On November 8, 2006, Ms. Cynthia Cooper was the first speaker in the Distinguished Speaker Series. Ms. Cooper is most well-known for her role in uncovering the corporate fraud at WorldCom. She was named one of Time Magazine’s 2002 Persons of the Year after detecting and reporting the fraud. Time Magazine has been naming its Person of the Year since 1927. The designation is given to the person or persons who most affected events during the year. Prior to Ms. Cooper, Sherron Watkins and Coleen Rowley, the designation has been given to only four women including Wallis Simpson, Madam Chiang Kai Shek, Elizabeth II, and Corazon Aquino.
Ms. Cooper was inducted to the 2004 AICPA Hall of Fame, and is the first woman to receive this distinction. She was featured as one of twenty-five influential working mothers in the November 2004 issue of Working Mother. Along with Senator Sarbanes, Representative Oxley and Sherron Watkins, Ms. Cooper was awarded the 2003 Maria & Sidney E. Rolfe Award by the Women’s Economic Round Table. This award was presented to Ms. Cooper due to her extraordinary contributions to educating the public about economics, business and finance.
Ms. Cooper is also the 2003 recipient of the Accounting Exemplar Award, which is awarded annually to an individual who has made notable contributions to professionalism and ethics in accounting practice or education. The American Accounting Association’s Public Interest Section recognized Ms. Cooper for her efforts to promote professionalism and ethics in the accounting profession. Ms. Cooper is the tenth recipient of the Accounting Exemplar Award and the first woman to receive the award.
Ms. Cooper previously served as the Chief Audit Executive for MCI until July 2004.Prior to joining MCI, she worked in public accounting in Atlanta, Georgia for PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte & Touche. Ms Cooper received her undergraduate degree in Accounting from Mississippi State University and her Masters of Accountancy from the University of Alabama.