Business and Industry Conference (Buffalo Chapter Satellite)

This session is designed for CPAs practicing in industry who seek to stay current on the evolving landscape of state and local income taxation. Participants will receive a concise update on recent legislative changes, regulatory developments, and emerging trends affecting state and local taxation. The session will highlight practical implications for businesses, including compliance considerations, planning opportunities, and areas of heightened scrutiny, equipping attendees with actionable insights to apply in their organizations.

This session is designed for CPAs practicing in industry who are responsible for, or work closely with, human resource functions. The course provides a practical and timely overview of current human resource management trends, key regulatory developments, and emerging workplace challenges impacting organizations today. Participants will explore current and evolving employment laws and compliance, while specifically addressing pressing HR challenges in today’s world. Through real-world examples and discussion, attendees will gain insight into: 1) how HR issues intersect with all areas of decision making; and 2) the knowledge needed to support sound organizational practices and enhance compliance.

This session will look at current trends in the economy in addition to discussing the outlook in the future. As the lead financial decision maker in your company, how do these trends affect you and what actions should you consider to best position your company for the future so that negative trends have little impact and you can ride the wave of any positive trends? 

This session explores one of the hardest parts of finance leadership: getting people outside of finance to understand, trust, and act on finance’s recommendations. CFO and keynote speaker Wassia Kamon shares why working across functions can often feel like speaking a completely different language and what to do about it. Attendees will learn practical ways to better understand stakeholder priorities, communicate more effectively, navigate resistance, and lead change more successfully in both large and small organizations.

By understanding how a bank assesses and mitigates credit risk, participants in this session can best position the borrower for a long-term mutually beneficial relationship with their primary credit provider.

An AI agent is a software coworker that reads your data, makes decisions, and acts in the systems you already use. You'll see what agents are doing today in finance and accounting departments (reconciliations, AP coding, variance commentary, audit pulls, etc.), where the line is for higher-stakes judgment, and where both functions are headed over the next 18 months.

AI agents are moving beyond experimentation and into the daily workflows of accounting and finance teams. They read documents, make decisions, and act across your systems — and that capability brings real security and governance risk that every CFO needs to understand. This session picks up where the conversation on AI capabilities leaves off and focuses on the harder question: how do you use AI safely? We'll walk through three foundational pillars — classifying your data before agents touch it, securing the integrations that connect agents to your systems, and building the human oversight structures that keep your firm accountable. Every topic is grounded in practical steps you can take back to your firm immediately, without waiting for a lengthy IT project or a new regulation to force your hand.