Cynthia Cooper is an American accountant who formerly served as the Vice President of Internal Audit at WorldCom. 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 Unive ...

and a Master of Science in Accountancy from the University of Alabama. She is a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE).

Career

Cooper worked for the Atlanta offices of public accounting firms PricewaterhouseCoopers 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. 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 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)