2025 School District Audit Conference: Afternoon Sessions

Brock Bowsher, Principal, Baker Tilly Advisory Group, LP

Brock Bowsher is a principal and municipal advisor with Baker Tilly Municipal Advisors. He specializes in serving schools and libraries through capital and operating referendum planning and strategies, comprehensive financial planning, debt management and budget development. Brock also practiced for more than 13 years as a public schools chief financial officer.

Chad Wade, Shareholder, Renning, Lewis & Lacy, s.c.

Chad counsels private and public sector employers in a variety of labor and employment matters, including legal compliance under the FLSA, FMLA, NLRA, and discrimination laws. Chad’s practice focuses on representing Wisconsin school districts and municipalities on a variety of governmental issues, employment relations matters and general education law. Chad also has significant experience assisting school districts with pupil services, special education, and disability accommodations matters.

John Higgins, Strategic Technology Advisor, Higgins Advisory LLC

John is the co-founder of CPA Crossings, LLC, which specializes in helping accounting, tax and financial professionals to leverage technology. John serves as a strategic technology advisor to CPAs in the planning and deployment of effective technology solutions and workflow automation. This aids them in the transformation to a digital practice model that features paperless processes and leverages cloud computing. In 2015, John established CPA Crossings’ new Cloud Accounting Learning Center. This is a comprehensive knowledgebase of training, information and consulting services that is designed to help CPAs make the transformation to delivering client accounting services through the use of cloud based accounting systems and other tools. This is the new accounting services paradigm for the 21st century, and John is regarded as a foremost authority on how CPAs can seize the opportunity. John recently co-authored Ten Steps to a Digital Practice in the Cloud, published by the AICPA. This book provides CPAs with a strategic roadmap for taking their firms online by leveraging cloud computing. John’s primary qualification is his passion for helping CPAs achieve success by leveraging technology. He has extensive knowledge and experience working with CPAs throughout the country.

Laura Pedersen, Associate Attorney, Renning, Lewis & Lacy, s.c.

Laura primarily practices in the areas of School and Higher Education Law, as well as Labor and Employment Law.

Before joining the firm, Laura worked in civil litigation as an associate attorney for a Milwaukee-based law firm. During law school, she clerked for a civil litigation firm and fellowed for the Milwaukee Justice Center and Milwaukee Volunteer Legal Clinic.

Before entering law school, Laura worked as a special educator and reading interventionist in Seattle Public Schools and as an English teacher in Milwaukee Public Schools. Ultimately, it was Laura’s experience in teaching that brought her into the legal field and to Renning, Lewis and Lacy, s.c.

Laura’s legal experience involves drafting court documents, representing clients in hearings, including expulsion hearings, conducting investigations, evaluating and interpreting laws, reviewing and revising policies and procedures, and preparing charter school contracts and policies.