Michelle D'Amico, CPA
As a former Assurance Director at BDO USA, LLP (formerly SS&G Financial Services, Inc.), and one of the leaders of the Northeast Ohio Employee Benefit Plan (EBP) practice, Michelle has over 20 years of public accounting experience focusing primarily on employee benefit plan audits and related consulting. Michelle has extensive experience performing limited-scope and full-scope audits of employee benefit plans for both single employer and multi-employer plans, which include profit sharing, 401(k), pension, 403(b) tax-sheltered annuity, employee stock ownership (ESOP) and health and welfare plans.
Michelle served as a firm wide, employee benefit plan audit technical resource developing audit testing programs and annual firm training seminars. Michelle has led several employee benefit plan continuing education sessions for the Ohio Society of Certified Public Accountants. She annually attends the AICPA National Conference on Employee Benefit Plans, which is the industry’s premier conference covering all current and emerging employee benefit audit interest areas.
Valerie Wawrin, CPA, CFE
Valerie is a former Assurance Director with BDO USA, LLP, a national accounting firm where she was one of the leaders of the Northeast Ohio Employee Benefit Plan (EBP) practice. She has more than 22 years of experience in public and private accounting sectors including over 18 years of employee benefit plan audit experience. Valerie has audited benefit plans ranging in size from 100 participants to several thousand, with net assets ranging from less than $1 million to over $1 billion. Valerie has an in-depth knowledge of all types of EBP audits including both full-scope and limited-scope audits. She has a special interest in the audits of health and welfare (H&W) benefit plans. H&W plan audits present unique challenges which Valerie has significant experience navigating.
Valerie presents at internal firm employee benefit plan training as well as at external seminars related to various employee benefit plan audit topics. Each year she attends the annual AICPA National Conference on Employee Benefit Plans. She is also a certified fraud examiner (CFE).