Common Interest Realty Associations Conference (CIRA)

Bruce Nunnally, Partner Emeritus, Retired, Inactive or Other

Bruce Nunnally was a founding partner of Carr, Riggs & Ingram, LLC in 1997. He entered semi-retirement in 2019. He has 40 years of public accounting experience, including 9 years with the international public accounting firm, Ernst & Young, LLP. Bruce is a national instructor of accounting and auditing issues. He has presented accounting and auditing continuing education classes for a quarter of the top 30 CPA firms in the U.S. Some of the courses he has led include:

• Annual Update for Accountants and Auditors
• Audits of 401K Plans
• Fair Value Accounting
• FASB Update for Industry

In 2016 and 2022, Bruce was recognized as an “Outstanding Discussion Leader” by the Florida Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

Other
Certified Public Accountant since 1981.
Past member of the AICPA Accounting & Review Services Committee (ARSC)
Past member of the AICPA PCPS Technical Issues Committee
Past member of the AICPA Auditing & Attestation Subcommittee

Elan Sternberg, Director of Forensic and Litigation Services, Kaufman, Rossin & Co, PA

Elan is a director in the Forensic, Advisory, and Valuation Services group at Kaufman Rossin, specializing in providing forensic accounting and litigation consulting services.

Before joining Kaufman Rossin in 2016, Elan worked as an auditor at a national public accounting firm in Philadelphia for more than three years. He executed various client engagements, including planning, budgeting, directing, and completing integrated audit tasks (including financial statements and internal controls).

Currently, Elan works closely with trial attorneys, in-house counsel, corporate boards, and management teams in the context of complex commercial litigation, fraud, financial investigations, and business and partnership disputes.

Elan provides dispute consulting and investigative services for various types of engagements, including those that involve economic damages such as lost profits analysis, business interruption calculations, intellectual property infringement damages, and construction claims.

Gabriel Mendoza, Senior Director - Assurance Services, Sokol & Sokol, CPA

Gabe Mendoza joined our audit department in September 2016. He performs audits, reviews, and compilations for our condominium and homeowner association clients and manages our quality control process. He supervises field audit engagements, designs audit plans and supervises audit staff.  He manages preliminary testing and documentation, turnover audits and agreed-upon procedure engagements.  Further, he leads our external training program geared towards property management company accounting departments and property managers looking to increase their technical skills, financial literacy, and expand their ability to communicate financial results to users of the financial statements. Prior to joining Sokol & Sokol, he spent five years working as an auditor at Grant Thornton, LLP in their South Florida offices.
He is a Certified Public Accountant in the state of Florida and a member of the Florida Institute of Certified Public Accountants. He also serves on the Common Interest Realty Association (CIRA) Committee of the FICPA, which plans and presents the annual FICPA Common Interest Realty Association Conference and assists members in becoming more technically proficient in accounting, tax, consultation and certain operational matters related to Florida’s CIRA industry. He graduated from Florida International University with a BS degree in Accounting and a Master of Accounting degree in 2012.

Guy Strum, Owner/President, Gladstone, Strum & Company, CPAs

Guy has been a practicing CPA for the past 30 years. He holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from the University of Miami and worked on his MBA at Suffolk University in Boston, Massachusetts. His practice is located in Plantation, Florida and concentrates on providing audit, review and compilation services to CIRAs.

He has been an active member of the FICPA, serving on the Common Interest Realty Associations Committee since 2000 including Chair in 2007. Since then, has chaired this committee’s Legislative Sub-Committee. He also currently serves as Chair of the State Legislative Policy Committee. Guy is also a past FICPA Council member.

Jason Harrell, Chief External Affairs Officer, Florida Institute of CPAs

Jason Harrell is the FICPA Chief External Affairs Officer responsible for leading all aspects of the Institute’s public policy, advocacy, governmental affairs and regulatory affairs. He serves as the liaison to the DBPR and Board of Accountancy and is responsible for all advocacy-related external communications and campaigns to increase the value of the CPA license. Jason brings numerous years of experience to this role, previously serving as director of government relations for Florida Court Clerks and Comptrollers Association and budget and communications director for the Clerks of Court Operations Corporation, serving in key roles under two Speakers in the Florida House, and serving in the Executive Office of the Governor in the Office of Policy and Budget and Chief Inspector General’s Office.

Jennifer Green, President & Owner, Liberty Partners of Tallahassee, LLC

Jennifer Green is President and owner of Liberty Partners of Tallahassee, LLC and founded the firm in early 2007 with former U.S. Senator Connie Mack. With over 24 years of experience in political, lobbying and grassroots activities in the State of Florida she consults primarily on state Legislative and Executive branch issues affecting corporations, trade associations, local governments and not-for-profits. Jennifer is the Past Chairman of the Florida Association of Professional Lobbyists (FAPL) and still serves on the board and in numerous capacities within the organization including as a trustee of the FAPL Educational Foundation. She helped develop the DPL credentialing program. 

Prior to Liberty Partners, Jennifer served as the Deputy Executive Director and lead lobbyist for the Florida Institute of Certified Public Accountants (FICPA). Jennifer headed up the legislative, communications, regulatory, political committee and membership functions of the 18,000-plus member organization with a $13 million annual budget. Jennifer’s direct staff reports consisted of more than 20 management and director-level employees. She represented the CPA profession as a registered lobbyist before the Florida Legislature and Cabinet for more than a decade. 

Jennifer was responsible for the administration and fundraising efforts of five political action committees totaling more than $350,000 in contributions per election cycle and a statewide grassroots network with more than 400 individual CPAs. Previous to her tenure with the FICPA, she lobbied the Florida Legislature on behalf of the Florida Bankers Association and a private lobbying firm. In addition, Jennifer participated in several statewide Florida political campaigns including the 1992 Bush-Quayle Presidential campaign and former Governor Jeb Bush’s 1994 and 1998 campaigns. 

In addition to lobbying, Jennifer’s background includes experience in many aspects of advocacy including political action committee fundraising, grassroots activities, coalition building, strategic management, communications, member relations and marketing. Jennifer has a wide range of business-related expertise, but has focused recently on professional regulatory issues, state and local taxation, local government auditing issues, not-for-profit and for-profit accounting and auditing issues, legal liability reform, constitutional amendment reform and common interest realty association regulation. Jennifer has worked with several successful business coalitions and directed the efforts of a group of 27 organizations that successfully defeated a proposed constitutional amendment that would have created a services tax in Florida. 

Jennifer earned her Certified Association Executive (CAE) designation from the American Society of Association Executive (ASAE) after graduating from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce four-year association management program. Jennifer also earned the Designated Professional Lobbyist (DPL) title from the Florida Association of Professional Lobbyists (FAPL). Jennifer is a member of ASAE, the Florida Society Association Executives (FSAE) and serves on the boards of FAPL, Florida Chamber Political Institute, Florida Chamber CCE and is a past member of FSAE’s Board and Foundation. Jennifer received her Bachelor Degree in Political Science from Florida State University. She and her husband reside in Tallahassee, Florida.

Kevin McElgunn, Senior Manager, WithumSmith+Brown, PC

Over 10 years of public accounting experience specializing in auditing, financial statement preparation and analysis as well as business consulting, with a focus on private and publicly-held entities. Withum’s team leader for implementing cloud based audit technologies tools such as the Dynamic Audit Solutions (DAS), OnPoint Employee Benefit Plans and Preps, Compilations and reviews, which utilizes WithumAI to ingest data on these various engagements. Leading member of the Firm’s Central Analytics team, responsible for implementing and executing computer-assisted audit techniques for the analysis of data using programs such as ACL, CAAT and data mining software.

Matthew Kuisle, Regional Executive Director, Reserve Advisors, Inc.

Matthew C. Kuisle is a Director and Shareholder of Reserve Advisors. Mr. Kuisle is responsible for the overall management and administration of the firm’s Southeast regional team. Reserve Advisors is a leading provider of reserve study consulting services, having conducted over 30,000 reserve studies.

Mr. Kuisle is a frequent speaker and author and a Florida-licensed Continuing Education Provider for Community Association Managers. He serves on the Community Associations Institute (CAI) National Business Partner Council, CAI National Board of Trustees and as a council member with the Florida Legislative Alliance (CAI-FLA). 

Mr. Kuisle is a Professional Engineer, licensed in Florida since 2006 and also holds both the Reserve Specialist (RS) and Professional Reserve Analyst (PRA) Designations. He is also the Treasurer of his condominium association in Tampa, Florida where he has served on the board for 15 years. He enjoys fishing, camping and spending time with his wife and their two young children.

Michael Marcusky, Juda, Eskew & Associates, LLC

Michael T. Marcusky joined the firm in 1997 and is the firm’s audit and tax partner. Michael is a South Florida native and a graduate of the University of Florida.

Prior to joining the firm he worked for a local CPA firm as audit manager in charge of condominium and homeowners associations, as well as a controller of a large South Florida management company.

Since joining the firm his focus is on servicing clients in monthly accounting write-up, consulting and auditing. Responsibilities currently include overseeing a portfolio of monthly accounting clients and supervision of the audit department. In addition to these duties he has performed other consulting services that include litigation support for a large Insurance defense firm, receivership services for multiple condominium and homeowners associations and preparation and review of Association turnovers from Developer control. In addition, he has played a key role in several accounting software conversions and upgrades. With his longevity and dedication Mike plays a vital role in the management and future of our firm.

Mike is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), Florida Institute of Certified Public Accountants (FICPA) and the Communities Association Institute (CAI). His outside interests include coaching youth sports including travel baseball. He also partakes in numerous water sports including, fishing, diving and jet-skiing.

Paul Brown, Vice President, Professional and Technical Standards, Florida Institute of CPAs

Paul Brown joined the FICPA in November 1992 and is the VP of Professional and Technical Standards for the Florida Institute of CPAs (FICPA). One of Paul's main duties is to serve as the technical reviewer in Florida for the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) Peer Review Program.  The program administers approximately 350 reviews annually in Florida and oversees approximately 90 peer reviewers.  Paul also assists members in the areas of professional ethics and professional standards. As part of his role in the peer review program Paul has previously been an instructor and author of continuing education programs for the AICPA and FICPA, for which he had received several outstanding discussion leader and author awards.  Paul serves on the AICPA's Peer Review Standards Task Force, Technical Reviewers Advisory Task Force to the Peer Review Board and serves as staff liaison to two committees of the FICPA.

Russell Landy, Damian Valori Culmo DVLLP

Russell Landy is a Partner at Damian Valori Cuomo and focuses his practice in the areas of complex commercial litigation, business torts, receiverships, contract disputes, class actions, and employment litigation. He represents businesses and individuals in litigation involving business disputes, shareholder issues, and employment matters. Mr. Landy has an AV Preeminent® Rating from Martindale-Hubbell® Peer Review Ratings™ and frequently handles defense and prosecution in class and collective actions. He also represents federal and state court-appointed fiduciaries in corporate control disputes and government enforcement actions by the SEC, CFTC, and FTC, particularly in asset recovery litigation.
Mr. Landy earned his J.D. from the University of Miami School of Law in 2007, where he was a member of the Business Law Review and received honors in the Litigation Skills program. He also holds a B.B.A. in Marketing and Finance from the University of Miami, where he was both Athletic and Academic Captain of the Men's Track and Field team.
Active in pro bono work, Mr. Landy has chaired the Business Litigation Committee of the Florida Bar's Business Law Section and frequently speaks on complex commercial and employment litigation topics.

Shayne Ellman, Auditor, Sokol & Sokol, CPA

Shayne has over 10 years of experience in public accounting. Her focus is on providing audit and other assurance services for condominium and homeowner associations. Shayne holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from the University of Miami and an accounting degree from Florida Atlantic University. 

Shayne is also a member of the Florida Institute of Certified Public Accountants. She serves on the Common Interest Realty Association (CIRA) Committee, which plans and presents the annual FICPA Common Interest Realty Association Conference. She also serves on the Young CPA committee which identifies services and benefits valuable to young CPAs and develops opportunities to engage in professional development and networking socials. 

Shelly Weir, President & CEO, Florida Institute of CPAs