Author: brendarobertsblog

An established audit professional in Oakland, California, Brenda Roberts has spent more than two decades as an auditor for publicly-held companies, government agencies, and other organizations. She began her career in public accounting with KPMG. Later, as Senior Manager with Deloitte & Touche she collaborated with other managers and took on critical roles in the recruitment programs and staff training initiatives while managing well-performing audit teams and leading financial reporting efforts.

ALGA Announces Free Archived Webinars for Members

Brenda D. Roberts is an auditor and project manager with over a decade of experience in various industries, including Fortune 500 companies, consulting firms and government agencies. She is a project manager at RGP, a global consulting firm serving clients in all aspects of business needs. Because of her work experiences in government agencies, Brenda Roberts is associated with the Association of Local Government Auditors (ALGA), a non-profit professional organization, committed to supporting auditors in their work at local government agencies throughout North America.

As part of its mission to provide training and educational materials to members, the organization regularly holds conferences, producing webinars focused on industry topics. ALGA has recently announced that all of its archived webinars will now be free of charge for its members. However, there will still be a nominal fee for non-members.

These webinars cover a wide range of topics, from highly technical issues to the important ‘soft skills’, such as developing rapport-building skills, including a recent addition to the webinar library, “Five Benefits to Using Reciprocity During Interviews.” This presentation focuses on and demonstrates how auditors can obtain the best information from auditee interviews, one of the most important data gathering tools.

The archived webinars can be found on the ALGA website, https://algaonline.org/.

How to Make a Positive Impact on the Earth’s Health Individually

The former City Auditor for the City of Oakland, Brenda Roberts is known for presenting exemplary audit reports and developing high-quality risk-based audit plans. Brenda Roberts resides in Oakland, California, where she spends her free time volunteering in animal shelters and for environmentally-friendly campaigns such as Earth Day.

The Earth Day Network is considered the largest global environmental movement; it encourages individuals to implement eco-friendly practices in their daily lives. One such practice is exchanging regular light bulbs for ENERGY STAR-certified compact fluorescent light bulbs, which are proven to use one-quarter of other bulbs’ energy while producing more light. It is estimated that if every US household replaced one regular light bulb with a compact fluorescent bulb, more than 13 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions would be prevented.

Another eco-friendly practice is ensuring energy-efficient temperature control at home. Sealing doors and windows to increase insulation and replacing older heating and cooling systems with a programmable thermostat are two key steps that homeowners can take.

Outside the home, replacing vehicles with more fuel-efficient options, such as hybrids, can also help reduce emissions. If this is not possible, reducing speed while driving helps reduce carbon dioxide emissions, as high-speed cars burn more gasoline.

PMI Offers Business Continuity Course for the Remote Workplace

A former auditor for the cities of Oakland and San Francisco, risk and compliance executive Brenda Roberts has earned awards from the U.S. Department of Labor and the advisory firm Deloitte, LLC. Brenda Roberts is a certified public accountant, fraud examiner, and internal auditor. She is currently working toward a credential from the Project Management Institute (PMI). In addition to offering industry-recognized certifications, PMI delivers continuing education topics for project management professionals and leaders.

In response to the prevalence of remote teams, PMI has put together a new virtual course on business continuity and managing the change from an in-person to a completely remote workforce. These workshops, the Virtual Experience Series expands on several topics and features key speakers on a variety of topics. The series is hosted by Tamron Hall and highlights topical content relevant to the new way of working in a virtual world.

The series reviews several options which are free to set up, including Google Hangouts, Microsoft Office, and Cisco’s video conferencing platform. Through these tools, managers can address challenges with communication, coordination, and risk management. PMI also recommends creating more opportunities for co-workers and teams to interact by scheduling work-focused and social virtual meetings.

For more information and to sign up for this series of free workshops, visit the Project Management Institute website at https://www.pmi.org/virtual-experience-series.