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 Indiana University of Pennsylvania and is a certified
public accountant in the states of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.