Technical Director, Financial Accounting Standards Board
Chairman, Emerging Issues Task Force
Diversity Leader, FAF/FASB/GASB
Susan M. Cosper is the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) technical director and chairman of the Emerging Issues Task Force, a role she has held since 2011. As technical director, she is responsible for managing all of the FASB's technical accounting and research activities and staff. During her tenure, she has had the privilege of overseeing some of the most challenging and important projects the FASB has addressed in recent times, including comprehensive changes to the accounting for revenue recognition, financial instruments (including credit losses and hedge accounting), lease accounting, convergence efforts with the International Accounting Standards Board, and accounting alternatives for private companies with the inaugural work of the Private Company Council (an Advisory Group of the FASB).
As FASB technical director, Cosper frequently interacts with staff from the Securities and Exchange Commission, Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, and AICPA as well as with banking regulators, congressional and senate staffers, companies, auditors, investors, and standard-setters from around the globe. Cosper is also the diversity leader for the Financial Accounting Foundation (FAF), the parent organization to the FASB and the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB). In that role, she has focused on ways to promote diversity and inclusion within her organization and in the accounting profession.
Prior to her appointment at the FASB, Cosper was a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) and had the distinguished honor of being the first female partner in the Pittsburgh office. She joined the Pittsburgh office of PwC in 1992, where she performed audits of private and public companies in PwC's Assurance practice. From 1998 to 2001, she accepted an international assignment in the firm's London office. There, she led global audit engagements and advised clients on international accounting issues. After her return to Pittsburgh in 2005, she was selected for a three-year fellowship with the FASB. Upon completing the fellowship, she became part of PwC's National Office in Florham Park, New Jersey, and served in PwC's Financial Instruments, Structured Products, and Real Estate Group in New York City. She earned her BS in accounting in 1992 from ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø and is a certified public accountant in the states of New York, New Jersey, and ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø.