Member Profile

Steve Saunders

Steve Saunders gained an appreciation of the complexity of tax early in his career as a CPA. Here’s how he explains it: “I assumed tax was fairly prescriptive and predictable. As my work became more complex, I gained an appreciation for the nonlinear thinking that is so necessary to being… Read more »

Anna Ogenblad

When Anna Ogenblad was a second-year law student, she took a tax course and was pleasantly surprised: “I thought I was going to hate it, but instead I really found it interesting and decided to take a few more elective tax papers to specialize in tax even further.” Ogenblad, now… Read more »

Cathy Stevens

Cathy Stevens says it’s a myth that being a tax professional means you have very little interaction with other people. On the contrary, say Stevens, director of domestic taxes at Brunswick Corporation: her involvement in controversy and incentive work allows her to meet with other corporate business units and learn… Read more »

Mary Jones

Can tax be a refuge from other academic pursuits? For Mary Jones, director of benefits taxation at Microsoft Corporation, it was. “I fell into the tax space as I was trying to escape litigation and employment law and found the benefits group at an employment law firm with which I… Read more »

Walter Doggett

A great teacher can often make an epic difference in your life. Just ask Walter Doggett, the executive tax director of E*Trade Financial Corporation and incoming TEI international secretary. While attending the University of Virginia, Doggett took elective tax courses from David LaRue, an experience that greatly influenced his future… Read more »

Patricia Likogiannis

Teachers really do make a difference. Just ask Patricia Likogiannis how she got interested in tax as a career. “We had excellent tax instructors when I was an undergraduate majoring in math and accounting at the University of Waterloo,” she says. “Those teachers explained the structure, history, and reasons behind… Read more »

Marji Gordon-Brown

When Marji Gordon-Brown was in law school, she needed an elective. Having majored in accounting as an undergraduate, she thought that taking a somewhat numbers-oriented class would not be too difficult. In that elective, Gordon-Brown says, “I had a wonderful professor, Linda Galler, who was a new, young, energetic teacher.… Read more »

Peter Waterstreet

When Peter Waterstreet opted for an accelerated master of accountancy program, he made a critical decision: he chose the tax stem over the professional accounting and information systems stems. In making that choice, he was influenced by business law and introductory tax classes that were part of the undergraduate accounting… Read more »

Linda Kim

Since Linda Kim was young, she knew she would go into accounting because of her father. She fought it for a while, thinking she might become a teacher. However, after working with her father one summer, she decided to follow his advice: If she pursued a career in accounting or… Read more »

Kent Cain

Despite enjoying his financial accounting classes in college, Kent Cain was taking his undergraduate tax and audit classes that same semester when he realized he would probably enjoy a career in tax more than in audit. “The following spring, I had the opportunity to do an internship in the tax… Read more »