Ascend Inspiring Across Generations

Ragini is a Principal within the Cyber & Strategic Risk Practice within Deloitte.   With twenty-one years of experience, she specializes is in the area of Crisis Management. She helps lead the Crisis Recovery Practice where she serves our largest disaster recovery clients to include projects in Texas, Louisiana, and Colorado.  She has vast experience working in areas of disaster recovery, grants management ARRA funded projects, organizational transformation, managing public assistance engagements, hazard mitigation engagements, finance transformation, and in performing internal, financial, and operational audits. She has used her leadership, communication and analytical skills to successfully manage and lead her engagements.  Ragini has been involved in helping her clients with multi-billion dollar natural disasters and successfully led and managed disaster recovery projects and has demonstrated capabilities to help organizations quickly set up and effectively administer large and complex programs.  She has significant experience in helping our clients respond and recover from large-scale crisis events and build resiliency into their organizations. Relevant Experience ►            Ragini is currently serving as the Lead Engagement Partner for the State of Louisiana’s Governor’s Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Preparedness (GOHSEP), a client of hers for over thirteen years. She has led a multimillion dollar, multi-functional project for the assessment of the systems of internal control over governmental entity as it is related to the governance of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Public Assistance Grant Program for over $14 Billion for Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustav, Ike as well as other federally declared disasters. As it relates to Grant Management and Disaster Recovery she has created a risk based subrecipient monitoring plan and monitoring strategy to monitor over 1200 sub-grantees. She has designed expense review tools to effectively manage and reconcile over $14B of transactions. She has led data analytics projects to identify data integrity issues and subsequently designed and transformed the organization to include new and redesigned processes for grants management, finance, accounting, sanctions, appeals, insurance tracking and overall compliance with managing a Public Assistance and Hazard Mitigation programs. Related to grant management and disaster recovery she has: Led an agency wide risk-based assessment of current state capabilities of the organization related to the people, process, and technology components. Designed and supported the phases of implementation for the creation of a risk assessment to assist the organization in evaluating its sub-grantees and developing a monitoring strategy, created monitoring templates to facilitate desk reviews of A-133 reports and subrecipient site visits. In addition, led the design and implementation of a sanctions and appeals program. Designed an expense review tool to automate and enhance the grant manager’s review of over $14B expense reimbursement requests for claims processing for disaster related claims. Performed a data analysis exercise to identify data integrity issues and subsequently developed a tool, procedures and a template to facilitate the reconciliation of a $14B transactions related to federal programs. Designed an insurance tracking and compliance system to better manage insurance considerations for Grant Managers in managing a PA disaster. ►            Ragini served the State of Colorado’s Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management as the Lead Engagement Principal and helped design their strategic plan, design their business processes over their PA program for expense reimbursement, payment reconciliation, subrecipient monitoring, project formulation, closeout and helped implement a disaster grants management system and helped configure and customize the solution to meet the needs of the states. She also advises the state on Audit readiness and helps facilitates conversations with FEMA and other third parties. ►            Ragini has led a project in Texas with ARRA – State Energy Conservation (SEC0) office and their grants and created a risk based monitoring program to monitor approximately $290 Million worth of funding that was distributed to various recipients.  She led the creation of tools and templates to monitor recipients based on financial, compliance, and operations requirements of the program. ►            Ragini has led two projects for the Texas State University System to evaluate the client’s processes to effectively comply with federal and state regulations over Public Assistance (PA) funds available to them.  She also led the development of Disaster Recovery and Management Policies and Procedures for the Systems offices and campuses as a part of an audit readiness project to better prepare them for future disasters and related audits. Ragini holds a Bachelors of Science in Accounting from Louisiana State University. She is a frequent speaker on strategic risk, crisis management, disaster recovery.

Mandy is a Managing Director at BDO.  She has been a data analytics leader for over 25 years .  Her focus has been assisting clients in recovering from, and avoiding, significant business events across diverse industries by leveraging data and analytics technologies.  She has been actively involved in ASCEND Houston mentoring program.

Dan leads the business owner tax team for the Houston office of RSM. He has more than 20 years of experience at public accounting firms advising business owners on interconnected business, financial, and personal tax saving strategies. His focus is understanding the specific goals of his clients and delivering custom solutions to help them reach their goals. Dan enjoys volunteering with TXCPA Houston.  He chairs the Scholarship Extravaganza committee and the Accelerate committee.  These committees provide scholarships to accounting students at local universities and educate future accounting leaders in executive leadership competencies. Professional affiliations and credentials        - American Institute of Certified Public Accountants        - Texas Society of Certified Public Accountants        - TXCPA Houston        - Houston Estate and Financial Forum        - Houston Business and Estate Planning Council        - Certified Public Accountant, Texas and California        - Certified Financial Planner Education Bachelor of Science, accountancy, California State University, Fresno

Nazif has over 24 years of public accounting experience, which includes the Big Four, plus two years of industry experience with a Fortune 500 company. His professional services experience is in a wide range of industries, including energy, manufacturing and distribution, technology, etc. Nazif has led and supported the execution of auditing processes, application reviews, IT security reviews, quality assurance reviews, board-level presentations and business process improvement projects. His expertise includes compliance and risk management, IT strategies, emerging technologies, i.e., cloud, mobility, cyber security, robotic process automation (RPA) auditing, data governance, including business intelligence and artificial intelligence. Nazif is skilled at reengineering business processes and implementing technologies to improve efficiency, remove redundancy and optimize working capital. Nazif works with private equity groups to provide IT due diligence services as they relate to mergers and acquisitions. Nazif oversees the Houston consulting practice, which includes IT audits for public registrants (Sarbanes-Oxley 404), internal audit services, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) selection and assessments, cybersecurity, technology consulting, infrastructure managed services, digital transformation, supply chain management, organizational change management and IT risk assessments. He has designed automated programs for Statement on Auditing Standards (SAS) 99 procedures for various business cycles applicable to both public and private entities to improve the approach and execution of substantive audit procedures. Nazif also provides System and Organization Controls (SOC) 1 (Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements No. 18 [SSAE 18]), Type 1 and 2; SOC 2, Type 1 and 2; and SOC 3 attestation services. Professional certifications and affiliations     - Certified public accountant (CPA)      - Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA)     - Certified in the Governance of Enterprise IT (CGEIT)      - Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control (CRISC)     - Certified Information Technology Professional (CITP)     - Certified Common Security Framework Practitioner (CCSFP)     - American Institute of Certified Public Accountants     - Texas Society of Certified Public Accountants (TSCPA)     - Houston Chapter of TSCPA     - Information Systems Audit and Control Association Education Education:     - Bachelor of Science, accounting, Rutgers University     - Bachelor of Arts, economics, Rutgers University

Tam Vo is a certified coach passionate about helping clients attain balance in 12 different life categories so they may live happier, healthier lives. Tam has worked C-suite executives, business entrepreneurs, Grammy award-winning musicians, healthcare workers, emergency responders, veterans, terminally ill patients, and more on shifting mindsets and forming healthy habits to attain what they out of life. Before switching careers to coaching, Tam enjoyed 2 decades in public accounting as a tax strategist for many clients including Fortune 500 companies and most recently worked at Grant Thornton as Director and regional service-line leader.

Ms. Wahjudi is a Managing Director in Deloitte Digital – Customer and Marketing practice with an expertise in business transformation, global program management, and digital technology enablement to help our clients engage their customers, partners and employees better. In addition to her market role, she also serves as US Digital Customer Architecture Talent leader. She is passionate about Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and talent development, especially our women in technology and next generation of architects who provide a hands-on approach to defining how digital business platforms deliver value in the modern enterprise and measuring the results against plans. She's known for approaching her work with empathy, humility and cultural awareness. Originally from Indonesia, she has experience working as an electrical engineer in Asia and New Zealand prior to joining Deloitte in Australia and transferred to US practice.

Melinda Yee is Deloitte’s Houston Advisory Leader and leads a team of over 600 practitioners focused on helping organizations effectively navigate a variety of business risks and opportunities – from strategic, reputation, and financial risks to operational, cyber, and regulatory risks—to gain a competitive advantage. She has over 25 years of public accounting experience with a background in accounting, auditing, due diligence, transaction structuring, and financial processes. Melinda specializes in advising clients with their transactional needs for mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, and joint venture formations and dissolutions.  She has led numerous M&A teams, both foreign and domestic, on various acquisition and divestiture transactions serving both corporate and private equity clients.  She has substantial M&A experience with companies across the energy value chain including upstream, midstream, downstream, chemicals and oilfield services.  Additionally, she also has substantial experience with power and regulated utilities, including independent power producers, alternative energy, clean-tech, water and waste water, mining, manufacturing, and industrial products. Melinda is also active in the non-profit community and currently serves on the board of Junior Achievement of Southeast Texas, the Foundation for the Women’s Energy Network, and the University of Colorado Foundation.  She is a co-founder and original board member of the North Texas Chapter of Women’s Energy Network and served on the Houston Chapter’s Advisory Board as well as United Way of Greater Houston’s Women’s Council and the Greater Houston Women’s Chamber of Commerce. She graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder and previously served on the Advisory Board for CU’s Leeds School of Business. She was honored to be recently named by Oil & Gas Investor as one of the 25 Influential Women in Energy as well as recognized by the Greater Houston Women’s Chamber of Commerce as one of the Breakthrough Women.