand the importance and benefits of a risk-based business model. This puts her at the forefront of developing an engaging curriculum for the firm’s Annual Supervisory Committee and Board of Directors Conference.
Von Garces is the head of Hedge Accounting at Derivative Path. Prior to this, Von was at Wells Fargo Securities helping institutional, large corporate, and commercial clients understand accounting and design considerations for their strategic hedging programs encompassing interest rate, FX, and commodity exposures.
For over 15 years, Stephen has dedicated his career to delivering exceptional audit and advisory services tailored to meet the needs of financial institutions.
Stephen serves as a year-round trusted advisor for many financial institutions, leveraging his valuable insight gained from leading opinion audits, current expected credit losses (CECL) validations, accounting implementation projects and internal audits. Collaborating with clients, he carefully addresses concerns, provides valuable recommendations, and executes a thorough and efficient engagement. A highly technical professional, Stephen specializes in interpreting and advising his clients on critical accounting standards updates. Since the inception of the CECL model, he has worked alongside institutions to help take them from concept to implementation. Now post-implementation, he diligently performs independent CECL validations, pointing out model limitations and recommending best practice fixes and internal controls.
A nationally recognized speaker and author, Stephen is often called on by technical and industry associations. His commitment to delivering valuable financial guidance makes him an invaluable asset to his clients in their pursuit of financial clarity.
With more than 15 years of experience, David specializes in delivering merger, acquisition and strategic advisory services to financial institutions and related companies.
Starting his career in public accounting with Ernst & Young and hedge fund services with JP Morgan, David shifted focus to investment banking where he spent nearly a decade providing strategic advice to financial institutions and investment management organizations. In addition, he also spent time leading the strategic finance function and ultimate sale of a technology start-up company.
Today, David serves as a trusted advisor to clients providing strategic, financial and operational knowledge. His deep understanding of industry trends and current market activity helps clients overcome challenges and identify opportunities for growth. Fueled by his passion to see clients succeed today and beyond, he guides them through complex mergers and acquisitions, ownership restructures and business valuations, as well as developing succession, strategic business, financial and operational plans.
Committed to helping institutions strategize and identify opportunities, David frequently presents at various industry associations where he provides valuable insights into current market activity, ways to enhance services, drive member value and capitalize on opportunities.
John brings more than 35 years of public accounting experience to his role as the Practice Leader of Doeren Mayhew’s Financial Institutions Group and as a trusted leader in the credit union industry.
Starting his career as an auditor in the industry, John quickly realized his passion for helping credit unions achieve their financial goals. This motivated him to eventually go on to open his own successful firm Orth, Chakler, Murnane & Company, that later merged with Doeren Mayhew in 2015.
Today, John spends his time supervising audit and advisory engagements for credit unions and credit union service organizations across the nation. He has carefully overseen the execution of thousands of certified audits for both federal- and state-chartered credit unions, as well as corporate credit unions. In addition, John helps guide clients through the implementation of new accounting standards, mergers, asset/liability management, implementation of derivatives and other highly technical projects to position them for success.
A respected industry figure, John is also frequently called upon to speak and author on a wide range of industry topics.
Drawing on more than 30 years of experience, Bob provides financial institutions with risk-based assurance and advisory services to ensure sound business practices are being performed. Bob’s professional background includes leading opinion audit, internal audit, regulatory compliance, and fraud analysis engagements aimed at helping clients mitigate risks to their institutions and stakeholders.
Driven by his desire to help position clients for success, Bob goes beyond traditional assurance services to serve as a true strategic partner helping clients overcome challenges and recognize opportunities for growth. With a specialization in the merger and acquisition process, Bob provides vision through the development of business and strategic plans, paving the way for clients to meet their short- and long-term goals.
His leadership within the industry has positioned him as a sought-after speaker and author to educate financial institutions on a variety of topics impacting them.
As a partner at Financial Management Services Inc. (FMSI), Cory consults with financial institutions on asset/liability management, investment portfolio strategy and execution, and liquidity management.
Prior to joining FMSI, Cory owned a consulting company for eight years where he offered similar services to both banks and credit unions. He has over 25 years of industry experience with banks and credit unions having worked as a CFO on both buy- and sell-side M&A, profitability consultant, accountant, and payment systems manager.
Dedicating nearly 30 years to serving the credit union industry, Dean is a trusted industry leader providing a range of audit, internal audit and advisory services to institutions across the nation.
A seasoned pro and past credit union internal auditor, Dean thrives on assisting clients face challenges of all types to position their financial institution for success. He focuses his time on providing risk management solutions related to financial statements, internal controls, business lending, regulatory compliance, unrelated business income tax, and asset and liability oversight. He also works with several large credit unions on strategic issues such as board governance, product pricing and enterprise risk management.
As a director at Wilary Winn, Cole leads up the firm’s fair value business line, which includes mergers and acquisitions, goodwill impairment testing, and fair value advice related to footnote disclosures. In this role, Cole is dedicated to ensuring the highest quality in Wilary Winn’s product offerings, overseeing a team of skilled analysts, and directing the ongoing advancement of the firm’s proprietary financial models. In addition, Cole helps lead the firm’s CECL business line and oversees the valuation and stress testing of non-agency mortgage-backed securities.
Jack brings over 20 years of experience to his role in the firm’s Financial Institutions Group, where he focuses on providing comprehensive audit, assurance and advisory services to institutions spanning asset sizes up to $13 billion.
A dedicated industry expert, Jack thrives on helping clients face challenges, and providing valuable insight beyond just a traditional audit. Financial institutions find confidence in his ability to identify risks and highlight areas of growth and opportunity. In tandem with financial statement audits, Jack specializes in performing Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Chapter 6 and 7 audits to ensure institutions are compliant with the requirements. Jack also has extensive experience working hand-and-hand with clients during the due diligence process gathering and verifying relevant information to help institutions make informed decisions to the path they seek.
Isaac Wheeler is a Managing Director at Derivative Path where he helps financial institutions structure and execute hedging strategies. Prior to this, Isaac spent five years at MFS Investment Management supporting execution of fixed income, currency and equity derivatives.
Leveraging over 30 years’ experience, John is committed to assisting financial institutions of all sizes in managing, prioritizing and strategizing regulatory compliance.
John’s true passion is making sense of regulatory compliance. He has dedicated his career to performing a diverse range of compliance engagements, including BSA, UDAAP, lending, operations and marketing. Committed to helping clients navigate an everchanging regulatory environment, John frequently helps establish regulatory compliance programs and management systems, as well as educate clients and firm staff on various regulations and regulatory trends. His leadership in overseeing the simplest to most complex compliance challenges, has solidified his position in the industry as a sought-after expert, speaker and author on the subject matter.
