Four CPAs—Mark Bartlett, Scott Green, William Harmon and Warren Haruki—were inducted by the Institute and Ajilon Finance into the AICPA Business & Industry Hall of Fame in recognition of their strategic insight, business expertise and leadership skills.

Bartlett, executive vice-president and chief financial officer of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, executed effective cost-management programs, implemented comprehensive benchmarking, spearheaded strategic acquisitions of for-profit subsidiaries, and introduced extensive financial modeling into all aspects of his company.

Green, the first chief administrative officer of Weil, Gotshal and Manges, is the author of Manager’s Guide to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act: Improving Internal Controls to Prevent Fraud, and Sarbanes—Techniques and Best Practices for Corporate Governance. He also is an adjunct professor of finance and banking at Hofstra University and the 2004 and 2006 winner of the Institute of Internal Auditors Outstanding Contributor Award. His recognition by the AICPA is the result of his internal controls and corporate governance accomplishments.

Harmon, president and chief executive officer of Triana Energy Holdings LLC, made the “2006 M&A Deal of the Year” when he bought and turned his former company, Columbia Energy & Resources, into the second largest oil and gas producer in the eastern United States in the 1990s and then sold it to the Chesapeake Energy Corp. for more than $3 billion.

Haruki is president and chief executive officer of Grove Farm Co., a development company active in increasing the diversity of agriculture on the Hawaii island of Kauai, and has been recognized two years in a row by Hawaii Business Magazine as one of Hawaii’s 10 most influential people.

Presenting the awards were John Morrow, AICPA vice-president for new finance, and Janette Marx, senior vice-president of Ajilon Finance.

Dennis R. Reigle will become the Institute’s director of academic and career development in January 2007 in its Durham, N.C., office. In this role, he will lead the AICPA’s academic outreach and student recruitment initiatives, the AICPA Foundation, and diversity, work/life and women’s initiatives. Reigle succeeds Bea Sanders, who in January will join KPMG LLP as national director of faculty relations.

A managing partner at Arthur Andersen LLP before taking early retirement in 2001, Reigle was responsible for Andersen’s human resources, recruiting and university relations for more than a decade. He is a former member of the AICPA Academic and Career Development Executive Committee and was vice-president, practice, of the American Accounting Association. He also is a past president of Beta Alpha Psi, the honors organization for business information professionals. He currently coaches MBA program students at Northwestern University’s J.L. Kellogg School of Management.

Doyle Z. Williams, chair of the AICPA Awards Committee, presented the Institute’s 2006 Special Recognition Award to Bernard J. Milano, CPA, a retired partner of KPMG LLP, at the annual meeting of the American Accounting Association in Washington, D.C. The award was in recognition of Milano’s work to increase diversity in university business programs through the KPMG Foundation’s PhD Project. When the project began in 1994, there were 294 minority faculty members in U.S. business schools; today there are 812. Approximately 400 minority students currently are pursuing doctorates.

Milano, who retired from KPMG in 2000, stayed on as president of the foundation as well as the KPMG Disaster Relief Fund. He also is a member of President Bush’s Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and a former member of several AICPA committees.

For the first time the winners of the Outstanding CPA in Government Award came from all three levels of government: federal, state and local. AICPA Board Chair Leslie Murphy gave out the 2006 awards at the AICPA’s 23rd annual National Governmental Accounting and Auditing Update Conference in August in Washington, D.C. The citation recognizes CPAs who have significantly contributed to the efficiency and effectiveness of government and to the growth and enhancement of the accounting profession.

Jeffrey Steinhoff, managing director for financial management and assurance, the GAO’s largest audit team, won the federal award. During his tenure, he was integral to the enactment of most major financial management legislative initiatives, most notably the landmark Chief Financial Officers (CFO) Act of 1990. In the past five years the initiatives he put into place resulted in more than $36 billion in financial benefits to American taxpayers.

Craig Watanabe, the state-level winner, is captive insurance administrator for the state of Hawaii. Watanabe was instrumental in passing the Captive Insurance Law of 1986, which resulted in Hawaii’s being recognized as one of the top 10 domiciles in the world for captive insurance.

Carla Sledge, winner at the local level, is chief financial officer of the Charter County of Wayne, Mich. In 2003 the county faced a $54 million dollar deficit as it struggled to recover from the national recession. In response Sledge developed a deficit plan to bring the budget into balance and strategies to strengthen and stabilize the county’s financial situation without increasing property taxes or reducing services to county residents.