Neel Corporate Governance Center - Speaker Series Current Schedule

Kazi Islam

September 6, 2024
9:30-11:00 a.m.
Location: Student Union 262A/B

Kazi Islam serves as the global assurance strategy and growth leader for PwC, which includes the firm’s audit, digital trust, ESG and AI practices. Prior to this role, he served as the U.S. strategy leader for PwC’s trust solutions segment. With an assurance background that spans more than 25 years, he has cultivated extensive experience serving large, public, multinational audit clients across a wide array of sectors — including chemicals, automotive, packaging, process industries and industrial products — across various global markets. In his current capacity, Islam engages with a diverse range of stakeholders that includes clients, boards, industry organizations, academic institutions and regulators. He leads the creation of new businesses, services and growth platforms, including technology and innovation strategy, and oversees marketing and branding for global assurance. Islam is a member of PwC’s global assurance management team, which oversees strategic decisions and critical aspects of the global practice, including technology, quality, talent management, client relations and market expansion.

Marty Brown

September 20, 2024
9:30-11:00 a.m.
Location: Student Union 262A/B

Marty Brown, a 1985 UT accounting graduate, is president and CEO of PYA, an accounting and consulting firm headquartered in Knoxville. His leadership experience spans almost four decades and many industries in organizations from start-ups to Fortune 100 companies. Brown has approached clients’ needs with a mindfulness and purposefulness based on defining values — relationships, excellence, character and impact — and a culture of help. Under Brown’s leadership, PYA has ranked consistently among the nation’s top 100 accounting firms and has been honored with the Inside Public Accounting’s “Best of the Best Firms” ranking for strategic and visionary leadership and growth. Accounting Today ranked PYA as a Top 100 firm and “one of the most successful firms in the country.” Modern Healthcare has ranked PYA consistently in the top 20 firms in the nation for healthcare management consulting. In 2022, Brown was awarded the UT Alumni Service Award. In 2024, Forbes named him one of America’s Top 200 CPAs.

Brown is very active in the community and has served in leadership positions in many organizations. His spirit of entrepreneurship and thinking manifests in many PYA initiatives. This year marks PYA’s fourth annual Ballard Innovation Award — the largest of its kind in East Tennessee — given to three innovative startups. PYA has launched several successful startups, with Brown serving as a founding partner and executive committee member for these organizations, including Realty Trust Group, ranked by Modern Healthcare as the nation’s 10th largest healthcare development company, and PYA Waltman, Knoxville’s fourth largest registered investment advisory firm. Additionally, Brown is a co-founder and general partner of Market Square Ventures.

Bart Dockery

October 11, 2024
9:30-11:00 a.m.
Location: Student Union 262A/B

Bart Dockery is a Director in RSM’s Consulting Practice and is based in Knoxville, Tennessee. He is responsible for a National Team providing project and oversight to RSM’s most complex engagements across all service lines and industries such as consumer products, gaming, financial services, hospitality, health care, life sciences, and private equity. His thirty years consulting experience spans process improvements design, resource strategy alignment, custom and package implementation, large scale transformation migrating from ERP System to another, and numerous global deployments of solutions. His expertise in Program and Account Management numerous technologies helping Customers leverage new uses of data and technology to gain efficiencies throughout key business processes. Dockery graduated from Carson-Newman University with a Bachelor of Science in computer information systems.