Cynthia Cooper is an American accountant who formerly served as the

Vice President A vice president, also director in British English, is an officer in government or business who is below the president (chief executive officer) in rank. It can also refer to executive vice presidents, signifying that the vice president is on ...

Internal Audit Internal auditing is an independent, objective assurance and consulting activity designed to add value and improve an organization's operations. It helps an organization accomplish its objectives by bringing a systematic, disciplined approach to ...

WorldCom MCI, Inc. (subsequently Worldcom and MCI WorldCom) was a telecommunications company. For a time, it was the second largest long-distance telephone company in the United States, after AT&T. Worldcom grew largely by acquiring other telecommunic ...

. In 2002, Cooper and her team of auditors worked together in secret and often at night to investigate and unearth $3.8 billion in fraud at WorldCom which, at that time, was the largest corporate fraud in U.S. history. Cooper was named one of three "

People of the Year A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of property ...

" by ''Time'' magazine in 2002.

Education

Cooper earned her Bachelor of Science in Accounting from

Mississippi State University Mississippi State University for Agriculture and Applied Science, commonly known as Mississippi State University (MSU), is a public land-grant research university adjacent to Starkville, Mississippi. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Univ ...

and a Master of Science in Accountancy from the

University of Alabama The University of Alabama (informally known as Alabama, UA, or Bama) is a public research university in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Established in 1820 and opened to students in 1831, the University of Alabama is the oldest and largest of the publ ...

. She is a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE).

Career

Cooper worked for the Atlanta offices of public accounting firms

PricewaterhouseCoopers PricewaterhouseCoopers is an international professional services brand of firms, operating as partnerships under the PwC brand. It is the second-largest professional services network in the world and is considered one of the Big Four accounti ...

and Deloitte & Touche, and later became Vice President of Internal Audit at Worldcom. Cooper stayed with MCI (previously Worldcom) for two years following the fraud. She and her team helped the company successfully emerge from bankruptcy.

Later career

Since leaving what became MCI, Cooper started her own consulting firm to speak with both professionals and students sharing her experiences and lessons learned.

Writing

Cooper's book about her life and the WorldCom fraud, ''Extraordinary Circumstances: The Journey of a Corporate Whistleblower'', was published in 2008. She has donated profits from her book to high schools and universities for ethics education.

Personal life

Cooper maintains an office in

Brandon, Mississippi Brandon is a city in and the county seat of Rankin County, Mississippi, United States. It was incorporated on December 19, 1831. The population was 21,705 at the 2010 census. Brandon is part of the Jackson Metropolitan Statistical Area, and is l ...

. She married Lance Cooper in 1993; they have two children.

Honours

Cooper was named one of three "

" by ''Time'' magazine in 2002, along with fellow whistleblowers

Sherron Watkins Sherron Watkins (born August 28, 1959) is an American former Vice President of Corporate Development at the Enron Corporation. Watkins was called to testify before committees of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate at the beginning of 200 ...

and Coleen Rowley.

References

External links

Cynthia Cooper website

Cynthia Cooper talks about her book, Extraordinary Circumstances
,

C-SPAN Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network (C-SPAN ) is an American cable and satellite television network that was created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a nonprofit public service. It televises many proceedings of the United States ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cooper, Cynthia American accountants American women accountants Living people Mississippi State University alumni University of Alabama alumni American whistleblowers People from Clinton, Mississippi Women in finance Accounting scandals Year of birth missing (living people)