Forensic and Valuation Services Conference

Rod is a Business Valuation Expert and a Practice Development Coach. He is the founder of Burkert Valuation Advisors, where he has been practicing solo since July 2000. His traditional practice assists individuals, businesses, and attorneys determine or resolve questions of value. He also coaches overwhelmed BVFLS professionals to find more "margin" in their practices and their lives so that they can create the experiences that matter most to them. And by leveraging social media and his professional network, Rod has built a mobile consulting practice that allows him to travel full-time throughout the United States and Canada in an RV with his wife and their two dogs. He was named a "Pioneer of the Profession," as part of the National Association of Certified Valuators and Analysts' Industry Titans awards at their June 2016 Annual Conference.

Jarrod is a senior manager in healthcare valuation at HORNE. He has performed business and intangible asset valuation/consulting services within the healthcare industry for over five years, including hospitals, ASCs, physician practices, ACOs, pharmacies, imaging centers, dentistry practices, physical therapy clinics, department carve-outs, mobile lithotripsy providers, sleep centers, ambulance companies, home health & hospice, pathology labs, dialysis centers, etc.

He is also experienced in valuing healthcare-specific intangible assets such as certificates of need, bed licenses, workforce-in-place, medical records, tradenames and other related intellectual property, etc. He is a CFA® charterholder, Accredited in Business Valuation, an Accredited Senior Appraiser (Business Valuation) and a Certified Valuation Analyst.

Robert Vance has practiced as a CPA for 38 years and today is a full-time forensic CPA and forensic economist concentrating his practice on business valuation, divorce litigation support, commercial lost profits and personal injury economic damage calculations, forensic investigations and expert witness testimony. He is the principal of Forensic & Valuation Services, PLC with offices in Memphis and Chattanooga, Tennessee.

He has qualified as an expert and testified in 162 trials and hearings, 31 with a jury, in 57 differ-ent courts and has been appointed by judges as a Special Master 5 times. Additionally, Rob's tes-timony has been referenced in over 30 Tennessee appellate cases.

Rob was appointed by the Governor of Tennessee in 2021 as a member of the Tennessee State Board of Accountancy. He is a Past-President of the Memphis Chapter of the Tennessee Society of CPAs (TSCPA) and is a past-chairman of the Forensic & Valuation Services Conference Plan-ning Committee of the TSCPA. He has served as an officer on several non-profit Boards includ-ing the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Memphis and The Phoenix Club of Memphis.

Harold G. Martin, Jr. is a Director in the Valuation and Forensic Services ("VFS") Practice of Keiter, a certified public accounting and consulting firm located in Richmond, Virginia. He was formerly the Partner-in-Charge of the VFS Practice for 23 years and member of the Executive and Partner Compensation Committees.

He has over 40 years of experience in valuation, forensic and public accounting, and financial services. He has performed over 2,000 valuation and forensic projects in over 220 industries. He has qualified as an expert witness before U.S. District Court, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, and 22 circuit courts in five states, as well as the American Arbitration Association and National Association of Securities Dealers. He has been named as an expert in disputes subject to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. He has been appointed by U.S. District Court as a forensic accountant on cases in which he collaborated with the SEC and the FBI. He has been appointed by the U.S. Office of the Federal Public Defender as a consultant on fraud cases. He has also been retained by the U.S. Department of Justice as a consultant in a litigation in U.S. District Court. He has presented testimony at trial, arbitration, and deposition over 95 times. He has been appointed by various circuit courts as a neutral forensic accountant and appraiser.

Harold is also the Managing Director of the Financial Consulting Group ("FCG"), the leading organization of independently owned business valuation, forensic, and financial consulting firms in North America. FCG provides member firms the opportunity to collaborate in knowledge-sharing, teaming on projects, practice development, and training through participation in FCG University, webinars on specialized topics, on-line discussion forums and publications.

He is an adjunct faculty member of The College of William and Mary Raymond A. Mason School of Business. He has taught forensic accounting in the Master of Accounting program for 19 years, and he has also served as a guest lecturer for the M.B.A program and the Marshall-Wythe School of Law. He has also served as a guest instructor at the FBI Academy for forensic accountants in Quantico, Virginia, as well as the National Judicial College.

Prior to joining Keiter, he was affiliated for 13 years with two of the "Big Eight" international accounting firms, serving as a Director responsible for managing the Financial Advisory Services practice for Coopers & Lybrand's Richmond, Virginia office and as a Senior Manager in Management Consulting Services for Price Waterhouse. He also served as a Direct Loan Officer in retail banking at First & Merchants National Bank.

In 2024, Harold was recognized by Forbes magazine in its inaugural list of America's Top 200 CPAs. He was also selected as a "Super CPA" in Virginia in valuation and litigation services in peer surveys conducted by Virginia Business and the Virginia Society of Certified Public Accountants for each year from its inception in 2001 to its final year in 2014.

He is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants Business Valuation Hall of Fame and is a two-time recipient of the AICPA Business Valuation Volunteer of the Year Award. He serves as an instructor for the AICPA Business Valuation School and is a former instructor for the AICPA ABV Exam Review Course and AICPA Expert Witness Skills Workshop. He is a former member of the AICPA Business Valuation Committee, former Chair of the AICPA Business Valuation Conference Steering Committee, former commissioner of the AICPA National Accreditation Commission, former editor of the AICPA ABV e-Alert, and former editorial adviser and contributor for the AICPA CPA Expert.

He is a former member of the VSCPA's Board of Directors and former chair of the Business Valuation and Litigation Services Committees. He created and formerly chaired the Virginia Society of Certified Public Accountants Forensic & Valuation Services Conference for 23 years.

He is a co-author of Financial Valuation: Applications and Models, 1st-5th ed., a contributing author to Cost of Capital: Estimation and Applications, 2nd-4th ed., an Editorial Board member for Business Valuation Update, the editor of the Financial Consulting Group FCG Buzz, a former member of the VSCPA Editorial Task Force for Disclosures, and a former expert panelist for Financial Valuation and Litigation Expert. He has been interviewed by The Wall Street Journal, as well as numerous other publications.

He received his A.B. degree from The College of William and Mary and his M.B.A. degree from Virginia Commonwealth University where he was a member of Beta Alpha Psi (National Accounting Honorary). He is licensed in Virginia as a Certified Public Accountant (CPA). He is also certified by the AICPA as Accredited in Business Valuation (ABV), Certified in Financial Forensics (CFF); by the American Society of Appraisers as an Accredited Senior Appraiser in Business Valuation (ASA); and by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners as a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE).

Joshua Hedrick is a member in Kraft Analytics, LLC, an affiliate of KraftCPAs, PLLC that focuses on valuation, forensics, and transaction advisory services. For nearly two decades, Josh has advised business owners, executives, investors, and attorneys on issues related to valuation, cash flow management, compensation systems, financial strategy, and economic damages. Prior to joining Kraft in 2009, Josh worked in the valuation, forensics, and transaction advisory group of a large North Carolina-based accounting firm. He started his professional career as lender and licensed financial advisor with Wachovia Bank.

Josh's practice focuses on measuring, evaluating, and communicating economic value. His valuations - which include appraisals of business enterprises, complex equity interests, debt instruments, intellectual property, and other intangible assets - are relied upon for investment, lending, managerial planning, compliance, accounting, tax, marital dissolution, restructuring, and litigation purposes.

Litigation support and forensic services include financial expert witness services in transaction, shareholder, and business disputes, marital dissolutions, and white-collar criminal matters. His reports and testimony have been relied upon in settlement negotiations, mediations, arbitrations, and trials.

Buy and sell-side transaction advisory and due diligence services include transaction feasibility analysis, fairness opinions, valuation and deal structuring, quality of earnings reports, working capital analysis, purchase price allocations, and post transaction cash flow projections. Josh's clients cover a broad spectrum of investor types and industries - ranging from venture capital and angels investing in pre-revenue tech start-ups to synergistic buyers acquiring late round healthcare companies to cautious first-time buyers acquiring single location retail businesses to the partners of service companies establishing buy/sell agreements.

Josh is frequently featured at corporate and legal industry events as a guest speaker on topics related to valuation, exit planning, mergers and acquisitions, and economic damages.

Josh manages a team of credentialed and experienced professionals who support and enhance his practice.

Brent A. McDade is a director of Willamette Management Associates. His practice includes business valuation, litigation support, and transaction advisory services.

Brent has performed the following types of valuation and economic analyses: business and succession planning valuations, acquisition purchase price allocation valuations, asset impairment analyses, restricted stock valuations, blockage discount analyses, reasonableness of compensation analyses, restructuring and reorganization analyses, transfer price analyses, merger and acquisition valuations, fairness opinions, economic damages analyses, income-producing property valuations, phantom stock and employee incentive plan valuations, and employee stock ownership plan ("ESOP") employer stock valuations.

He has prepared these valuation and economic analyses for the following purposes: tax planning and compliance (income, gift, and estate), forensic analysis and dispute resolution, financial reporting, martial dissolution, and transaction planning (mergers and acquisitions). Brent has valued the following types of business entities, securities, and assets: contractual rights, contingent consideration, close corporations, close corporation fractional ownership interests, public corporations, intangible assets (including intellectual property), general and limited partnership interests, limited liability company interests, restricted equity and debt securities, preferred stock, proprietorships, options and warrants, and fractional interests in real estate.

He has performed valuation or arm’s-length royalty rate/transfer price analyses related to the following types of intangible assets: customer contracts, customer lists and customer relationships, employment contracts, going-concern value, goodwill, licenses, noncompete covenants, patent applications, patents, procedural manuals, trade names, trademarks, trained and assembled workforces, and training manuals and documentation.

Brent has performed business valuations, economic analyses, and/or financial advisory services for clients in the following industries, among others: alcoholic beverage manufacturing and distribution, apparel, automotive, aviation, building materials, carpet and flooring, chemicals, computers and electronic products, construction, contractors, cybersecurity, distribution, entertainment and sports, fabricated metal products, finance, government contracting, heavy construction, hospitality, insurance, Internet service providers, investment, leisure, manufacturing, natural resources, oil and gas, professional services, real estate, rental and leasing, retail, securities, security, textiles, transportation and trucking, warehousing, and wood product manufacturing.

He has served as an expert witness in disputes regarding business valuation and economic damages, particularly lost profits and lost business value, in state and federal courts. He has also been selected as the third appraiser to resolve differences of opinion between appraisers in buy-sell agreement disputes.

Shannon is a Director at Elliott Davis. She specializes in the areas of forensic accounting, business valuation, and litigation support services. She provides consulting expert and expert witness services in marital dissolution (divorce) and commercial litigation matters. Her business valuation experience encompasses a broad range of companies and industries, and has been used in litigation, merger and acquisition transactions, healthcare regulatory settings, financial statement preparation, succession and estate planning, gift tax returns, and shareholder buy-in/buy-out transactions. Shannon recently served in a national professional leadership role related to forensic and litigation services.

As a certified public accountant since 1993, Shannon has spent the last 30 years working with small businesses and their owners, with the last 18 devoted to forensic and valuation services.

Wynne is a director in the Financial Institution Advisory Group of Saltmarsh, Cleaveland & Gund, specializing in advisory services, relationship management, industry training and public speaking. With more than 40 years of experience, Wynne has advised financial institutions through all stages, from consulting on the establishment of new bank charters to buying failed banks from the FDIC. He also has decades of litigation expertise and has served as an expert witness in court cases related to bank failures and frauds across the country.

Well-known for his contributions to industry standards and education throughout his career, Wynne is respected nationally as an authority on the Current Expected Credit Losses (CECL) model, developed by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) to replace current impairment models, is the author of the AICPA's premier bank course, Introduction to Bank Accounting and Auditing and was co-editor of the Handbook of Financial Management for Banks published by McGraw Hill. He has led training for the FDIC and OCC and has been recognized as an Outstanding Speaker by the Florida Institute of CPAs and the Tennessee Society of CPAs.

Wynne currently serves on the Board of Directors for Sevier County Bancshares, Inc. and Sevier County Bank and is also a member of its Audit and Compensation Committees. Throughout his career, he has served on a number of national boards, including the AICPA's Board of Directors and Foundation Board of Trustees, Strategic Planning Committee, Banking and Savings Institutions Committee and Banking Conference Committee.

Matt is a supervisor with Kraft Analytics, LLC who specializes in fraud and forensic analysis, transaction advisory, litigation services, and business valuations. Before joining Kraft's team, Matt worked as an attorney practicing in mergers and acquisitions, tax, and contract law in the Nashville area.

Matt's forensic experience ranges from internal investigations of accounting and financial reporting irregularities to more intensive investigations of alleged fraud and other misconduct subject to litigation in both the civil and criminal arenas. Matt's forensic work includes Ponzi Schemes, financial statement manipulation, check kiting, asset misappropriation, infringement claims, fraudulent disbursements, and wire fraud.

Matt's valuation experience includes business valuations, equity interests, debt instruments, intellectual property (patents, trademarks, copyrights), and other intangible assets such as non-compete agreements, management agreements, and customer contracts. Matt's valuation work includes modeling complex equity structures, waterfall analysis, and Monte Carlo simulations.

Matt's transaction advisory experience includes valuations, fairness opinions, purchase price allocations, due diligence (buyer and seller side), and transaction structuring related to acquisitions, mergers, joint ventures, divestitures, equity investments, lending transactions, and generational transfers.

Other advisory experience includes management consulting during the due diligence and transitional phases of acquisitions, performing industry and competitive analysis, identifying business strategies, completing compensation studies, and developing capital project analysis including PPP loan analysis.

Matt has broad industry experience, including healthcare, pharmaceuticals, financial services, manufacturing, professional services, entertainment, transportation, software, life sciences, retail, construction, distribution, and real estate.

Jeff Hollingsworth recently retired after serving 16 years as a Circuit Court Judge of the 11th Judicial District (Hamilton County) Tennessee. In Circuit Court he presided over all types of civil matters, including personal injury, medical malpractice, business and contract disputes and family law cases, including divorce and child custody.

Prior to being elected judge, Jeff was a partner in the Chattanooga law firm of Chambliss, Bahner and Stophel, where he was head of the litigation section. His experience includes numerous jury trials in product liability, contract and personal injury matters. He was AV rated by Martindale Hubbel and certified as a Civil Trial Specialist by the National Board of Trial Advocacy and the Tennessee Supreme Court Commission on Specialization. He was also listed as a Rule 31 Civil Mediator by the Tennessee Supreme Court and is in the process of being recertified.

Jeff is a graduate of Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, which he attended on a football scholarship. He received his J.D. from Louisiana State University. Jeff is a Fellow of the Chattanooga and Tennessee Bar Foundations, a member of the Brock Cooper Inns of Court, and served as chair of the Public Confidence Committee of the Tennessee Judicial Conference. He served on the board of Hope for the Inner City and is currently active with Kiwanis of Chattanooga and First Things First's Dads Making a Difference program. He is an Elder and Trustee at Signal Mountain Presbyterian Church.

James G. Martin, III joined Schell & Oglesby after serving two terms as a Circuit Court Judge for the 21st Judicial District in Williamson County, Tennessee. Jim is Of Counsel with the firm and brings with him extraordinary experience and insight from both his sixteen years on the bench and as well as his 35 years in private practice.

Prior to taking the bench, Jim graduated with Honors from Vanderbilt University in 1971 after a distinguished undergraduate career and service in the United States Army. Jim then practiced law in Middle Tennessee from 1974 to 2008, primarily focusing on civil litigation with an emphasis on family law.

In addition to his private practice, Jim served as City Attorney for the City of Franklin for over a decade. He also represented the interests of Middle Tennessee Electric Membership Corporation throughout Williamson County.

While sitting as judge in Williamson County, Jim continued to serve his community through work on several task forces with the Bar Association and the State of Tennessee. Notably, Jim worked to revise the statutes and rules which govern the practice marriage and family law. Jim also served as presiding judge for the 21st Judicial District Recovery Court from 2014-2022.

Since returning to private practice, James G. Martin, III has resumed his focus on general civil and family law matters and has established a strong mediation practice as a Licensed Rule 31 Mediator. With his unparalleled experience in the fields of civil and domestic litigation as both a practitioner and judge, Jim is an invaluable asset to the firm and its clientele.

Kurt Myers concentrates his practice on business valuation services. In addition to being a CPA, he also holds the designation of Accredited in Business Valuation (ABV) from the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). He also holds the designation of Accredited Senior Appraiser (ASA) with the American Society of Appraisers, Certified Business Appraiser (CBA) with the Institute of Business Appraisers, Inc. and Certified Valuation Analyst (CVA) with the National Association of Certified Valuation Analysts. Kurt is licensed as a CPA in Tennessee and Kentucky.

With over 32 years of public accounting experience, Kurt has been involved in over 950 appraisals of various types of closely held businesses since 1994. Appraisal clients include businesses in industries such as health care, entertainment, manufacturing, wholesale and retail distributors, and service industry businesses. Appraisal services have been performed for the following types of engagements:

Mergers and Acquisitions Divorce Litigation – Marital Property Settlement Estate Planning and Estate Tax Documentation Gift Tax Substantiation Succession Planning

Kurt attended Belmont University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in accountancy. He served as a staff auditor for the State of Tennessee, Comptroller of the Treasury, and Division of State Audit and in 1988 joined Carter, Young, Lankford, & Roach, P.C. He joined Horne CPA Group in 2001 when it merged with Carter, Young, Lankford, and Roach, P.C. In October 2004, he started his own accounting and valuation firm – Myers Valuation Associates, PLLC.

Dr. Chris Kuehl is a Managing Director of Armada Corporate Intelligence. He provides forecasts and strategic guidance for a wide variety of corporate clients around the world. He is the chief economist for several national and international organizations, Fabricators and Manufacturers Association, National Association of Credit Management, Finance, Credit and International Business and the Business Information Industry Association. He is also the economic analyst for several state accounting societies – Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee and Kansas.

Prior to starting Armada in 1999 he was a professor of economics and finance for 15 years – teaching in the US, Hungary, Russia, Estonia, Singapore and Taiwan. He holds advanced degrees in economics, Soviet studies and East Asian studies.

Chris is the author of Business Intelligence Briefs and Executive Intelligence Briefs - both publications from Armada. He is also responsible for the Credit Manager's Index from NACM and Fabrinomics from the FMA.