CPA Founding Partner

Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada (CPA Canada), one of the largest national accounting organizations in the world, has chosen to become a founding partner of ThinkTwenty20.

Meet our team

Gerald Trites

Editor in Chief

Jerry is a CPA with a history of editing, writing and publishing. Most recently he served as Managing Editor of The Antigonish Review - a literary journal with international circulation. He also worked as a partner in KPMG, and as a Professor of Accounting and Information Systems at a Canadian university, where he served as Director of the Schwartz School of Business. He also served for twelve years as Director of XBRL Canada. He has published twelve books and numerous articles and papers. As a Research Associate for the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants, he led the development of several sections of the CICA Handbook, the source of Canadian accounting and auditing standards and he served as chair of he Auditing Standards Board. He also served the CICA as Assistant Director of Education, where he had responsibility for administering and managing the Uniform Final Examinations for Chartered Accountants.

 

Gundi Jeffrey

Managing Editor

Gundi Jeffrey is an award-winning business journalist specializing in writing about the accounting profession for various publications in Canada and England. In 1985, she co-founded The Bottom Line, Canada's only independent publication for the accounting and financial professions, serving as its executive editor. After it was sold to a British consortium in 1989, she continued to write for it until it closed its doors at the end of 2016. Gundi also specializes in editing accounting books, research studies and educational material for organizations such as what was then the Canadian institute of Chartered Accountants, the International Federation of Accountants, The World Bank, the Ontario Government and several accounting firms, including one of the Big 4.

Eric E. Cohen

Contributing Editor

Eric is a CPA and technologist with a passion for collaboration toward the goal that “a piece of business information, once entered into any system, anywhere, never needs to be retyped as it moved through the business reporting supply chain”. A prolific author, engaged in virtually every effort to standardize accounting and audit data, a national expert to a wide variety of standards efforts, and co-founder of XBRL, he covets a dialogue with the ThinkTWENTY20 community.

Alan Willis

Columnist

Alan Willis, FCPA, FCA is an independent researcher, writer and advisor on corporate reporting and performance measurement outside the scope of financial statements, and the implications of such reporting for corporate governance and assurance. Since 1991, he has pioneered concepts, standards and practical guidance for  sustainability accounting and reporting, and lately for integrated reporting – in short, the transformation of corporate reporting.

Alan was a member of the founding Steering Committee of the Global Reporting Initiative from 1997 to 2002, and of the Working Group of the International Integrated Reporting Council in developing its 2013 Integrated Reporting Framework. He has served on the Advisory Council of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, the Integrated Business Reporting Committee of the International Corporate Governance Network, the Technical Working Group of the Climate Disclosure Standards Board, and the Sustainability Advisory Board of CPA Canada.

He has authored and co-authored many publications for CPA Canada, including Briefings for Directors on climate change and sustainability, and led the development of CPA Canada’s innovative 2002 Guidance on Management’s Discussion and Analysis. 

Alan received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012 in recognition of his contributions in Canada and internationally to accounting for sustainable development.