Academic Degrees
PhD, Accounting, Virginia Tech
MAcc, Accountancy, Virginia Tech
BS, Accountancy, North Carolina A&T State University
Professional Certifications
Certified Public Accountant
Biography
Kelly Richmond Pope is the Dr. Barry Jay Epstein Endowed Professor of Forensic Accounting at DePaul University. Pope is a nationally recognized expert in risk, forensic accounting and white-collar crime research, and an award-winning educator, researcher, author and documentary filmmaker. She teaches managerial and forensic accounting to undergraduate and graduate students. She's the author of "Fool Me Once: Scams, Stories and Secrets from the Trillion-Dollar Fraud Industry" (Harvard Business Review Press, March 2023), which was named one of the "40 Nonfiction Books to Watch Out for in 2023" by the Next Big Idea Book Club.
In 2020, the AICPA and the CPA Practice Advisor named Pope among the top-25 most powerful women in accounting. Her areas of expertise are in understanding and identifying financial fraud risk within financial statements, assessing corporate culture, and compliance systems designed to confront internal control challenges. Pope's research on executive misconduct culminated in directing and producing the award-winning documentary, "All the Queen's Horses," which explores the largest municipal fraud in U.S. history. Pope's TED Talk, titled "How Whistle-blowers Shape History," has been viewed more than 1.6 million times, translated into 20 languages, and serves as a resource to help organizations and individuals embrace internal whistleblowing.
Pope serves on the board of directors for the Greater Chicago Food Depository and chairs its audit committee. Pope is a former director and finance committee chair for Mercy Hospital & Medical Center, former director of the Illinois CPA Society, and former member of the governing council for the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants .
Pope is a frequent international speaker for numerous corporations, nonprofits, and government agencies. She has been interviewed by CNBC, the BBC and WGN-TV on fraud, risk and ethics. Additionally, Pope has discussed fraud and the need for sound internal controls in publications that include Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, CFO Drive, Accounting Today, Forbes, The Washington Post, and The Daily Beast.
Pope earned her Bachelor of Science in accounting from North Carolina A&T State University and her master's in accountancy and doctorate in accounting from Virginia Tech.