Heard in the Halls: Conference Favorites

"The session I'm looking forward to is the one on the criminal. That's always the highlight when I come to these conventions. It's interesting understanding why they did what they did, the thought process they went through and why they thought they might be able to get away with it. And even if they got caught, why wasn't the consequence enough to keep them from engaging in the act in the first place?" — Stacy Brown-Johnson, CFE, Director, Kikivarakis & Co., Nassau, Bahamas

"This is my first time here. I thought the former FBI profiler yesterday was a very interesting, very enlightening speech. It was nice to hear something a little focused on not just fraud and work, work, work until you drop dead, but that work-life balance, and how adjusting your attitude can really help change your perspective on things. I thought that was a really powerful speech." — Scott Preston, CPP, Vice President, Global Security and Investigations, TD Bank

"Coming to this conference has given me the opportunity to meet successful professionals and to network with people in this field. I'm very thankful for Dr. Wells' continued support of this scholarship and the chance it's giving me to further my career." — Vlad Morenko, Student Conference Scholarship Winner

"In the big data session yesterday, the purpose of the discussion was how we could gather structured and unstructured data together in a meaningful form that drives predictive analytics and allows us to understand the behavior patterns and identify where potential frauds might be taking place. I think many times we work with structured data because it's easy to use and not too much unstructured data, so the session yesterday was very beneficial." — Soumya Bose, CFE, Senior Vice President, Business Analytics, Citigroup

"I just attended Mark Nigrini's session. I saw him two years ago in Vegas at the ACFE Global Fraud Conference when he spoke about Benford's Law and today was a little more specific in going into the details around the speaker [Nathan Mueller] tomorrow. He, along with other sessions and speakers I've had the privilege of sitting in on, were so motivating, funny, yet inspirational, and kind of takes us back from a fraud professional perspective of what's important and really sometimes the most basic things one needs to be aware of. I find these conferences to be so valuable." — Kira Ector, CICA, Internal Audit Manager, Solarwinds