Emily is a director in the Charleston office with over 16 years of experience in public accounting with a concentration in accounting and assurance services. She specializes in working with closely-held companies, not-for-profit organizations, and employee benefit plans, including retailers, manufacturing, colleges and universities, and religious organizations.
She joined BE with the firm's acquisition of Gibbons & Kawash in January 2018. She started with Gibbons & Kawash after graduating college in 2008.
She earned her Bachelor’s degree in accounting from West Virginia Wesleyan College and her Master of Professional Accountancy from West Virginia University. She is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA), and a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE).
We interviewed Emily to get to know her, outside of her profession, and we were surprised to learn that "not to live in the past but...." she won three state championships her senior year of high school (soccer, basketball, and discus).
I grew up in Sissonville, WV, a small community outside of Charleston. My claim to fame is that Sissonville was named after my great, great, great, great-grandfather John Sisson.
Currently my free time is mostly consumed with spending time with my kids and family. I have a son, Luca, who is 7 and very active in sports, and then I have 3-year old twins, Sloane and Gavin. My husband, Chris, and I are huge WVU fans, with season football tickets, so I try to get up to Morgantown when I can!
It will be a while before I get over there (waiting for kids to get older), but I would love to go back to Italy and other parts of Europe. My husband's great-grandparents from both sides of his family are from Italy, so I would love for my family to experience that heritage.
How to Catch an Elf and Pig the Elf :) (my reading is pretty limited to children books these days)
I love Mexican food, but my family probably couldn't live without pizza.
Someone who knows survival skills, whatever they think is most important, and some sort of communication device to get me out of there :)
My mom encouraged me to try accounting in college. I figured my mom knew me the best so I gave it a shot and as always, mothers are always right. Accepting a position at Gibbons & Kawash seemed like what I was supposed to do after graduation, but choosing to stay in public accounting for 16+ years and choosing it as my career was because of the opportunity to help people – whether that be mentoring/training young staff or assisting my clients.