Robotic Process Automation Fundamentals for Accounting and Finance Professionals Certificate Program

Sean Stein Smith is an assistant professor at Lehman College (CUNY), a member of the AICPA Leadership Academy class of 2017, and was named a 40 under 40 by CPA Practice Advisor in 2017. His work and analysis of accounting, blockchain, and the evolution of the accounting profession has been featured in dozens of practitioner and academic publications, and numerous presentations. The CPE sessions he has led, both online and in-person, have attracted thousands of attendees in 2018 alone. Sean has presented on, written about, and been interviewed in live T.V. formats the various implications and applications of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology on various aspects of the accounting and financial services marketplace. Sean has also presented at regional and national level accounting conferences discussing blockchain and the accounting profession. Additionally, he is the author of numerous books focusing on accounting, technology, and how the profession will change moving forward. He has created and led nearly a dozen CPE sessions tying back to blockchain for the NJCPA, NJ chapter of the ACFE, CPA Academy, a national accounting conference (Scaling New Heights), and is slated to present at the coming Accounting and Technology show, being held in Manhattan July 2018. New York

Edward Brooks is trained as a chartered accountant in London with Ernst & Young, and went on to work as a consultant with Accenture and ISG before launching The RPA Academy in 2017. During his consulting years, Ed specialized in outsourcing and business transformation, and advised and supported technology start-ups. The RPA Academy was founded to address the growing skills shortages in the automation space, and has since expanded its training offerings to include courses on RPA, Machine Learning, AI, and Blockchain.

Chanyuan (Abigail) Zhang is a PhD candidate in the Accounting Information System department at Rutgers Business School. Her research addresses the impacts of emerging technologies, especially Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Intelligent Process Automation (IPA), on auditing. She has been working with several medium sized public accounting firms to build prototypes of implementing RPA in some of their audit procedures. In her working paper “Intelligent Process Automation in Audit�, which has been presented in the Strategic and Emerging Technologies (SET) workshop in the 2018 American Accounting Association (AAA) annual meeting, three frameworks are constructed to guide the implementation of IPA in the future of audit. Currently she is also a part time lecturer at Rutgers Business School.