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Tom Marchese is an executive in residence here at Ohio University. Tom joined Ohio University and fall of 2014, along with his wife, Lori Marchese, who was an instructor within the College of Business MIS department. They both live in Athens and have four kids who are working and living in Columbus and Cincinnati.

Prior to coming to Ohio University, Tom worked in senior level marketing roles with some of America's strongest brands in both the consumer-packaged goods and restaurant business. Tom's restaurant experience includes vice president and officer level roles in marketing and innovation at KFC Yum Brands, Papa Murphy's Pizza, Bob Evans restaurants and Wendy's restaurants. Tom's consumer packaged goods background includes roles as vice president of marketing and innovation for Elmer's and brand management roles with Crayola, Nestle© and Hershey.

Tom currently teaches marketing within the College of Business Integrated Business Cluster Program and Marketing Strategy in the College of Business, Online Professional MBA and Residential MBA programs. Tom also serves as the director of the MBA program. He also stays busy consulting and doing executive education with his creative logic consulting business.

Hi, I'm Tom Marchese, and I'm going to talk to you today about personal branding, and I've been very fortunate in my career throughout my 30 plus year corporate career, I've worked on building some of America's greatest brands, you know, brands like Wendy's or like Hershey, Nestle©, Crayola, al-Marri's, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Bob Evans and an Ohio University.

And these are all really great brands, and they're great brands that make great promises. They make important promises about what they're going to do for the consumer. They make promises about what they're going to do functionally for the consumer and what they're going to do and what they're going to bring them emotionally. Take Hershey Chocolate Company, for example. What Hershey does functional is they make a great chocolate bar, but what do they do emotionally? They make you smile. You know, we used to have when I worked there years ago, we had an ad campaign. There's nothing like the face of a kid eating a Hershey bar.

And that's true. There's nothing like it, right? It makes you smile. You're smiling. Now I can see you. You are smiling right now. I know it. That's what Hershey does. You see this great feeling, this nostalgia and everything else that comes with it.

Elmers was a great brand, too. It also made a great promise. Functionally, we add here things you could trust us down here. I hear things, but emotionally, what do we do? We make you feel creative. We bring you back to your childhood. We even help you make slime now for crying out loud. Great. It's a great brand. It brings. It makes it great promise, both functionally and emotionally. That's what great brands do. And these brands, they don't get there by accident.

Corporations put a lot of time and effort and thought and planning into building brands. And what do they do? They start out, they've got a mission. They define what it is they want to accomplish and then they set objectives.

We're going to talk about those smart goals. And then what else they do, they hire a lot of you folks to do great analysis, right? We analyze everything. We analyze our situation. We try to determine where the opportunities are in our business, where our threats are, and then they really spend a lot of time on the third thing.

This is the key to marketing strategy is developing and we'll talk more about this. But you're positioning your unique point of difference in the marketplace for that brand. And they develop that an entire brand identity that the consumer will know them for. Well, when it comes to building your own brand, wouldn't it be great if we just did what the corporations did do?

Let's follow their precedent. Let's follow what they do, those steps to build our own brand. That's what I'm going to talk to you about today. How do you follow what the corporations do to build your own brand?

And that would start just like they do by establishing a mission. Only this time it's a personal mission and setting your own smart goals. And then we're going to analyze our situation. We're going to take a look at what we do well, what we don't do well, what our opportunities are. And then this third point is really critical, and I don't people I don't think people give this a lot of thought. We're going to develop our own personal positioning on our show, you how to do that in our own brand identity.

So let's start with this mission statement. What is the mission statement? It's a formal summary of your purpose, your goals and your values. It's and every one of your companies has this, every one of the organizations you work for. They've got a mission statement. It's probably hung on a plaque somewhere. Some I know I've been with companies where they made you carry it and in your and a card in your wallet, it's important they put it down on paper. It's important, and it defines their purpose and when they and their goals, their values. Lot of companies now, a lot of organizations, very value driven, and you know what it does, it holds us accountable. When we put it on paper, it holds those, those companies accountable. It gives them something to benchmark against when they're making decisions. It helps them to guide those decisions. Well, if that works for the companies, for the corporate world, shouldn't it work for us? Shouldn't we hold ourselves accountable? Shouldn't we have our own purpose and define it and define our values? And when we get into tough times, we've got to make a decision. We go back and we look at that mission statement.

This is my mission statement; I wrote this when I was faced with a pretty tough decision. I was I had spent 30 plus years in the corporate world, and I was kit since considering completely changing careers and going back to teach here at Ohio University. And I remember having some sleepless nights where I just kind of lay down and I and I sketched out this mission statement to help guide me, what do I want to do with the rest of my life? And I defined my purpose to live with integrity and make a difference in the lives of others. Now that's a different purpose, probably then than it was maybe when I was, let's say, twenty-five.

You know, I think over time we evolve, and at that point in my life, at that point in my career, what I really cared about, what I really wanted to do was to make a difference to other people. And then I started playing around with this. And I listed my relationships. What do I want to be as a husband? As a father, I as my kids are down below in the picture there is a brother. I've got my siblings down there. As a friend, I got some of my good friends in there as a teacher with my students. And then I laid out my values, family, friendship, honesty, exercise.

So let me tell you why I do that. Number one, let me tell you about the relationship piece. Why do I think that's so important? Well. This was my house when I when I worked for Kentucky Fried Chicken, I had a big job vice president of Marketing Innovation, KFC. Man, I bought the biggest house in the county. It was one of the biggest in the state. It was the biggest in Oldham County. I'll tell you that over 7000 square feet. It had seven bedrooms, six fireplaces. That driveway actually had almost a little bridge there that you went over to get to the house. Just an absolutely crazy house. I mean, it had everything. The spiral shaped staircase incredible. Wayne's coating was beautiful picture windows. It had a kitchen that's as big as my house is now. Giant, giant kitchen. All the latest appliances are sitting room, a fireplace and it just it had everything and every room in the house was special.

It had we had Italian marble floors when you came in and Big Crystal Chandelier, those are Brazilian cherry wood planks there for the wood. I mean, it was it. It was something in the basement alone. I want to call. Our basement is three floors, three floors, 14-foot ceilings on the first floor, and that had a complete media room that you could sit. And we had media chairs. Man, it was. It was cool. I'm not going. It was really, really cool. But you know what? I didn't come home at night and sit down on my couch and say, Man, I'm so happy. I got Italian marble floors. I got I got Brazilian cherry. What flight this is? I am so happy. You look at my crystal chandelier. It doesn't work that way.  It's cool. It's cool, but it doesn't make you happy. That's not. That's not what makes it. You know what makes you happy when it was free? You feel good. Your relationships, the strength of the relationships in your life. So that's why I built my mission statement around my relationships and what I want to accomplish with those relationships.

And then I also focused on my values. You know, you could see them their family, as you can probably already get that out of me family, friendship, honesty, exercise. And so now I'm making this tough decision. Do I want to leave the corporate world and go to work and teaching? Well, let me tell you, at the time I was living in Vancouver, Washington state that's right across from Portland, and it was three thousand miles almost away from where I lived in Columbus, Ohio. And when I moved out there, I moved myself. I told my wife, Lori, we sold our house. You get you get an apartment here; I'm going to apartment there. Let's see if it works. I don't want you to come out yet, and I'm all by myself and Vancouver, Washington state and I got this family back in Columbus, my wife. And then, you know, stuff was just happening. And my mom was ninety-three and I couldn't fly back and see her. It was too far and my son, my oldest son, broke up with his girlfriend and I couldn't be there for him. Two of the kids moved and I wasn't there. One of the kids, I had to miss their graduation, and this was just so against my family values. And you know, at the time came, I thought I was going to get rich because the company went public, and I had a bunch of stock. But I didn't read the contract really well and basically had a vest for five years, I be there five years like I can't do this for five years. This is not consistent with my mission, it's not consistent with my values. And it actually turned out to be a pretty easy decision to say, yes, I'm going to leave this behind him to leave the stock behind.

I'm coming back to Ohio and I'm going to teach. And then I look at the other values I talked about family friendship. I've always been that one to because it's important to me, so I'm going to initiate those conversations. Honesty. You know, it's just a quick story. But when I worked at KFC, when I left KFC, I actually made it. I went to work for Bob Evans, and about a year into Bob Evans, I came home from work one day and my wife, Laurie, says, Tom, we just got seventy-five thousand dollars deposited into our checking account from KFC. Like, what's up with that? I was gone a year and I thought about and I remembered, you know, in my severance agreement, when I left there, I made a deal with them because it was during the housing crisis.

What? You got to protect me, you know, if I lose money on this house, you protect me up to seventy-five thousand dollars of the loss. And they said, Sure, we signed it all contract. Everything was good. Well. Turned out I'd actually lose $75000 when I went to work for Bob Evans, I said, Look, if I'm going to come here 2008, you know, terrible. I got a giant house in Kentucky. You got to help me. You got to buy my house. You've got to make me whole buy for what I paid. And they did. I actually made a tiny bit on it. So, you know, this was my values. I called up KFC and I said, Look, you guys made a mistake. I didn't actually lose money on the house. So, here's your seventy-five grand back and you probably think some of you were thinking, I'm crazy and I'm not saying that has to be your value, but live your values, live your mission statement, and I think you're going to be a lot happier if you do that.

So, we went through the second piece of this is setting up objectives, we got a mission. What about objectives? What we learn in our MBA program about smart goals, specific goals, measurable goals that are attainable, that are very relevant and have a timeframe to it. And corporations are all over this man, right? You know, whatever organization or company you work for, they set smart goals at every asset and every aspect of their business. They set these goals and it holds them accountable. And shouldn't we do that to? So here I talk to my son about this, he's a young professional, he's 30 now. We did this couple of years ago and he was considered know some career moves and so forth. And we defined some goals for him. We said, short term, I'm going to become an area sales representative by 2020. And he did it medium term. He wants to be the regional sales manager by twenty twenty-five and long term, he wants to be in the top 10 percent of performers and become a vice president by 20 30. And so that's good. Now that you've got those goals, they will guide your your action steps that in the mission statement will help you to make decisions. And, you know, we set a final goal. I encourage people to make a breakthrough goal, a really big goal that will drive actions. And we talked about, he said, You know, Dad, I love to do what you did. I'd love to make enough money at 50 so that I can get out of sales and maybe have a second career teaching. So, OK, well, then you're going to have to that's going to drive actions. You're going to have to get your MBA because you have to have that as an entry level to teach and you're going to have to get some adjunct experience. So it drives action steps when you do that. So we've got our mission, we set our objectives, and I think it's especially important for you guys because you're at that stage of your life where you're are making big decisions.

Should I take this career or that career, this relationship, should I move? Yet that mission statement down on paper, get those objectives down to paper. Let them guide you. The second piece. What the companies do is, Oh my gosh, we spent a lot of time analyzing things. And when we enter, after we analyze it, all we do like our sixth analysis and everything.

We wind up with a SWOT analysis. You've done this by now. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. Every organization, every division of every company does this, and we should do it too. And take an honest look at yourself, get some help from people. And then the really important piece of this is how do we leverage our strengths? How do we minimize our weaknesses? How do we take advantage of those opportunities? And what I encourage people to sit down and make an action plan right now. Once you list those, make an action plan, what am I going to do specifically in the next three months to take action on this? If one of your strengths is planning, then OK, leverage that leverage that within your organization and become part of a committee of some sort where you can organize things for them. If one of your weaknesses like my weaknesses when I was younger was this, I was deathly afraid of public speaking, deathly afraid of it.

I joined a group called Toastmasters that helped me overcome my fear of speaking for you. What might be TEDTalks? I don't know what it is but make it specific. If you don't do that, you're not going to take action. Make a specific list of things you're going to do in the next three months, the next six months. So now you've done with the company's Don, but now you got to get to the really tough part. And a really important place developing your positioning and your brand identity. So, if you've had marketing before you know this, if not, you're going to get to this positioning is the act of designing the companies offering any image to occupy a distinct place in the mind of the target market. There are so many brands out there, so many products we're bombarded by. But you've got to have a distinct place in the mind of that consumer for you to stand out. That's what makes for a successful strategy, makes for successful brands. And there's a thing we call the brand positioning statement, and there's different elements that help define the brand. We define very carefully the target market, the people most likely to be interested in our brand. We look at a thing called the competitive set, the frame of reference that what brands can be substituted against, and we look at, very importantly, their unique value proposition. What's the primary benefit that we want consumers to associate with our brand? We don't get 12.

What's the one primary associate association we want to create and maybe a reason to believe why people should believe that, why we have credibility. That's what a brand positioning statement is. It looks like this to the target. Snickers here is the competitive set that does what while Snickers is a great brand and for years, they really define their brand so well and they've got that distinct place in our mind to anyone looking for a snack to get them through the day. Snickers is the snack that really satisfies them because it's packed with peanuts. All right, it's very clear they've been telling this for years. You can go back on YouTube and check it out. 30 years ago, 40 years ago, they've been telling us this and they have different campaigns. The new one I love with the Betty White and people like that, you know you're not you unless you had a Snickers bar. They just do a wonderful job. It's a very clearly defined brand. Well, people should do that too, because it's a competitive marketplace out there for whatever role you're looking for within your company or outside your company. I wrote this several years ago. I sat down, I'm look, I'm a marketer. I got to write a positioning statement for myself, and this is what I wrote. Two companies looking to transform themselves and grow in new areas. Tom Arcade's is the senior marketing executive who thinks strategically but acts with the speed, passion and creativity of an entrepreneur that defines me.

And when I sit down and when I when I go into an interview, you know, for Papa Murphy's say, for example, you know, I was able to say, Hey, look, I know you're talking to some great people here. You've got some people with all them have MBAs. What a great experience. Good companies. Let me tell you what makes me different. You know, I grew up in the business with Hershey and Nestle©, a largest food company in the world. So, I learned it. Thanks for stage. But I also spent a lot of time with some smaller, more nimbler companies like Elmer's and Crayola, where I learned how important speed and creativity as I learned to act like an entrepreneur, OK? I've now differentiated myself in their mind. They're interviewing all these people. I get time. I get him. Now I'm building my brand.

What do I do? Well, there's my LinkedIn. If you LinkedIn with me, you're going to see my about my profile. Tom Bar-Kays is a visionary marketing executive who thinks strategically and then acts with the speed, passion and creativity of an entrepreneur. What differentiates Tom is his ability to create a clear vision and then passionately build and lead teams to execute on that vision at the tactical level. And then look at my resume at the top of my resume. A visionary marketing executive who thinks strategically and acts with a speed, passion and creative interaction or creativity. And again, it's consistent. This is my brand. People get it and they know me. They know who I am when we get into that interview type situation before the interview, and then they're going to know about it when we get into the interview as well.

This is my wife's positioning statement, my wife, Laurie is an instructor at Ohio University, also had a long corporate career. Laurie was the classic overachiever. Oh my God, she had a 4.0. You know, I think a three nine undergrad, 4.0 MBA passed the CPA exam on the first try. She got every job she ever wanted. Then, you know, she got pregnant. She had four kids, five four kids in like five years, you know, and putting a little bit of damper on the career took a little time off, went back to work and did everything for a small company. My God, she did their accounting, their finance, their systems work, their project management, their testing. She did everything. And then one day she said, You know, I'm tired of working for this company. I got to drive seven hours to get back to their headquarters. I'm going to get a job in Columbus. And she started interviewing, and for the first time ever, my wife was failing. I couldn't believe it. She was not getting the jobs. And one of the jobs she got turned down for was that safe white auto company up in Columbus, and I happen to know the chief people officer. He was my H.R. person at Elmhurst and I called him up. I said, Steve, Laurie didn't get the job there. You know, that's OK. We got other interviews coming up. I'm just hoping you could give us some feedback that will help her and he call the people who interviewed her. And he got back to me and he said, Tom, we absolutely love Lori. They loved her. They said she was so qualified and so articulate. They just couldn't figure out exactly who she was, what she did, what she really wanted. OK, now the light bulb goes off. Laurie, we got it right, a positioning statement. And here's what we wound up with two technology companies looking to execute their ideas on time and on budget. Laurie Marcus is the Project Management Pro. She declared her frame of reference who combines the ability to manage people in projects with broad business problem solving skills that enable companies to move projects forward.

Now, she goes in the interview, and I'm not kidding. She had four offers in like two weeks. Everything she interviewed, she goes in and she said, Look, I know you're interviewing a lot of great project management people. Maybe they got pampered like I do and so forth. I think what makes me different is, yes, I've got my PMP, my certified, I'm a certified scrum master, but I also have my MBA and a CPA. And what I'm going to do is not just help your projects move forward, but I'm going to jump in and actually solve problems too. And I can give you a lot of evidence of how I've done that in the past. Boom. She differentiated herself, and now I've got a clear picture of who she is and wow, the job offers started coming. Where does this go? I'm Laurie's resume and Laurie's LinkedIn.

I work with my son, TJ. When he was, he actually left his first job and took a job. He got this job with Johnson and Johnson, a division, and I'm selling medical supplies. And we wrote this positioning statement for him to companies looking for high potential young sales executives. TJ Marcus is the up-and-coming sales representative who is highly motivated with a strong work ethic and an ability to create rapport quickly with coworkers and customers.

And that's on the top of TJ's resume. It's on his LinkedIn. And when he went in his interview with this great company, this JJ company said, Look, I know you're interviewing the best salespeople around. Let me tell you what makes me a little bit different. You know, I grew up in Dublin, Ohio, in a pretty affluent community. My dad was an executive and I was very comfortable talking to the other executives that were friends of ours and neighbors. Then we moved to a very rural area of Kentucky and the same thing I was able to develop rapport quickly with friends and family and people there. And then I went to school and played football at the University of Akron in a very city environment, and I also felt comfortable. I think those are skills that transfer and that maybe separate me a little bit is my ability to create rapport with so many different types of people. And it did. It separated him from the pack. What's your personal positioning statement?

What separates you in this very highly competitive environment? So now we get to the brand identity piece, man, we spend a lot of time in the corporate world. We have a million different frameworks for analyzing and building brands. This is one that I happen to use when I consult, but it's not the only one. There are hundreds of them, but I look at things like, What's the insight behind the business? What drives the business? You know, who's the target? Who's my competitors? What's my story as a brand? Why do I have credibility? What's my promise from a functional? We talked about early and on an emotional standpoint, what's the personality of the brand that I want to I want to present? And then, of course, that positioning is critical to everything. When I did this for myself, this is the brand identity I wrote for myself when I wrote that mission statement. I said, OK, my insight what drives people to be interested in me is that businesses today need innovation to keep pace in a fast changing business. Well, that's very true today. Still, my target were companies that are looking to change, looking to grow. And then when I was able to go and interview again, I could tell them, Look, why not? Let me tell you what I'm going to bring to your company functioning? I'm going to bring technical expertise and innovation strategies and processes. I've got a stage gate process system that I've developed that I've taken with me to for companies, and I can take it to your company as well. But more importantly, I'll tell you, innovation is hard to do. It's hard to get people excited to keep moving forward. I'm going to get people excited that they could achieve these big breakthrough results. And I've got I've got the background to do that. That's my credibility there. 

Over 30 years of experience and vice president of innovation for four different companies, and you could see the positioning personality. It all comes together and it comes together and hopefully a solid, meaningful, consistent brand. This was Lawry's, the insight for her. Technology companies need everybody working together to keep pace and a fast chain. That's true. Her target technology companies looking to change and grow again. Look what I'm going to bring to your company. I'm going to bring the latest. I'm a certified scrum master. I am a PMP. I'm going to bring the latest and technical expertise and project management process to your company. And more importantly, I'm going to help you solve problems along the way. I'm going to make your employees feel confident that they're going to execute and achieve their plans. And and you know, a little bit about my background and I've been doing this for over 20 years. I was vice president of technology and software development for a company and so forth, right? So this is what it's about. You've got to build your it doesn't it doesn't happen for the companies overnight. They build it consciously. You need to consciously build your brand. How do you do? What do you do next? How do you market these skills? You got a brand. hat do you do? It's not hard. You got three things to do.

Number one, you got to create a product that's got value to the companies to get the product in front of as many companies as possible. Three. Communicate that your products got more value than a competitive applicant. So. First of all, creating the product, you got to know what they're looking for. You've got to understand their needs and wants, and you're looking at it now. You're like, Tom, why is Chuck E. Cheese on your slide? Well, I'll tell you why. I don't have a lot of regrets in my career, but this one's a regret. I got a call one time I met Bob Evans and I'm going head to head with the CEO. I need to get out of Bob Evans, and I get a phone call not through a recruiter, but a phone call from Mike McGoohan, the act, the president of Chuck E. Cheese. And the guy calls me up out of the blue, he says, Tom, I'm looking for a chief marketing officer for Chuck E. Cheese, Mike Biggs, the ACC president. How are you? He said, Look, I'm doing this the old fashioned way. I'm not using LinkedIn. No recruiter. I'm using my network. And everybody I talked to says, You've got to talk to Tom Mark case. He said, Look, he says, I'm looking for someone who's got kids experience. I understand you do. I said, Oh yeah, I worked on Disney brand. I worked at, you know, Nestle© doing a whole line of children's products I did when these kids meals, Elmer's and Crayola.

He said, You know, we're also a restaurant. You have restaurant experience. I heard, Yep, oh, I'm here at Bob Evans right now, but also was a vice president at Kentucky Fried Chicken and Wendy's, you know, Oh my god, this is perfect. Let's go. I went down to Dallas. I had great interviews. I mean, it was perfect. And a week later, I get a phone call from Mike Magoo. Zach says, Tom, we love you here. He said, But you know, we do want you to meet Chuck again. I can't wait. That's not his real name. I can't remember the chairman of the board name. He said he's he didn't get enough time with you, only spent like ten minutes in the hall with you. He wants to meet you again. He's going to fly to Columbus and take you to dinner. Oh man, that sounds good, right? That's I'm going to get this job. I mean, I start researching Chuck E. Cheese in public company. You could see what all the officers made. I'm going to be one of the top three or four people in that company. They all made over a thousand million dollars the last three years. And I'm like telling my wife, Laura, I'm going to make a million bucks, I'm going to make it and this is going to happen. He's coming up dinner with me. I take him to Bob Evans when he comes for dinner and I show them the transformation that I led of Bob Evans and you to tell the whole story about it. And then I did something probably nobody does. I laid out a notebook full of how I was going to transform Chuck E. Cheese with a Chuck E. Cheese Olympics.

And and I was going to have Chuck E. Cheese University. I had a whole bunch of stuff to transform this. Grow this brand. And we wait, we had a great connection. And a week later, I get a phone call and it's Mike McGee, Zach says, Tom, Mike McGee, Zach and my heart's pumping at this point. And he says, Listen. Chuck loved you. And we think you're an absolute genius. Now I'm thinking I'm going to make two million a year, he says. But oh crap, he said. But we're going to go a different direction, he said. We thought about it, we prayed about it, you know? You know, I got to be honest with you, Tom. If we wanted to transform our business. You're the guy. Your vision. It's just incredible. Your excitement, you know? You know, you would be the guy. But I got to be honest, Tom, he said, Look, I'm sixty five. Chuck, 70, the whole board's over 70. We have a lot of stock. We don't want to screw anything up. We don't want to take any chances. We're hiring some guy from Frito-Lay that manages their budgets. Oh, great. It was a mistake because they declined after that. All businesses, I think in the restaurant industry need to continue to transform.

And I know what some of you are thinking. You're thinking you didn't want that job then. Well, I didn't want that job a million bucks a year. What was the worst thing that's going to happen? They're going to give me a severance agreement for a year. Give me another million. I wanted that job and if I got there, I and I understood them. I could have said, Hey, I don't like to take chances, but I got this idea up in Columbus. You led me to this idea for that one underperforming store. We should just test something. I'm just going to test it there because I don't want to take chances. And you led me to this. I would have sold in those ideas at that point, but I didn't pay attention. What do they need? What do they want? Pay attention. And you know what they want. They want some kind of combination of these eight things. You know what? I made this list. I made this list 30 some years ago, 30 some years ago. I was teaching as an adjunct, and I made this list of the skill set that all employers are looking for. And you know, I've done I've looked at some other studies and so forth. They all come basically to pretty much to this. They don't really change that much. They're looking for an ability to learn intelligence. My son, T.J., I told you he sells surgical instruments. You know, he didn't know anything about that. So, the ability to learn was really important to him. How do you communicate that? Well, I'll tell you how you communicate that. All of you can. You're getting an MBA.

You've got the ability to learn. You got a certificate, maybe from HubSpot. Maybe you won the chairman's award at your company. Maybe you learned some new computer systems through your analytics program here. I don't know what it is, but you now got to start thinking, What do I do? Because in every interview, this is what they're looking for. Your job is to weave these things into the interview. You got to show you've got some technical skills. You've got either you're either a certificate in your area of expertise, some type of computer training. You got to show leadership. Come on, you're in an MBA program, you're here. There's a leadership development program. That's another thing that you could do to demonstrate your leadership. Look, I was involved in Ohio University's leadership development program is tremendous program. This is what I got out of it. I led project teams. Let me tell you about the project team I led. Oh man, I'll tell you what, I've been coaching for a long time. This is your job in this interview. Communicate that they're looking for people who can communicate. Maybe you were involved in TED talks or Toastmasters like I was.

Maybe you took some specific communications or you had a sales role. You've got to weave this into your story. They're looking for people who are organized. Time management man, you can work remotely like now. Well, you guys have it off. I mean, you're getting your MBA while you have families in jobs. Oh my gosh, what a great way to show how organized and your time management. You run a family and a job. You got big roles in organizations outside of work. I'm the maybe you're the chairperson for the American Lung Association or the chairperson for the Alcide, a fundraiser. They want people who are team players like I do really well with teams, this is how I contribute. I'm on this team or that project team. They love critical thinking, skills, creativity. Did you organize some type of an event? A new process that you developed. And man, you've got to talk more about this last one. Passion, passion, passion. So now your job is to weave these things into the interview.

You know, I still remember when I coached my son, T.J., to get the one job out of college. You know, it was like he went in there and he said, Look, I, my name is T.J. Marcus. Yeah, let me tell you a little about myself. I yeah, I grew up in Dublin, Ohio. I came to the University of Akron here. I majored in communications, but I played as a walk on the football team. And I'll tell you what it was. It type became a starter eventually, but it was a 30 to 40 hour commitment and I promised my dad while I was here. If I was going to play in the football team, I'd make the dean's list and I'm really proud. I made it every time I've been here. And then I got I did also have the time to get significantly involved. I'm the founder and the president of the American Marketing Association chapter here, and it's awesome. I get to lead students, communicate with faculty members and so forth. And I've done that all while making the dean's list. So, you know, and now I'm excited to take this next leap in my career. Oh, 30 seconds. Maybe, maybe ability to learn made the dean's list leadership. He's the president. He leads the organization, he's a communications minor, he communicates with faculty, he's organized. He spends 30 hours a week on football, plus does all this stuff. He's on the football team, team player. You organize the new event, you get it. This is your job. You got to communicate this, this this is what they're looking for now. You've got to get that product in front of as many employers as possible. Networking and networking doesn't mean linking in with someone. It means spending time contacting them. Can I meet you for breakfast, for lunch, for eight teams meeting now? Can I speak with you about what's going on in your company and learning a little bit more about the business? Go direct to if you go direct to company, by the way. That's tough, but here's a tool I learned called a two letter. And you could google it T letter, and it basically gets through the bots and everything else and all the systems that analyze your resumes. I was having no success, zero when I left Bob Evans.

I start doing this and everything I applied for. I start getting interviews and it's so easy. You basically just copy and paste on the left, your job qualified requirements. They give you those right. And on the right you say how you made those. It's a really simple process. I'm going to tell you it made a big difference for me. Call the T letter. If you're applying to jobs directly through a company, you don't know anybody. You responded to a post. It's a great way to get through. Now we on our resume, you know, I don't know if my resume is good at this point, that resumes a little ball. If I was doing the resume now, I'd be going to a professional because there and be talking to people here at all you and other places. And let's get this in the most appropriate design. It's that important. It's got to be absolutely impeccable. It's got to have something that tells what you're doing, but it's got to be very accomplishment oriented. You can see all those bullets on mine. You know, there are all the accomplishments. That's what people are interested. What did you accomplish? Then we get into an interview, and you know, a couple of things you've got to look your best man. It should go without saying. But how many times have I interviewed people? And people make a decision. I've read this in several studies. The first five seconds people make a judgment on you. Either this person looks like they fit in or this person doesn't fit in. I want to look like I fit in. I want I don't want to spend the whole interview saying, no, you were wrong. Your first impression. So, make sure that you make that strong first impression. Be prepared, know everything about the company, about the interviewer, that third point. That's what I was just telling you earlier present the skills in positioning, no matter what the questions are asked. They're going to tell you at some point they're going to say, Tell me about yourself. They're going to say, Tell me your strengths and weaknesses. You know what you're doing? That skill package from that previous page, you're weaving it all in your weave, weaving it in that. And what I would suggest I've learned is so late in my career, I wish I learned this earlier. And maybe you know it, it's called the star method. I learned this literally. I was left Bob Evans and I'm interviewing for some big jobs, the Papa Murphy's job and some others. And the one recruiter who had set me up with the job in the middle of the call stops it in the interview, and he said, Stop, stop. He says, Look, you don't sound like a CMO. I'm like, Excuse me? He says, you're like all over the place, you're here. And I think I was, you know, I'm a right brain guy. Near my mind kind of goes back and forth, and I had so much things to talk about. He says, Listen, they're looking. They're going to want at this level. They want someone who's really kind of more logical and in terms of their speaking and ability to communicate.

So, use this thing, call the star method. And he teaches to me and it's simple and we practice that I work that out. I had just done this great transformation work of Bob Evans and how do you explain that simply? Well, let me tell you the situation I was in. Sales were declining for over 15 years at Bob Evans. Traffic was down and the company was really at that point in pretty serious trouble. And the CEO challenge, I got the I took on this job of refreshing the restaurant and my task. You know, I had literally I had 30 days to come up with a strategy. They lay they love the strategy, which was to focus on our carry out and build some new layers for carry out. And then the action steps I took was I organized a group of inner functional employees. There were six of us from operations, from H.R. from finance, and we all work together. I went out and hired an outside company. Shoot girl, I'm in very good company out of Columbus to help us with the design. We develop the strategy. They did the design work and we the result was unbelievable. We develop. What we did was we repositioned the brand back to the farm around farm fresh goodness. So, I had a strategy. We created all new layers like family meals to go in a bakery and so forth. The results were incredible. The payback was immediate and fact. You know, the payback was so strong, and people are returning to the to the restaurants that that this is implemented now. It's been implemented in all five hundred and fifty restaurants. So that's that. Was it. I couldn't do that before. Now I approach everything with that star method. Read about it. Learn it, practice it. I think it'll help you.

The final thing. Is to communicate with passion and close with passion. Tell the interviewer, you're interested. When I was at Wendy's, I worked a lot with Dave Thomas. The founder was in all of our advertising, and I did the advertising work. And one day I was leaving, and I said I got an interview.

I'm interviewing for a new hamburger for manager. And Dave said, Tom, can I give you some advice? And Dave Thomas was an old school guy with just unbelievable common sense. And he says, Listen, he says in my in my past, he says, I've seen that the person who wants the job the most does the best job. I are the one you want. He said they're all going to come from fancy schools and companies hire the one who really wants the job. That was great advice. You know, interviews, they used to be an hour. Now they're like forty-five minutes, they're 30 minutes. And I can't say how many times I'd interview someone and it's like, well, I like I like Jane. But I also like Billy here, man, they're really close. I don't know which one I go with. Well, you know which one you go with, you go with the one that was the most passionate. The one that when the interview ended, you know, many times people are like, Do you have any questions now? I'm done. Come on, man. You should have some questions about the company, the culture and so forth. Then after that, it's like you ask them, Hey, can you tell me, what do you have any reservations about my background? Anything I might be able to address when you want to know that? And then finally, it's like, you know, I don't have any questions other than this. I want to tell you, I'm really interested in this job. I hope you see that my skill set is a really good match and I love what your company offers the product line, the people you know. How soon will I hear back from you now? I got Susie and Billy. Are Jane and Billy? Which one do I going to go for? I'm not a golfer. I'm going to go for Jane. She was so enthusiastic. I'm going to go with her. It's that close, sometimes close every single interview in your company, outside your company with passion. And then finally, you got to do all these things. It's not easy. Well, let's say you do all this man. You go out and you establish a mission. You put it down on paper, you make some good smart objectives.

You do your homework and you come up with your strengths and weaknesses and you make an action plan on what you're going to do to get better. And then you work on that positioning to nail that, to have a point of difference and build out that brand interview properly. Then go out once you do all that, go out and live your brand. And I think you're going to just be a lot happier if you're living your brand. I know I am. I made this decision to leave, the corporate world says going up seven and a half, almost eight years now. And it was the best decision I ever made. I make a fraction, a fraction of what I did in the corporate world. But man, I'll tell you why I love being in the classroom. I love teaching. It's just directly relates to my purpose, my mission, you know? And then there's my house on the upper right. I don't have that marble floors anymore. Nothing in there. I got to laminate stuff or whatever. I don't know what it is. I don't really care. It's just fine. In fact, it's terrific that us, it's all I need. It's perfect. I don't make a lot of money anymore, but there's my wife, Laura. You know what we do. We got a lot of time. We go travel and exercise is one of my key values. So as soon as as soon as our rec center opens up, I'm going back in there. Two years ago, I was the oldest intramural basketball player in history. I think I'm going to become the oldest again next year. You know, I'm living my brand and I think you should, too. And if you go through and you methodically try and build that brand, I know you're going to be successful. Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.

Speaker 1: Well hello, everyone. Welcome to the accounting for impact the intersection of financial and ESG reporting webinar. We're excited you're here with us today. My name is Stephanie. I'm one of the enrollment counselors with the online programs supporting Ohio University. This session will contain 30 minutes of information along with a brief Q&A at the end. Please feel free to post your questions in the chat as we go along today, and we'll take time at the end to answer those for you. Today's webinar is hosted by Professor Jennifer says Derek Stevens. Professor Stevens is an associate professor at an Ohio University School of Accountancy and the program director for the Master of Accountancy and coming in the Journal of accounting and public policy, accounting horizons research and accounting regulation, the Journal of portfolio management and the Journal of investment management and issues in Accounting Education. Jennifer teaches accounting theory and application as well as forensic accounting and fraud examination in Ohio University's masters of accounting, accountancy and analytics. She also participates in interdisciplinary forensics team at Ohio University, and Tim teaches introduction to forensic studies. As we go through the presentation today, again, please do not hesitate to leave questions in the chat, and we'll answer those at the end. With that, I hand it to Professor Stevens.

Speaker 2: Thanks so much, Stephanie. I'm really happy to be with everyone today. Thank you for joining us, I am going to talk today about a topic that is very important to the future of accounting. And that's accounting for impact, you know, the intersection of financial and ESG reporting. I would like to introduce myself, so I am the program director for our Master of Accountancy and analytics, I have a background in I have a master's degree and a PhD in accounting, I also have significant work experience in forensic accounting. And so I think you will find that with most of our professors here at Ohio University, we all have a lot of industry experience, we're all CPAs. And we really bring a lot to the classes that we teach. So before I get too much into the financial and ESG reporting, I just want to talk about accounting in general for a minute, because I want to challenge you to think of accounting a little more broadly today. So I want you to think of a scenario, let's say we have two drug companies and coming out of the pandemic, I think we can all envision this scenario, right? We have two drug companies, company A and company B. So Company A has promising clinical trials, they are investing in new cutting edge R&D technologies, they're attracting and retaining top talent, they're buying new plant and equipment to mass produce drugs, and they're paying their suppliers in a timely manner, then we have Company B, they have not so great clinical trial results, they aren't really investing very much in new technologies and R&D, their talent is underpaid with high turnover, and they're selling off plant and equipment to cover their debt payments. And as well as not paying their suppliers in a timely manner. So each company needs $100 to stay in business, we only have $100, how do we determine which should get the money. So I think all of you would agree that we should allocate that $100 to Company A.

And so this is why accounting is so important. It allows those companies that have you know, promising operations are investing in our future to get the required capital, that capital that they need, by communicating that information that they have internally, to external participants. And so this allows society as a whole to collect this relevant, reliable and comparable information and make decisions based on it and help allocate the scarce resources that we have efficiently and effectively among competing needs. And in addition, it's allowing companies and the society to really avoid waste and enhance enhance efficiency. So we have some of the most efficient and effective capital markets in the world here in the United States. And I attribute that to the very strong reporting and regulatory environment that we have around financial reporting in the United States. So when we go back to the cancer drug scenario that I just gave, I went on a team teach my forensic studies course and and that is a an undergraduate course but it's teen taught across a lot of professors, many from the arts and sciences. I stand up it kind of toward the end and I tell the students, you may not think that accounting is helping to cure cancer, but I am going to argue that accounting is helping to cure cancer by helping allocate that money to those companies that have the best cures for cancer and are investing in those drugs. And so you may say that accounting doesn't help cure cancer, I disagree. Accounting does help your cancer. So again, my colleagues in the arts and sciences kind of laugh when I say that, but I want you to remember that accounting really is the Language of Business. But I want you to think about accounting more broadly, accountant, accountants really are information specialists. And so while data analytics are the is the, you know, most recent buzzword and big data's a very kind of more modern buzzword, really, accountants have been dealing with big data. For decades, and we've been doing damage data analytics for decades, what we do is we take all of this, this disparate data, and we turn that data into useful information for decision making. And up until this point, it's been mostly financial data. However, accounts actually work in many, many areas of the business. So think about Medicare claims, or payroll data, even employee performance or balanced scorecard. And now we're getting into you know, sustainability metrics. And so anything that needs measured and reported, accountants are really good and can think critically think through these issues. Think through what data is needed, and how we get data that is reliable, you know, comparable, reportable. So we can make decisions based on that data. And it's not always just business data, right, you will always use this, you will need these skills in your personal lives as well. So like I said, traditionally, accounts have been focused purely on financial data. But really, because accounts are information specialists. And in business, people realize that accounts understand all areas of the business, because we see for the most part, everything that comes through the financial reporting process, we take all of those events, right, and we, and we create, summarize them, create metrics and measure them, and put them into reports to be used in decision making.

So while we've traditionally been focused on financial data, we are moving toward a more broad based view of business and economic activity. So now it is not only the financials, that matter, it is the overall impact on society on various stakeholders, maybe, you know, not only investors and creditors, but other potential stakeholders as well. And so accounts are really ready to tackle this challenge of moving the financial reporting system, from a purely financial reporting system, to an overall business reporting system that's going to include the financial aspects, as well as the non financial aspects. And so if we think about the future of accounting, it is really bright, because we are really well prepared and well trained in these areas that are going to need to be measured and reported. And so you know, we had the former chair of the IASB say the future of financials is non financial. And then we had someone else. Some to these are two very famous, three very famous authors that said, the future of ESG is potentially accounting. And why could the future of ESG be accounting because you can't manage what you don't measure. So if companies are going to need to be undertaking, and by ESG, I mean environmental, social and governance initiatives, they are going to have to find a way to measure those initiatives to manage those initiatives, and report those initiatives to the various stakeholders, both internal and external to the organization. So accounting is going to play a very key role, and the future of the environmental, mental, social and governance initiatives that are being undertaken by businesses, organizations and governments. So here's a little bit here's kind of a nice graphic from PwC that helps you under better understand the what you know, what is ESG well, it stands for environmental, social and governance. Here we have the environmental pillar, and that's going to be focused around climate change, natural resources, pollution and waste and environment opportunity. Then we have the social pillar. So here we have human capital, product liability, stakeholder opposition and social opportunity. And then lastly, we think about governance, you know, corporate governance or diversity, ownership, accountability, transparency, anti corruption. Hi, um, initiative. So really ESG is very, very broad.

Speaker 2: And the good news is, you know, a lot of accounting already is incorporating has already traditionally incorporated incorporated a lot of these governance areas covered that, you know, through the 404, stocks reporting, and all of these disclosures that go into the 10k reports issued by companies. And, you know, we do have, again, around Sarbanes Oxley, we had a lot of new corporate governance initiatives. So we have made good progress in the governance area. But I think what is going to be upcoming in the future is a greater focus on the environmental and social pillars. So I, here's kind of a summary of the traditional financial reporting system, right, it had a very economic focus. So we had the real world, right, we have all these economic events. And we put those economic events into our accounting system. And the three stage steps kind of of the accounting system where we are going to identify those events, we're going to measure them. And then we're going to communicate those events in a manner that gives relevant information for decision making. And those within the accounting system, traditionally, into to identify and measure those events, we relied on accounting rules. So generally accepted accounting principles would tell us which events we are measuring, and then how to measure them. And then it would also tell us how to organize those into some type of reporting interest into some type of report, right, and those reports were our general purpose financial statements with our balance sheet, our income statement, our statement of cash flows, our notes, we know the notes are very important, the auditor's report. And then for public companies, we also had, you know, the additional disclosures around the 10k, and the management, discussion, discussion and analysis. The creators of the rules were the FASB, the IASB. And, you know, the regulator in the United States is the Securities and Exchange Commission, that regulates all companies with publicly traded securities. So though that relevant information was really focused on kind of two sets of decision makers, it was focused on those internal for the financial reporting, it's more focused on external, right, but managers might also need information. So then we have some managerial accounting, but really, for our external decision makers, for our traditional economic focus, we're focused on those investors and creditors. So those people putting equity into the company, and those are holding the company's debt. So either bond holder, bondholders or private lenders like banks, however, we are now kind of moving to a more to an expanded accounting system. And so we're talking about a new accounting system that has a triple bottom line focus, some are calling it. So we'll have all of these real world events. But now we're not only going to be focused on the economic events, we're going to be focused on the environmental and social events as well. And so that is going to go into the accounting function. And that is going again, the accounting function is evolving. So it is, you know, we're going to have to figure out which I which events need to be reported and included in the in the, in the measurement and reporting system.

How are we going to measure those events? And then how are we going to communicate those? So what does that right, how do we take all that data, measure it reliably, and put it into your report that that provides relevant information for those decision makers? So is it a general sustainability, general purpose sustainability report, some companies are putting out these general purpose sustainability reports right now. And they are separate from the 10k are the financial reports, some think that we are going to a holistic report where it will be a dual purpose financial statement that will have not only the financials, but it will also have all the environmental the ESG aspects built into that one report as well. And we're really moving from a purely EQAT you know, the economic stakeholders, meaning the investors and creditors, to looking at a broader array of stakeholders when we're thinking about who needs this information, and, you know, what information do they need? And so we're not only thinking about the investors and creditors, we're thinking about governments, we're thinking about employees, we're thinking about citizens of the planet, and So we are, again, as we think about the demands for information, who those demands are coming from, it helps shape the reports that we decide to create. So the accounting system is evolving. And it is a very exciting time to be an accounting. So if we think back, I just wanted to give you an example about how we might think, how about how do we start to think about measuring and reporting some of these ESG events. So the easiest one to think about potentially could be the environmental pillar. So this is a rapid, you know, it's an economic, environmental, social and governance. But this is a rapidly changing regulatory environment around ESG. So unlike financial events, no US regulatory entity exists, that will provide some type of gap specifically for environmental and social events. The I'm going to talk a minute about some this rapidly changing regulatory and reporting environment. And but the EU is actually further along than we are in the US. And they have a new corporate sustainability reporting directive, that is going to require reporting around ESG, for companies doing business in the EU. And that is going to apply not only to publicly traded companies in the EU, but it is also going to apply to privately held companies of a certain size, that are doing business in the EU. So this may be you know, even if you are a private company in the US, if you are a significant size, and you are doing significant business in the EU, you may have to comply with the reporting requirements that have been set forth under the CSRD. So for this ESG reporting, I've been talking a lot about the external reporting. But remember, we have accounting systems for internal decision making as well. And so we are going to have to evolve our internal accounting systems to also capture and measure these environmental and social events that are occurring within organizations. And so this is going to again, these internal decision makers need help in determining and in supporting the decisions and their strategic, you know, their strategic process.

So strategic decision making, how do you decide what segment to invest in? How do you decide decide what country or area to put a new plant? How do you decide which product you should have? Which pricing. So all of these strategic decisions that are occurring within companies need information to support that decision making. And so our ESG is going to need to be increasingly incorporated into our internal systems as well. Sometimes we have some reports that are issued regularly, you know, management wants to monitor these every single quarter, sometimes it may be for one time use or our projects. And then from the external reporting, we already do have some reporting requirements in the United States that may encompass some of the ES, Ng, as I mentioned, we actually do have a lot around the G around the governance. But for example, if we have some very large contingent liability, so we have a site and it potentially needs to be remediated after we leave that site and there's going to be in a you know, an environmental liability associated with that, that is already disclosed in the 10k. Or in our in our financial or GAAP financial reports. And also under the the risks and analysis environment, environmental concerns, concerns and enter increased. increased regulation, or increased regulatory risk is already probably listed in management's discussion and analysis. So, that is kind of the current state.

Speaker 2: Of the the required reporting around ESG. But we also have a lot of voluntary reports that are occurring right now around ESG. So I would say the lion's share of reporting around ESG is currently voluntary. So if you go to any company, a lot of times they're going to have an environmental impact report or an ESG report. These are voluntarily put out by the company and they are not consistent. They are not you know, the components of the reports are not consistent the metrics that they are including are not consistent across companies, they may not be consistent across the same company or across different years within the same company. And they are measured in different ways. So the problem with the voluntary reporting regime is that companies can cherry pick what and how they report. And so right now, this is a risk as companies are putting out all of this information, some, some are referring to this as greenwashing. So companies are putting out all of this great information, but it hasn't been audited, the information may not be reliable, and it may not be trustworthy. And so the SEC is starting to get involved. So the SEC is going to have a new rule, it's going to be purely related to the E, it's around climate related disclosures. And as I mentioned, the EU is already further ahead and some mandatory reporting that I mentioned under the CSRD. So when we think about the recording in general, that the measurement can be very difficult. And these events, it's going to take time for us to learn about all the different events that should be included and how to measure them. And we don't have or we haven't had one set of standards to provide a tip or a guidance on how to measure these. So we have US GAAP right generally accepted accounting principles to help guide financial reporting, but we don't have one. And we do of course have the IFRS, right. International Financial Reporting Standards. So we kind of have two major financial reporting, standards, sets of standards. But we don't have the same thing for environmental disclosure, environmental ESG disclosures. So we that is a rapidly evolving space. And we're going to talk about in one minute.

So that is a challenge, right? How do we measure these activities measure, identify and measure these activities and events? Especially when we don't have one standard yet? How do we report these? What does the report look like? You know, is it going to be regulated? Is it going to be mandatory? Or are we going to continue under some voluntary some type of voluntary reporting regime? How do we audit these so auditors, we're going to have to have, you know, more rooms during the audit, or a separate, you know, a different group that's going to audit these. And then we also need to think about if we do go to a mandatory reporting regime where we have, you know, standards as far as how to measure these events, which events to include, how do we report them? Are these reporting requirements causing any unintended consequences? Or what incentives? Are they encouraging or discouraging? And so, you know, we sometimes think about we've had some major frauds in the past where the FASB, you know, the accounting rules says, Here's a bright line, so the company manages right below the but the bright line, right, so we need to think about some of those unintended consequences or these incentives, when we are creating the standards and formulating the the regulatory regime. And then we also need to think about that cost benefit trade off of reporting, this reporting is going to be very expensive. And so we need to make sure that the benefits to this reporting are outweighing the costs. And I think that as a society as a as a global community, we are moving in the direction that these, you know, initiatives, these impacts matter. And so they need to be measured and reported in a reliable way.

So if you just think about how difficult this can be, I want you to think purely about the E and about the GHG emissions. And so in the United States, we are moving potentially to have these reported, depending on the new SEC Rule. So the question is, how do we know which GHG emissions do we measure? And then and then how do we measure them and so we have for GHG greenhouse gas, we have kind of three scopes, a scope, one emissions, a scope, two emissions and a scope three emissions. So if you think about it, the scope one emissions are the direct emissions from the company. So these are, you know, the emissions from their facility or their fleet, that are the greenhouse gas emissions that are going into the environment. And then the scope two emissions or any indirect energy usage that they're purchasing from the large, you know, basically utility providers. So here they're purchasing electricity or steam, heating and cooling for the company's own use. So scope one companies seem to have started to get a pretty good handle on scope two is measured a lot of times by the big utility companies and they're giving some measurements to the company to be able to provide that But then there's something called scope three emissions and those are our emissions related to all parts of their production process, all the way from each piece of raw material to how the end consumer uses that product. So, this is the entire supply chain. So, I level three emission is getting at all of those emissions, that that the company touches through its entire supply chain. So, any fuel or energy related in any, you know, used in mining or creating any of the raw materials that go into their production process, even their employees, you know, commuting into work counts as as a scope three, and then if you think about the kind of downstream activities, how, you know, are they selling those products, how is the end consumer using those products? How is that when that product is disposed of what types of impact on those on the environment might that have, so, the level three emissions are extremely complex and very difficult to measure. And so, I think that the, you know, the experts in the area are, we're still trying to get in kind of a handle on how to measure these are there is there going to be double counting of emissions, because you know, one person's raw materials another person's final, final good etc.

Speaker 2: So, with the good news is we have had some consolidation and reporting frameworks. So, we used to have a lot of different reporting frameworks, but very recently, as of like, a couple of days ago, even we have had several of the big frameworks that have merged together into the international sustainability Accounting Standards Board, most recently the Task Force on Task Force on climate related financial disclosures, T CFD is going to be kind of subsumed by the I S SB. So the international sustainability standards board. So, this is part of the IFRS Foundation, and they are It basically started out as SASB the SASB standards, and they have been now purchased by the IFRS are acquired, I guess would be a better word by the i by IFRS. And they have are going to be coming up with IFRS sustainability disclosure standards. So the old SASB standards are going to be renamed i are kind of you know, acquired by the IFRS sustainability disclosure standards. So it appears now that we are going to have you know an international sustainability standards board. And we are going in we already have you know, some some standards under that board under the SASB. And they are going to you know further incorporate this elaborate on these and make them more formal into IFRS sustainability disclosure standards. And then they are going to talk about and they are going to help another initiative is going to be an integrated reporting framework that is going to help companies kind of integrate all this information into usable reports for decision making. So I'm a little short on time I'm going to just briefly mentioned so while the EU and Europe is a little bit that I SSP is a little bit further ahead.

The SEC is moving in this direction. We have a new rule expected out likely in October, we've seen a proposed rule on climate related disclosures. This note is only the E it's only environmental, it's only climate related disclosures. The SEC realizes that we do need some consistency and regulation around this reporting. It is likely to require disclosures of scope one and two GHG emissions is the current thinking it is unlikely to require financial statement recognition. So that rule is unlikely to require these to actually be reported, you know, as a line item on the financial statements, it is more likely to be a note disclosure. And the final rule is expected this year. And we were thinking it could be April but we're hoping now that it is October. So, um, if this topic interests you, I think that you know there is a bright future in accounting. And I just like to talk a minute about our masters of accountancy and analytics program. Everything we have a fully online program. We have very dedicated faculty here at Ohio University. So our faculty, you get the same faculty that teaches in our residential program that you get in our online program. And our faculty really attempts to recreate that hands on personal touch that we have in the on campus setting in our online setting. So we get to know our students on an individual basis we get to understand their career goals, and we try and help them meet those career career goals. We do hold live interactive classes every week. So this is not a, you know, an asynchronous, you know, work, do it your own, do it all on your own program. We are there to guide you and help you. We do our we are very proud of our case based curriculum.

So when we designed our Master of Accountancy, we actually designed the same program for the on our on campus and our online program. We designed it around a case based curriculum, we thought, we think that that really helps students learn the material and be able to apply it right away and hit the ground running when they start working. Of course, we will help you, our degree will help you meet the requirements to sit for the CPA exam. But please check with your enrollment advisor, we do meet the requirement in almost every jurisdiction. But you know, just to make sure we meet your individual states requirements, please check with your enrollment advisor. And we are a very efficient program, you can be done in a little over a year, depending on your background. And if you come from a non accounting background, we do have a path for you that is going to be extremely efficient, and get you done, you know quickly as well. So we have designed our programs so that you can enter our masters of accountancy program and work towards your CPA, based on any undergraduate background. So you can have an undergraduate degree in accounting, or you don't have to have an undergraduate degree in accounting, we have created three tracks based on your undergraduate degree. If you have an undergraduate degree in accounting, we have an accounting track, if you have an undergraduate degree in business, but not accounting, so maybe finance or marketing or another business degree, we have a path for you. And then if you are coming from an undergraduate background that is completely non business, maybe one of the sciences or engineering, we have a very efficient path for you as well. So for our accounting track, you can come in again with an undergraduate degree in accounting, and it's seven core accounting classes and three electives in data analytics.

We have designed this program to be very heavy on the analytics, because we believe this is very important to the future. And again, accounts are really good at analytics. And it is a very, you know, kind of key skill set for their toolbox. So we have you get to choose three electives in data analytics taught by our data analyst faculty, based on what's available when you need them. Now, if you're coming from a non accounting background, we do have four accounting foundational courses. So these are prerequisites that are basically going to get you up to speed to take your master's level accounting courses. The good news is you don't have to get an entire undergraduate degree in accounting we, we took 30 hours of accounting or 24 hours in undergraduate accounting and condensed it into four prerequisite courses. So we call it the best hits of an undergraduate degree in accounting to get you up to speed. So you can take our masters level courses and get prepared for that CPA exam. So and then, of course, you would have our seven core accounting courses in three courses in data analytics. If you're coming from a non business undergraduate degree, you would take the same four prerequisite courses, the same seven core accounting courses, the same three electives and data analytics, and then we require two additional business courses that we think will be helpful to you. So you better understand business and the application of accounting within business. We are we are a case based curriculum. But we have again, adapted our curriculum for the working professional, you take one class at a time online classes are seven weeks, so you can really focus on one class for seven weeks. And then you get to move on to the next class, we find this really helpful for busy working professionals that have families and you know, jobs and lives. And we have found that this it really helps our students be successful as opposed to taking full 14 week courses they take to seven week courses as opposed to you know, the normal 14 week course and where you would take two a semester.

There are so many opportunities in accounting. So, you know, I think sometimes people think of accounting as bookkeepers, we are not bookkeepers, look, most bookkeepers don't have a degree in accounting. So we are training you for the future for those critical thinking skills and for dealing with business problems. How do we use data to solve business problems? And, you know, in the end, it does all flow through the accounting system. If you don't create generate cash, you're not going to be in business very long. So we are not only poised to help address the needs of the future from an environmental, social and governance for perspective. But we also are extremely well versed in helping companies be sustainable long term from a financial perspective. So we have three starts here, fall, spring and summer. And if you have any questions, please, you know, reach out immediately, you are always welcome to contact me, or any of our enrollment team at these at this at this contact information.

Speaker 1: Wonderful, thank you so much for all of that information. I think we've all learned a little bit more about how this program will really benefit what's changing and developing, especially when it pertains to ESG. We do have one frequently asked question, you did a wonderful job covering the first question that I often get, which is about the program tracks and how students are going to benefit from those. So that was fantastic in the presentation already. But one of the questions that we do get, or have gotten recently, because of the new name to the program, we've added the and analytics, would you tell us a little bit more about what this means for students?

Speaker 2: Sure. So we actually have always had those analytics requirements in our program. And so we just renamed the program to reflect the underlying curriculum and skills that our students are going to be acquiring in the program. And this is really, you know, we think that our program is unique and that we are, are teaching all of, you know, some hot accounting topics. But we are also we are also cognizant that the tools that we are using are changing, and we want our students to be very well versed in those tools, and new approaches to data and data analytics, because again, we see ourselves as information specialists, and that's going to be increasingly important as we start to tackle more than just accounting information. And or sorry, financial information. So we think that employers while while the the opportunities in accounting are endless, so my boss likes to say, if you get a degree in accounting, I can promise you that you always will always have a job, I can't promise you that you will like your job. But if you don't, I can promise you that there are five other jobs out there waiting for you. So there are so many opportunities in accounting. And then there are also so many opportunities in analytics. But pure analytics is so broad. That if you couple that, you know, deep knowledge of data and data analytics, with a very specific financial accounting skill set, it is really an highly desirable degree that is going to open many doors not only immediately, but well into the future.

Speaker 1: Wonderful, that is so helpful to have that clarification. I'm not seeing any other questions in the chat. So I think we can begin wrapping things up. So I do want to just thank everyone again for joining us today. We hope you've received some great takeaways and learn a little bit more about today's topic and how this program can help you with that. We'd love to hear from you with additional questions for our team. So please feel free to reach out to online admissions at 740-924-5725 or email us at getstarted@ohio.edu and we'll connect you to an enrollment counselor. Thank you all again. Have a great day. Thank you Stephanie.