Enterprise Risk Management Expert Advisors:
Governance Risk & Compliance needs change, and the regulatory landscape is constantly evolving. Vital Insight maintains strong relationships with leaders throughout the auditing, risk management, and regulatory communities. Some of these domain experts, including former executives from accounting and consulting firms and leading faculty from respected institutions such as the University of Texas, serve on Vital Insight's formal Advisory Board. A partial list of our expert advisors is included below.

Urton Anderson - Professor in Accounting Education and Accounting Department Chairman, University of Texas at Austin
Urton Anderson joined the Department of Accounting at the University of Texas at Austin in 1985, teaching auditing and managerial accounting. Dr. Anderson has consistently distinguished himself as a leading member of the accounting staff. In addition to his teaching responsibilities, he serves as the Chairman of the Department of Accounting at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas.

Dr. Anderson's research has addressed various issues in internal and external auditing - particularly corporate governance, enterprise risk management, and internal control. He has written two books, Quality Assurance for Internal Auditing and Implementing the Professional Practices Framework (with Christy Chapman), as well as papers published in a variety of scholarly and professional journals. Prof. Anderson is currently editor/author of the Handbook for Internal Auditors published by LexisNexis/MatthewBender.

From 1994 to 1999, he served on the Board of Regents for the Institute of Internal Auditors. In 1999, he was appointed a member of the Internal Auditing Standards Board and now serves as its chair. He served on the CCSA Steering Committee, which developed the professional examination for Control Self-Assessment and the CGAP Steering Committee for the new professional examination in governmental auditing. Prof. Anderson is currently the chair for the IIA's Internal Audit Standards Board. In 1997 he was named Leon R. Radde Educator of the Year Award, by The Institute of Internal Auditors.

Dr. Anderson received his Ph. D from The University of Minnesota in 1985. He holds the Certified Internal Auditor (CIA), Certification in Control Self-Assessment (CCSA), and Certified Government Auditing Professional (CGAP) designations.


Eric Hirst - Professor of Accounting and Associate Dean, University of Texas at Austin
Dr. Hirst has been a leading Professor of Accounting at the University of Texas at Austin since 1991. The University of Texas has been consistently ranked among the top accounting schools in the United States by various publications including the Public Accounting Report, which ranked the University of Texas as the best public accounting school in the nation. In addition, Dr. Hirst serves as the Associate Dean for the Master of Business Administration Program (MBA) and teaches in UT's Executive MBA Programs in Mexico City and Dallas.

Dr. Hirst has blended his real world experience working as a public accountant at Thorne Riddell in Toronto with his work in academe to provide outstanding teaching, research, and consulting to public companies, industry groups, and students. He has developed and taught programs for executives in Asia, Europe, and throughout the Americas for KPMG, Dow Chemical, 3M, Texas Instruments, USAA, Motorola, and other major companies.

From 2001 to 2004 he served on the American Accounting Association's Financial Accounting Standards Committee and chaired the group in 2003-2004. This committee is responsible for writing comment letters on new accounting standards to the FASB and IASB.

His monograph, Earnings: Measurement, Disclosure and the Impact on Equity Valuation, was distributed to over 32,000 members of the Association for Investment Management and Research. Dr. Hirst has published numerous articles in industry journals including Journal of Accounting Research, The Accounting Review, Contemporary Accounting Research, and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. In addition, he serves on the editorial board of The Accounting Review and was Associate Editor at Contemporary Accounting Research.

Dr. Hirst has received numerous awards and distinctions in his work including:

• Visiting Professor of Accounting and Control at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France for the 2003-2004 academic year.
  
• Awards for Teaching Excellence in the MBA program at the University of Texas at Austin, INSEAD, and the University of Texas Executive MBA Program in Mexico City.
  
• 1997 College of Business Administration Award for Research Excellence for Assistant Professors.
  
• 2003 McCombs School of Business Award for Research Excellence.
  
• American Accounting Association Financial Reporting Section's 1999 "Best Paper Award".
  
• AAA Auditing Section's "Notable Contributions to The Auditing Literature Award" for 2000-2001.
  

Dr. Hirst received a BA in Economics and Master of Accounting from the University of Waterloo (Waterloo, Ontario) and a Ph.D. in Business from the University of Minnesota.


Sridhar Ramamoorti, PhD
Co-Author, COSO Guidance on Monitoring Internal Control Systems
Dr. Sridhar Ramamoorti, ACA, CPA/CITP/CFF, CIA, CFE, CFFA, CFSA, CGAP, CGFM, CRP, CICA, FCPA, is currently an Associate Professor of Accounting and Director, Center for Corporate Governance at Kennesaw State University, in Kennesaw, Georgia. He specializes in corporate governance, risk management, external and internal auditing, internal controls, international financial reporting standards (IFRS), and forensic accounting.

Dr. Ramamoorti has a unique, blended academic-practitioner background with over 25 years of experience in academia, auditing, and consulting. After finishing his Ph.D. in Quantitative Psychology from The Ohio State University, Dr. Ramamoorti served as an Accountancy faculty member of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Subsequently, he was a principal in the Professional Standards Group of Arthur Andersen, Sarbanes-Oxley Advisor for Ernst & Young’s National Advisory Practices and a Corporate Governance partner with Grant Thornton. While with Andersen’s HQ in Chicago, Dr. Ramamoorti was a key liaison for a multi-million dollar research collaboration with MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Subsequently, at Ernst & Young, he spearheaded the development of a simulation model for litigation risk management that achieved "patent pending" status with the U.S. Patent & Trademarks Office. As a member of the E&Y Fraud Investigation and Dispute Services (FIDS) practice, Dr. Ramamoorti was in-house faculty who developed and delivered training on "Fraud Risk: Assessment and Response" to over 1000 E&Y audit partners and principals. At Grant Thornton, and later Infogix, Inc., he was a member of the authoring/ development teams of the 2009 COSO Guidance on Monitoring Internal Control Systems as well as the 2010 ISACA guidance on Monitoring Internal Control Systems and IT. He has co-authored Internal Auditing: Assurance and Consulting Services (2nd ed., IIA, 2009), Sarbanes Oxley Section 404 for Small, Publicly-Held Companies (2011, CCH/Wolters Kluwer) and The Audit Committee Handbook (5th ed., Wiley, 2010). He is the lead author on an Executive Report titled The Benefits of Continuous Monitoring (FERF, 2011).

A prolific contributor to the literature in governance, risk, and compliance, Dr. Ramamoorti is co-author of over 25 articles in respected academic and practitioner-oriented journals, as well as nine books and monographs. Dr. Ramamoorti holds numerous professional designations and has received many teaching excellence awards and research grants.

A member of the Board of Directors of several organizations, he is currently President of the Board of Directors of the Information Integrity Coalition, Chairman of the Audit Committee of the National Board of Ascend, and Co-Chair of the Institute of Internal Auditors’ (IIA) Global Common Body of Knowledge (CBOK) Study spanning over 100 countries. He has been the Chairman of the Academy for Government Accountability, and a Board member of The IIA Research Foundation, The Institute for Business and Professional Ethics, and the Institute for Fraud Prevention. Over the past decade or so, Dr. Ramamoorti has been a speaker/presenter in the USA, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Japan, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Qatar, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.

Strategic and Technical Advisors:
Vital Insight draws on the expertise of certain functional experts to ensure that the company continues to offer the highest quality products, implement the most effective marketing programs, and stay ahead of industry trends. Some of our advisors are listed below.

Gregory Fitzgerald - VP, Global Field and Channel Marketing, TippingPoint
Mr. Fitzgerald is an industry veteran of 15 years in the networking, wireless, security and systems management industries. He was previously vice president of marketing for Traq-wireless, the industry leader in wireless management software and services. Prior to joining Traq-wireless, Mr. Fitzgerald was the director of worldwide marketing at BMC Software, a leading provider of enterprise management solutions. He drove BMC's e-business management initiative from idea to final product, creating a $20 million product line.

Mr. Fitzgerald has extensive international experience, living and working in six countries, during which he opened BMC's international headquarters in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Mr. Fitzgerald holds a BBA in Marketing and Finance from Emory University, a MBA in Product Marketing from the University of Colorado, and a MIM in International Marketing Strategy from Thunderbird, The American Graduate School of International Management.


Jerry Eddy - Technology Advisor
Jerry Eddy has more than 22 years of successful software development, sales support, and product management experience interfacing with customers, defining problems, creating solutions, and working with highly technical software or hardware applications and technology.

As Chief Technology Officer and Director of Research and Development at CTR Systems, Jerry directed and managed the $25 million company's technology decisions and architecture with his "build, buy, or partner" philosophy that met the innovation, simplicity, and time-to-market needs.

During his 19 year tenure with CTR, Jerry held several positions, including Director of Software Engineering and Product Management. Jerry founded the software development department at CTR and was the chief software engineer for many of CTR's products, which had significant impact on profitability and growth of the company. He also managed the software department which was responsible for developing systems in the application areas of time and attendance, revenue control, payroll integration, e-commerce, and credit card authorization.

Mr. Eddy holds a degree in computer science from Kent State University.