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Construction’s Tech Revolution: How Generational Change is Driving Digital Transformation

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For decades, construction businesses have balanced hammers in one hand and paper ledgers in the other. However, a significant shift is underway, according to Angela Nelson, a 15-year Sage veteran and three-time Platinum Club member.

In a recent episode of The Unofficial Sage Intacct Podcast, Nelson shared insights into how the construction industry is embracing technology after years of resistance.

From Support to Sales: Angela’s Construction Journey

Nelson brings a unique perspective to construction technology. Beyond her professional experience, she has personal ties to the industry—her father worked in construction, and her brother-in-law owned a concrete company.

“I’ve been with Sage for 15 years, always in construction and real estate,” explains Nelson. “I started my career at Sage in support, so I got to know the customer base very well. Then I moved to sales and have held almost every position in sales.”

For the past four years, Nelson has been a Partner Account Manager (PAM), supporting Sage’s network of partners selling to construction businesses. While most PAMs in her division manage 4-5 partners, Nelson handles 14—a testament to her expertise with legacy products and newer cloud solutions.

“I am more of a facilitator than a manager,” she says of her role. “What can I do to help you sell? What can I do to facilitate between what Sage’s goals are and what your goals are?”

Why Construction Has Resisted Technology

Construction companies have traditionally been slow to adopt new technology. This resistance has deep roots in the industry’s practical, hands-on culture. 

“A lot of these guys start these businesses and they just go and they do it,” Nelson explains. “They’re not worried about reporting and all this other kind of thing until they get to a certain point.”

Many construction business owners begin with trade skills rather than technological expertise. Their focus centers on completing projects and managing crews, not implementing sophisticated financial systems. Paper-based processes and basic spreadsheets have dominated simply because they are functional enough for immediate needs.

The Generational Shift Changing Everything

A profound change is happening as aging business owners pass their companies to the next generation.

“All the people that are my age that are now like, ‘You know what, I’m getting tired of swinging a hammer. I’m getting tired of getting shocked when I’m installing an electrical outlet.’ These guys are now like, ‘I’m going to give this to my kids. I want my kids to take over the business,'” Nelson says.

This succession planning has become a catalyst for digital transformation. “These kids have grown up with technology,” she continues. “So now what we’re seeing is all of a sudden, it feels like a rush to get these companies that were using pencil and paper and Excel to do everything. Now they’re all like, ‘Nope, that’s not what we want to do. We need all these guys to be using iPads in the field and iPhones. And we want a cloud-based system.'”

The impact can be transformative. Podcast co-host Matt Lescault shared his experience working with a steel fabricator in 2005 that was still handwriting every invoice. By implementing proper systems over two years, the company grew from roughly $600,000 in revenue to $3.6 million—a six-fold increase enabled mainly through technology.

Sage’s Journey in Construction Technology

Sage’s position in construction technology has evolved significantly over time. The company entered the market in 2003 by acquiring Timberline, a construction software company that has served the industry since the early 1970s. This product, now known as Sage 300 CRE, remains popular today.

“Timberline is an amazing product,” Nelson reflects. “It may not be pretty, but it’s an amazing product. It works very well and people are very loyal to that.”

Sage expanded its construction offerings around 2008 by acquiring Master Builder (now Sage 100 Contractor), which catered to smaller construction companies. The fundamental transformation began after acquiring Intacct in 2017, followed by the launch of Sage Intacct Construction in 2020.

Recent years have seen Sage double down on construction through strategic acquisitions:

“In 2021, we acquired Corecon, now Sage Construction Management. And then last year, we acquired BidMatrix,” Nelson explains. “The thought process behind this is we want to have a product for every stage of a job, from bidding to winning that bid to handling that project to overseeing the project to doing all of the financial statements.”

This focus marks a significant shift in Sage’s corporate strategy. “This is the vertical that Sage as a whole is focusing on right now because we are the fastest growing vertical there is,” says Nelson.

What makes this evolution particularly remarkable is how the construction division earned this attention. “Up until about 4 or 5 years ago, we were kind of ignored,” Nelson remembers. “Other than the fact that we performed to our goals every year with very, very little support from anything.”

Connecting the Field to the Back Office

Sage’s construction technology is powerful because it integrates field operations with financial management, creating a seamless flow of information.

“The construction module ties in with the financial portion of it very closely,” Nelson explains. Meanwhile, “Sage Construction Management enables project managers and field techs to be able to do their jobs with information. They can record their job costs, the equipment they’re using, and do field reports.”

This integration creates significant time and labor savings compared to traditional methods. Nelson contrasts the old way—”handwriting invoices, doing an Excel spreadsheet and then transferring to another Excel spreadsheet”—with the streamlined approach where “somebody can just enter the information and it flows through easily, and then you push a button and it creates the invoice.”

Cloud-based systems also enhance disaster preparedness. Nelson has seen clients lose everything when storing data on-premise: “When everything is stored in your office, and you experience a disaster… they lost everything.” This vulnerability becomes particularly acute in construction, where project data represents historical knowledge and future revenue potential.

When Is It Time to Upgrade?

Companies typically outgrow basic systems at specific growth milestones. Nelson identifies these triggers: “Once they’re hitting about that 5 million a year mark… Sage Intacct customers average at least 5 million in revenue and about 20 employees.”

Beyond size, she points to three key factors that signal it’s time to move to a cloud solution:

  1. Annual revenue approaching $5 million
  2. Growing to around 20 employees
  3. Increasing job complexity
  4. Understanding the vulnerabilities of on-premise systems

The construction industry’s embrace of technology is evident in Sage Intacct Construction’s rapidly growing user base. “We have over 1,600 companies on Sage Intacct Construction,” Nelson reveals.

Building for Tomorrow

The construction industry has reached a pivotal moment in its technological evolution. The convergence of generational change with Sage’s strategic focus on construction has created perfect conditions for digital transformation in an industry that has historically approached technology with caution.

As founding contractors step away from daily operations, they’re handing leadership to digital natives who understand how integrated, cloud-based systems drive efficiency and growth. This generational handover is accelerating what would otherwise be a much slower technology adoption curve.

The industry’s future belongs to those who can seamlessly connect field operations with financial management through integrated, cloud-based systems. As younger leaders continue to take the reins of established construction businesses, this digital transformation will accelerate, widening the gap between technology adopters and those clinging to traditional methods.

Listen to the full conversation with Angela Nelson on The Unofficial Sage Intacct Podcast to hear more insights about construction’s technological revolution and how Sage’s solutions are transforming the industry.

From Mob Graves to Corporate Fraud: A Prosecutor’s Journey Through America’s Most Notorious Cases

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When former federal prosecutor Sam Buell received an unexpected phone call asking if he wanted to join the Enron Task Force, he had zero background in accounting or corporate finance. “I just got the Enron case. Do you want to come work with me?” asked his former supervisor Leslie Caldwell. Just like that, Buell found himself thrust into what would become one of the most significant corporate fraud cases in American history.

In a fascinating episode of “Oh My Fraud” podcast, Caleb Newquist and Greg Kyte interview Buell about his remarkable journey from prosecuting mob bosses to untangling Enron’s complex accounting schemes. Now the Bernard M. Fishman Distinguished Professor of Law at Duke University, Buell offers rare insider perspective on how major fraud cases are built and why corporate criminals are so difficult to prosecute.

From Organized Crime to Corporate Fraud

Before tackling Enron’s financial mysteries, Buell cut his teeth on cases straight out of a crime drama. After graduating from NYU Law School, he clerked for a federal judge in Brooklyn’s Eastern District of New York during the early 1990s.

“That courthouse was the most interesting place I had ever been in my life,” Buell explains. “At that time, in the early 90s, there was more crime than anybody knew what to do with. The murder rate in New York City was around 2,000 murders a year at its peak.”

The district was a hotbed of criminal organizations – not just the Italian Mafia, but diverse groups organized around various ethnic communities. These enterprises ran everything from drug trafficking to extortion, illegal gambling, and even human smuggling operations.

“These guys aren’t doing fraud,” Buell notes. “What they’re doing is real… it’s black markets. The question is simply what’s getting detected and caught and what isn’t. It’s a pure cat and mouse game.”

After moving to Boston, Buell joined the infamous Whitey Bulger investigation. Though Bulger himself was a fugitive, his lieutenant, Kevin Weeks eventually cooperated with authorities.

“Weeks took us to some locations where we recovered a total of five bodies,” Buell recounts. “The bodies were exactly where he said they were going to be. After 20 years, vegetation changes, everything changes. But I don’t think you forget that.”

Working on these cases taught Buell to “follow the money” – a skill that would prove invaluable when he later tackled corporate crime.

The Call That Changed Everything

In late 2001, while still working on the Bulger case, Buell received the call that would redirect his career. Leslie Caldwell, his former supervisor from New York who was now heading the Enron Task Force, invited him to join the investigation of America’s most spectacular corporate collapse.

Despite having a young child and a new house, Buell’s wife encouraged him to take the opportunity. “This is the one shot to do something,” she told him.

The learning curve was steep. “I needed a high-speed education,” Buell admits. “I didn’t even know what LIBOR was. People would say ‘LIBOR plus basis points,’ and I’d be like, ‘what is LIBOR?'”

Fortunately, prosecutors worked closely with SEC experts who could explain the complex accounting issues. “You’re talking to a lot of people who are experts, including lots of the witnesses who were CPAs. You’re like, ‘explain it to me like I’m your mother.'”

Despite the technical complexity, Buell found the fundamental challenge familiar: follow the money and identify the deception. “The people you’re dealing with speak a different language, but that doesn’t mean they’re smarter than you or capable of understanding things you’re not capable of understanding.”

The Slippery Slope of Corporate Fraud

Unlike TV crime dramas where villains set out to commit fraud from day one, Buell explains that most corporate fraud cases follow a pattern of gradual escalation.

“Once you tell the first lie, once you mess with the first number, it’s like… you read about what happened in Worldcom,” he says. What eventually became a billion-dollar accounting scandal often begins with small manipulations that executives might consider minor stretches of the rules.

Buell calls this “the creep effect” – a series of increasingly problematic decisions driven by pressure to maintain appearances and stock prices.

“These companies are being lauded as great success stories. And no CEO wants to say, ‘actually, we’re not succeeding,'” Buell explains. This reluctance creates enormous pressure, especially when executive compensation is tied directly to stock performance.

At Enron, “the tail was wagging the dog,” as Buell puts it. “Everything was designed not to have the stock price be a reflection of fundamental value, but a reflection of excitement about all the things they were going to do.”

Personal financial entanglements made this pressure even more intense. Many executives had borrowed against their company stock to finance lavish lifestyles.

“Ken Lay at Enron was being told to buy things like yachts and horses and cars and real estate—not very liquid stuff,” Buell explains. “So when the stock price starts coming down, there’s margin calls coming from the personal bankers, and they can’t be satisfied with selling other assets because you’ve put all your money into illiquid things.”

This creates a powerful motivation to keep the stock price up at all costs.

The Arthur Andersen Controversy

One of the most controversial aspects of the Enron case was the prosecution of Arthur Andersen, Enron’s accounting firm, for obstruction of justice. When Andersen employees shredded Enron-related documents as the SEC investigation began, prosecutors saw a clear case of obstruction.

“To have a big five accounting firm that was already in trouble with the SEC…suddenly have the relationship partner and somebody in the in-house counsel’s office telling all the junior people in Houston to shred everything other than the official working papers…because the SEC is looking at Enron – this was shocking,” Buell explains.

The Justice Department offered Andersen a settlement, but the firm refused to admit wrongdoing, fearing this would destroy them in civil litigation. When prosecutors proceeded with an indictment, Andersen launched a massive PR campaign with “full page ads in the Wall Street Journal about how the Justice Department is trying to put 10,000 people out of work.”

Though a jury convicted Andersen, the Supreme Court later overturned the conviction on a technical point regarding jury instructions. By then, however, Andersen had already collapsed.

The case had lasting repercussions for corporate prosecutions. “It explains a lot about why the settlement market in corporate criminal prosecutions has boomed over the last 20 years,” Buell notes. Defense attorneys now routinely argue, “You don’t want to have another Arthur Andersen,” to secure deferred prosecution agreements for corporate clients.

“Boeing got a deferred prosecution agreement and hundreds of people died,” Buell points out. “General Motors got a deferred prosecution agreement. The argument was being made, ‘Hey, you can’t slam GM. You know, you want to win Michigan.'”

Proving Criminal Intent in Corporate Settings

The central challenge in prosecuting corporate fraud isn’t just finding misleading statements – it’s establishing criminal intent in environments where some level of deception is normalized.

“When we say someone has the intent to defraud, what we really mean is that they have the intent to engage in a kind of deceit that is wrongful in the context. And they know it,” explains Buell.

He illustrates this through a comparison: “Think about the difference between poker and golf. In poker, it’s part of the game that everyone is trying to deceive each other… In golf, you’re supposed to apply the rules very strictly to yourself.”

This distinction extends to financial markets, where different sectors have different norms about acceptable negotiation versus fraudulent misrepresentation.

Applying this framework to Enron reveals why the case was so complex. “It wasn’t like there was no there there,” Buell explains. Unlike a pure Ponzi scheme, Enron had legitimate business operations. “The criminal case was a collection of pieces of the business and incidents over time where they stepped over the lines and told lies. That doesn’t mean that the whole company was a fraud.”

Buell describes Enron as “a Rube Goldberg device…cantilevered off of itself constantly.” This complexity made it challenging not only to identify fraud but also to explain it to juries.

Why Corporate Fraud Persists

Despite landmark prosecutions and regulatory reforms like Sarbanes-Oxley, corporate fraud continues to plague our financial system. When asked what continues to surprise him, Buell answers simply: “That the scandals never stop.”

He points to ineffective regulation as a key factor. “Every single one of these cases almost…you can see directly the story of taking advantage of ineffective regulators.” From Boeing’s relationship with the FAA to Volkswagen’s emissions cheating, companies exploit weak oversight.

Sarbanes-Oxley, passed after Enron, had limited impact on criminal enforcement. More troublingly, it “never took up the question of what kind of products are being traded, by whom, and what is the danger of that…the shadow banking problem.”

Buell sees Enron as “a canary in the coal mine” that foreshadowed the 2008 financial crisis. “Enron, even though it was an energy company, was basically trying to run itself like an investment bank, trading products that were not regulated by the banking system in ways that ended up being much riskier than people realized.”

Most disappointing is how little we seem to learn from these cases. “Every time one of these things blows up, there’s all this talk about lessons learned. But the lessons don’t actually seem to get learned.”

For a fascinating first-hand account of how major corporate fraud cases are built from the prosecutor’s perspective, listen to the full conversation with Sam Buell on the Oh My Fraud podcast. His experiences provide essential context for understanding why corporate fraud remains so persistent despite our best efforts to prevent it. 

You can also earn free CPE for listening with Earmark.

These Two Finance Teams Are Already Using AI While You’re Still Debating It

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Picture two finance teams: One is drowning in expense reports, manually checking every receipt, and spending hours on data entry. The other analyzes spending patterns, negotiates better vendor deals, and helps business units make smarter decisions. The difference isn’t budget or team size. It’s whether they’ve embraced artificial intelligence (AI) tools.

This became clear during a recent crossover episode of The Accounting Podcast and Beyond Spend, recorded live at Emburse in Motion in Nashville. Host Blake Oliver, CPA, spoke with Adriana Carpenter, CFO of Emburse, and Olga Pavlova-Grebliauske from PizzaExpress—two finance leaders who have moved beyond talking about AI’s potential to using it daily.

While much of the accounting profession continues to debate what AI might do someday, these teams already use smart automation to eliminate tedious tasks. They’re moving from being compliance enforcers to business enablers who guide spending decisions and drive real value through data insights.

Stop Looking at Things That Don’t Need Attention

The change starts with a mental shift: finance teams no longer need to review every transaction. 

For Olga at PizzaExpress, it’s not an option. She manages financial operations for a restaurant chain with over 350 locations across the UK, Ireland, Hong Kong, the UAE, and beyond. She deals with massive transaction volumes that would overwhelm any team doing manual reviews.

“Just stop looking at something that doesn’t need to be looked at,” Olga explains.

Consider PizzaExpress’s approach to VAT compliance. Previously, finance staff had to manually check every receipt to find and separate tips and service charges from product items. This is critical because VAT treatment differs for these components. Miss a service charge buried at the bottom of a long receipt, and the company risks over-reimbursing itself on VAT.

Now, AI-powered keyword detection automatically flags receipts containing terms like “tips,” “service charges,” or specific alcohol brands. The system doesn’t skip human oversight. Instead, it surfaces just the transactions that need attention. A receipt with a clearly separated tip gets processed automatically, while one with a service charge in a long itemized bill gets flagged for review.

Finding Hidden Insights in Your Own Data

When finance teams don’t have to look at every transaction, they can use this time to discover insights hiding in their own data. Adriana’s experience at Emburse shows how AI-powered analytics transforms routine spend management into business intelligence that drives real improvements and cost savings.

The transformation began with unlocking insights in their data through the power of Emburse Analytics, which combines spending data to reveal patterns. Rather than just processing reimbursements, the platform analyzes spending across departments, vendors, and categories.

Adrianna shares an example where the system identified vendor spend flowing through the wrong channels. Employees were buying SaaS subscriptions and processing them through expense reports rather than the company’s preferred procure-to-pay process. This created multiple problems: lost visibility into software subscriptions, missed security assessments, no volume discounts, and risk of buying duplicate solutions.

The system found scattered Adobe and DocuSign subscriptions—twelve individual Adobe licenses buried in expense reports, plus one enterprise license in accounts payable. Similar patterns appeared across other software vendors.

Armed with this intelligence, the finance team took strategic action. They consolidated the scattered Adobe licenses into a single enterprise agreement, negotiated better per-seat pricing, eliminated redundant subscriptions, and established clearer procurement protocols. The result wasn’t just cost reduction—it was better software governance, improved security oversight, and stronger vendor relationships.

The Future: Finance as Business Enablers

Adriana’s vision for the future shows how smart automation can change the relationship between finance teams and the broader organization, shifting from gatekeepers to enablers.

This future isn’t theoretical—it’s “quarters away, not years away,” according to Adriana. She describes a comprehensive AI-powered system that integrates calendar data, location tracking, emails, and receipt capture to pre-populate expense reports with minimal employee effort.

Adriana envisions AI as a central agent for all travel spending decisions—a single interface where employees interact with compliant travel booking options through conversation rather than hunting through policy documents.

Let’s say you want to book a business trip. You’ll open the Emburse app, and the AI will ask, “Tell me where you want to go. Tell me what it’s for,” Adrianna describes. The system will present only policy-compliant options and handle approval routing automatically.

“You’re helping the employee be compliant,” Adriana explains. Rather than catching policy violations after they happen, the system prevents violations by making compliance the easiest path. Employees get what they need efficiently, while finance teams gain better visibility and control.

Emburse is already working on technology to make this vision a reality. Their upcoming AI-powered hotel and car rental folio capabilities will accurately extract detailed folio data and itemize everything automatically. “It’s basically going to be able to look at very detailed receipts and truly go in and read it all and itemize,” Adriana says. This detailed data layer becomes the foundation for more advanced AI that can make decisions automatically.

Getting Started: Don’t Wait for Perfect Conditions

For organizations hesitant about this transformation, both leaders stress starting now rather than waiting.

Adriana recommends education as the foundation. “Educate yourself, educate your team,” she says. “We have a CFO organization that I’m a part of, and I get ideas from that. I get ideas from others in the industry. I get ideas from my CTO.”

She also suggests finding partners actively investing in AI development. “Look for partners that are investing in leading in these areas because they can also make it easier as a finance org to adopt and then continue to iterate.”

Olga adds that organizations should identify their most repetitive tasks first and remember that automation systems need ongoing human oversight. It’s also critical to get input from the people actually doing the work.

The Time to Act is Now

While many in the profession continue debating AI’s theoretical implications, forward-thinking teams are already getting real benefits from smart automation. 

Finance professionals who embrace these tools are positioning themselves as strategic partners who guide spending decisions and enable business growth through data insights. The choice facing accounting professionals today isn’t whether to eventually adopt AI—it’s whether to lead this transformation or be dragged along by it.

For finance leaders ready to make this leap, the path forward is clear: identify your most repetitive tasks, educate yourself and your team, and partner with vendors actively investing in AI. Most importantly, don’t let fear of imperfection prevent progress.

Technology isn’t just changing how we work—it’s redefining what it means to be a finance professional. Those who seize this opportunity will discover that AI doesn’t threaten their careers; it elevates them to roles they never imagined possible.

Women in Accounting Are Finally Done Pretending They Have It All Figured Out

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“Can we be friends?”

It was a simple message sent through a professional Slack channel—the direct approach that might work perfectly in elementary school but feels surprisingly vulnerable in the polished accounting world. Questian Telka had been watching Nancy McClelland’s posts in their Bookkeeping Buds community, thinking she seemed smart and funny, and decided to reach out.

Nancy’s response was swift and brutally honest: “No, I don’t have time for that.”

Looking back, Nancy admits she still can’t believe she said that. But it was a perfectly professional answer, the kind that protects busy women behind walls of efficiency. Yet it also captured something deeper about how women in accounting often navigate their careers, maintaining protective barriers even when craving authentic connections.

That initial rejection might have ended the story there, but Questian’s persistence paid off. Their eventual friendship became the foundation for “She Counts,” a new podcast where Nancy and Questian create the space they both desperately needed when starting their accounting careers. 

In their inaugural episode, they share how two very different paths through the accounting world led to the same realization: the conversations they needed most were the ones no one was having.

Two Different Paths, Same Destination

While both women ended up in accounting, their journeys couldn’t have been more different.

Nancy’s path was anything but traditional. With an undergraduate degree in music education from the University of Michigan, she started teaching music theory and managing finances at the Ann Arbor School for the Performing Arts. They were using Quicken—not even QuickBooks—to run their finances, and Nancy discovered a stack of uncashed checks in a drawer that had been sitting there for an entire semester.

“I found this big stack of uncashed undeposited checks in the drawer when I first started, and they just decided they would collect checks for the whole semester and then deposit them at the end of the semester,” Nancy recalls with a laugh.

From there, she worked at a world-famous violin-making studio, where she met Teresa Briggs, a tax preparer who became an unexpected mentor. “That woman saw in me what I had no idea about, which was that I needed to become a tax professional,” Nancy explains. Teresa gave her a CCH Master Tax Guide as a going-away gift—a moment that completely changed Nancy’s career trajectory.

After moving to Chicago, Nancy accidentally started her firm while trying to temp during wedding planning and caring for her mother, who had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Twenty-five years later, she runs The Dancing Accountant, focusing on hyper-local small businesses in her neighborhood.

Questian’s journey was marked by persistence and significant life challenges. It took her three attempts to finish college—something she struggled to share because of the shame she felt around it. “It took me three attempts to finish school before I finally graduated, and it’s not because I was a bad student because I actually had really good grades,” she explains. “But life kept getting in the way, and at the time I also had undiagnosed ADHD.”

She eventually worked in a non-client-facing role at a Big Four firm for ten years, then moved to a nonprofit as director of finance and accounting. But everything changed when her second son was born with a rare chromosomal abnormality. After six weeks in the NICU and eight surgeries before age two, Questian realized she needed the flexibility to be present for her family.

“When he was born, I expected we would see negative things. People would stare or say negative things. But what I really saw was the good in people,” she reflects. “It completely changed my view and made me want to lean more into nonprofit work and specifically disability advocacy.”

That experience also opened her up to having deeper conversations with other women, eventually leading to her recognition that so many women in accounting were struggling with similar challenges.

The Masks We All Wear

Despite their different backgrounds, both women discovered they were dealing with the same fundamental issue: professional isolation. But it showed up differently for each of them.

When Questian started her firm five years ago, she had “no accounting colleagues or friends” to turn to when challenges came up. “There were several times where I had problems that I needed to solve, and I didn’t have anyone to ask. And so then I started questioning, do I really have enough knowledge to be doing this? Do I have what it takes to run this business?”

Nancy’s experience was shaped by what she calls “loads of displaced confidence”—raised by parents who told her she could do anything. But underneath that confidence was a different kind of struggle. “I knew that I was just stabbing in the dark at a lot of it, and I didn’t have anyone to talk to about the fact that I was just making it up as I went along.”

She knew some people in accounting, but they were mostly men, and some were “really judgy and self-important,” which made her feel small, wrong, angry, and defensive. So she did what many women do: “I just put a mask on and pretended that I had it all figured out. And wearing that mask, it was actually really isolating.”

Both had breakthroughs when they found community. For Questian, it was joining Bookkeeping Buds, where she could finally connect with other women who understood her challenges. “It wasn’t until I found community that I finally began to find my stride,” she says.

The Invisible Challenges No One Talks About

Through their friendship and conversations with other women in accounting, Nancy and Questian realized that women face challenges often invisible to their male colleagues.

“Women really have some specific challenges that, quite honestly, men don’t have to deal with. And for the most part, don’t necessarily understand what those challenges are that we’re facing,” Questian explains.

These challenges can feel invisible sometimes. Nancy mentions one many women will recognize: “It turns out that having a favorite place to cry in the office is a thing, and men are shocked when they find out that we all had our safe place to go when we had to cry in the office. It’s real.”

“It’s not about excluding men,” Questian clarifies. “It’s about making space where women can stop filtering and just be themselves.”

Creating the Conversations We Need

Their vision for “She Counts” came from recognizing that the needed conversations were already happening in scattered, private moments. “It’s like a parallel to our WhatsApp groups and our Slack groups of female colleagues that we’ve met along the way, or the conversations that we have when getting together at conferences or meeting for coffee,” Nancy explains.

What makes their approach different is their commitment to authenticity over expertise. “We are not going to be preaching,” Nancy emphasizes. “This is not about that because we are not pretending that we’ve got it all figured out.”

Their approach deliberately avoids toxic positivity. “The good and the bad, they coexist, right? They don’t cancel each other out,” Nancy explains. “If you’re acknowledging the good in your life and you’re acknowledging the bad in your life, then you start to recognize, oh gosh, we’re just humans trying to figure this out.”

They’ve already identified over 50 topics they want to cover, including “Start with No” (about learning to say no before convincing yourself to say yes), “How to make business happen when life happens,” “Do it anyway” (about facing fear), and “I engage in too much negative self-talk like a stupid idiot” (yes, that’s the actual title—see what they did there?).

The podcast won’t feature guests every episode. Instead, it’s topic-driven; they want listener input on what to discuss. “We really want to hear from all of you what ideas you have, what topics you would like to discuss,” Questian says.

Building Community Beyond Individual Success

What they’re creating goes beyond just another professional development resource. It’s about shifting from isolation to community, from pretending to have it all figured out to admitting we are all work in progress.

Nancy captures this perfectly when describing a conversation with a colleague: “I’m not happy that you’re struggling with this, too, but I’m also glad that it’s not just me.” That sentiment—wishing others didn’t have to struggle while finding relief in shared experience—is exactly why authentic professional community matters.

Their philosophy, borrowed from friend Shirley Koss, is “go where you’re celebrated, not where you’re tolerated.” Rather than enduring professional environments that don’t support them, they encourage women to actively seek and create spaces where authenticity is valued.

“If you’ve ever felt like you’re the only one, you’re not. And you shouldn’t have to figure this all out alone,” Questian states. This isn’t just their tagline—it’s their mission.

The podcast is supported by sponsors who understand this mission: Forwardly, Ignition, and Keeper. Nancy gives special recognition to Ignition, where she was a Top 50 Women in Accounting awardee. Their new grant program for past awardees helped make this podcast possible.

Where We Go From Here

Nancy and Questian’s journey from that initial “No, I don’t have time for that” to launching “She Counts” proves something important: the conversations women in accounting need most aren’t happening in formal training sessions or networking events. They’re happening in coffee shops, text messages, and Zoom calls between women who understand each other’s reality.

Now, they’re making those conversations accessible to everyone who needs them. Their next episode is called “She Believed in Me Before I Did,” and it’s about mentorship and the people who see potential in us before we see it ourselves.

“It’s not just you count or I count. It’s “She Counts.” It’s like the voices of women in accounting, working together to try to figure it out and to try to be better than we already are,” Nancy explains.

For women in accounting who have felt alone in their professional struggles, this podcast represents both validation and hope. It’s proof that the challenges are real, shared, and manageable when approached with community support and honest conversation.

The question now isn’t whether you have time for authentic professional community—it’s whether you can afford not to make time for it. Because, as Nancy and Questian discovered, the right conversations don’t just change individual careers. They transform entire professions.

Ready to join the conversation? Follow She Counts on LinkedIn, subscribe to the podcast, and help them brainstorm topics for future episodes. After all, this isn’t just their podcast—it belongs to every woman in accounting who’s ready to stop figuring it out alone.

Hidden in Plain Sight: How Yale Missed a $40 Million Procurement Fraud

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For years, Yale University School of Medicine administrator Jamie Petrone lived a lifestyle far beyond what her job title suggested. She drove a Mercedes-Benz G550, a Range Rover Autobiography edition, and other luxury cars. She owned three houses in Connecticut and another in Georgia. Her social media accounts showed off her wealth for everyone to see. Yet it took nearly a decade before anyone at the prestigious Ivy League school asked how she could afford it.

The shocking truth: Jamie was orchestrating a massive fraud from inside Yale. She secretly ordered thousands of tablet computers—mostly Microsoft Surface Pros—and shipped them to an out-of-state business. That business paid her personally through her own company’s bank account. By the time an anonymous tip finally exposed the scheme in 2021, Yale had lost more than $40 million.

As told in an episode of Oh My Fraud, this case represents one of the most significant procurement fraud schemes ever perpetrated against an academic institution.

A Trusted Employee Exploits the System

Jamie joined the Yale School of Medicine’s Department of Emergency Medicine in 2008 and rose to become Director of Finance and Administration by 2019. With years of experience, she knew Yale’s procurement procedures inside and out, giving her the perfect roadmap to commit fraud.

In 2020, Jamie’s supervisors questioned why her department’s budget showed a big spike in computer purchases. She claimed the department was updating equipment and collaborating on a new project with Yale New Haven Health. No one pressed her further.

The $10,000 Threshold Trick

One simple rule made Jamie’s fraud possible: She could approve any purchase under $10,000 without extra oversight. Rather than submitting big orders for 50 or 100 tablets at once, she broke them into smaller requests—each one kept below the $10,000 limit. With no second approval required, her orders sailed through accounting.

According to the FBI, Jamie placed thousands of these small orders. In one case, she directed a coworker to purchase 100 Surface Pro tablets in 13 separate purchase orders. Twelve orders were for 8 tablets each, totaling about $9,100 each, and one order was for 4 tablets at $4,551. By splitting them up, she avoided the automated controls meant to detect high-value purchases.

Jamie then claimed the tablets were for department research or other official projects. Instead, she shipped them straight to a third-party reseller in New York, which sent payments to her company, Maziv Entertainment LLC. This arrangement racked up millions of dollars of profit, all at Yale’s expense.

Suspicious Spending Hiding in Plain Sight

While Jamie carefully hid the paper trail, she did not hide the results. She drove multiple luxury vehicles, including a Range Rover Autobiography and a Mercedes G550. She amassed four homes and flaunted her lifestyle on Instagram. Even without a full investigation, her lavish, conspicuous spending should have raised questions.

According to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), “living beyond one’s means” is the top behavioral red flag among fraudsters. Despite this common red flag, nobody at Yale confronted the glaring mismatch between her university administrator salary and her multimillion-dollar expenditures—until an anonymous whistleblower reported seeing her load stacks of computers into her Range Rover in 2021.

The Anonymous Tip and FBI Investigation

In August 2021, Yale received a tip about large quantities of computer equipment leaving its campus. After confirming that Jamie was ordering suspiciously high volumes of tablets, the university notified the FBI. Investigators got a search warrant and began tracking packages Jamie sent from a FedEx location in Orange, Connecticut, to a reseller in New York.

Within days, they intercepted several boxes containing 94 Surface Pro tablets. Records showed she had recently placed a $144,000 order for more hardware—far beyond any legitimate department need. Realizing the investigation was closing in, Jamie turned herself in on September 3, 2021.

Guilty Plea and Aftermath

Jamie eventually admitted to the scheme, telling investigators she had done it for years—perhaps as many as ten. In March 2022, she pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of filing a false tax return. She had not filed tax returns at all from 2017 through 2020, and earlier returns falsely claimed stolen equipment as business expenses.

In October 2022, Jamie was sentenced to nine years in prison. She forfeited six luxury vehicles, four houses, and more than $560,000 held in her company’s account. Yale’s official loss totaled $40,504,200. The U.S. Treasury was also shorted over $6 million in unpaid taxes.

Lessons for Every Organization

This fraud shows how easily a single employee can exploit weak procurement controls—even at an elite institution with a $41 billion endowment. Here are some key lessons:

  1. No One Is Above Suspicion: Long-term employees often have the trust and insider knowledge needed to commit major fraud. Familiarize yourself with employees’ roles and watch for unexplained changes in lifestyle.
  1. Monitor Repetitive Sub-Threshold Purchases: Splitting one large order into many small ones is a common trick. Regularly examine patterns of similar purchases under approval limits.
  1. Heed Behavioral Red Flags: Living beyond means, unusual personal expenditures, or unexplained wealth should prompt further review.
  1. Take Every Tip Seriously: The ACFE’s research shows that most frauds are uncovered by tips. Encourage a culture that supports whistleblowers and investigates promptly.
  1. Don’t Overlook Tax Implications: Illicit income is still taxable. Filing false returns or failing to file can lead to extra penalties and charges.

Hear the Whole Story and Earn CPE

For more details on this case—along with expert insights on fraud and ethics—listen to the full “Oh My Fraud” podcast episode. You can also earn free CPE credit by enrolling in the course on Earmark. 

The story of how such a large-scale fraud remained hidden for so long offers valuable lessons about the power of small gaps in oversight—and the big price organizations pay when those gaps go unaddressed.