Mary Jepperson, CPA, CFE, is the Chair of the Global Business Leadership Department, a professor of accounting and finance and the Ralph Gross Chair in Business and the Liberal Arts.

Mary graduated from the College of Saint Benedict where she majored in accounting. Mary also has a masters degree in business administration from St. Cloud State University and is a member of the Beta Gamma Sigma Business Program Honor Society. Mary received an Elijah Wyatt Sells award for outstanding performance on the CPA examination.

Mary began her career in the Minneapolis office of Coopers & Lybrand, where she became the office’s first female partner.

Her career at Coopers & Lybrand/PricewaterhouseCoopers centered in the audit practice where she specialized in financial services, banking, student loan servicing, higher education and health care. She also provided extensive forensic accounting services.

After leaving PricewaterhouseCoopers, Mary established a successful forensic accounting and litigation services practice, participating in a number of high-profile cases. She is a certified fraud examiner.

Mary loves identifying means to enhance the accounting and finance curriculum. She is a frequent presenter at American Accounting Association meetings on the topic and was the 2010 recipient of the the AICPA’s George Krull/Grant Thornton Teaching Innovation Award and the first runner up for this prestigious award in 2015.

Mary is a frequent presenter to CPA firms, businesses and not-for-profits on the subject of business ethics.

Mary teaches Auditing, Fraud Examination, Business Communication and a variety of other classes.