Business and Industry Conference Webcast

Gregory J. Altman currently serves as the Vice President of Finance and Operations at Nardin Academy, Buffalo, NY and as Treasurer/Secretary for American Coradius International, LLC, Amherst, NY. Prior to this role, Mr. Altman served as the Director of Finance and Operations at Health Sciences Charter School, Buffalo, NY and as Chief Financial Officer at Zone Oil & Gas LLC and Somerset Production Company, LLC, and as controller for Somerset Capital Partners, all affiliated companies in the investment and oil and gas industries. Prior to becoming affiliated with the Somerset companies, Mr. Altman worked for an independent oil and gas exploration and production company, a real estate syndicator with public and private partnerships, and in public accounting for ten years. Former affiliations include serving on the finance and audit committee for The Olmsted Conservancy in Buffalo, past-President for the Western New York Kidney Foundation, and the annual chairperson for the Kids Escaping Drugs dinner gala, Buffalo, NY.

Mr. Altman is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants. Mr. Altman earned his bachelor's degree from New York University and graduated from the State University of New York at Buffalo's graduate tax certificate program.

Beth van Bladel, CPA, is a Director & Outsourced CFO with BST Consulting Group, a division of BST & Co. CPAs, LLP, where she provides financial, management, and accounting advisory services to support mission-driven organizations. She specializes in translating complex financial concepts into clear, actionable insights and collaborating to solve problems that lead to measurable, positive outcomes. Leveraging her Six Sigma Green Belt (CSSGB), she designs efficient processes and uses financial systems and automation to support growing organizations.

Coaching and developing her clients, team members, and NextGen CPAs is central to Beth’s work and brings her tremendous fulfillment.

Beth is honored to be recognized on the Forbes 2026 America’s Best-In-State CPAslist, a milestone that reflects her lifelong commitment to the CPA profession. She is currently serving a three-year term on the AICPA Council. Previously, she served on the Private Company Council, advising the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) on private company matters. She is also a proud member of the New York State Society of CPAs and a recipient of both the Distinguished Service Award and the Outstanding CPA in Industry Award.

Beyond her professional work, Beth is a volunteer patient advocate and founder of Capital Region Patient Advocacy, where she teaches healthcare advocacy and navigation skills to the Capital Region community.

In her free time, Beth can be found on a yoga mat or discovering backroads on her Can-Am Spyder.

Tim focuses his practice in the state and local tax area. His work primarily involves New York State and New York City tax litigation and controversy. Over the past 25 years, he has handled more than 3,000 personal income tax, sales tax, corporate tax, or other New York State and City tax audits, and over 100 cases in New York’s Division of Tax Appeals. Tim is also a member of the Board of Directors of Hodgson Russ.

Tim leads the firm’s Tax Residency Practice and he is one of the leading practitioners in this area of the law. He has handled some of the most high-profile residency cases in New York, including a significant win in the Gaied case, one of the first New York residency cases to ever reach New York’s highest court. He is often quoted by media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Bloomberg, and Forbes, on residency and other state tax issues. Under his direction, the Tax Residency Practice authored What to Expect in a Residency Audit, a detailed guide to residency rules and audits in New York and other states. And over the past 25 years, he has guided literally thousands of taxpayers moving from high-tax states to low-tax states and successfully defended them in state residency audits.

As the “Noonan” in “Noonan's Notes,” a monthly column in Tax Notes State, Tim is a nationally recognized author and speaker on state tax issues. He co-authored the CCH Residency and Allocation Audit Handbook and Contesting New York State Tax Assessment- Fourth Edition, published by the New York State Bar Association. In addition, Tim has served as a contributing author or editor for several other tax publications and treatises, including the American Bar Association's Sales and Use Tax Deskbook, the "New York Sales Tax Guide" published by practicallaw.com, the corporate apportionment chapter in Thomson Reuters’ Checkpoint Analyst, the New York chapter of LexisNexis’s Practice Insights, and the New York Tax Litigation chapter in Thomson Reuters’ Commercial Litigation in New York State Courts treatise. He has also written more than 400 articles in state and local tax publications around the country over the past two decades, and he runs the award-winning Noonan's Notes Blog, where he and his colleagues offer regular commentary on developments in the world of New York and multistate tax law.

Tim also has extensive experience on New York City corporate and entity tax matters, and handled a significant number of residency and sales tax issues in other states, including work with many national and international clients on multistate compliance or voluntary disclosures. He has also appeared before the Connecticut Supreme Court and the Michigan Court of Appeals in litigated matters and is admitted to practice law in Connecticut.

Eric Morris is Portfolio Manager and Staff Economist at Alesco Advisors, an ESL Company, where he helps businesses, families, and nonprofit institutions with custom investment solutions and advice. His responsibilities include managing client portfolios based on evidence-based investment strategy and supporting decision-makers with practical interpretation of complex market developments. He also sits on Alesco’s Investment Committee. He is often called upon to share his insights about capital markets and the economy with broad audiences through speaking engagements, media appearances, and print publications.

Prior to joining Alesco, Eric shared his expertise with students as instructor of economics, history, and education at the secondary, undergraduate, and graduate levels. Earlier in his career he spent several years as a researcher with the Center for Governmental Research, a think-tank and consulting firm. He holds B.A. and M.A. degrees in economics from Syracuse University, as well as an Ed.D. from the University of Rochester. Eric and his wife live in Brighton, NY with their two sons.

Frank is responsible for advocacy on labor/HR, unemployment insurance and workers' compensation issues, and for providing human resources consulting services to Council members. Frank comes to The Business Council from the New York State Funeral Directors Association where he provided human resource and OSHA consulting services to employers of all sizes. Prior work experience includes human resources staff and leadership positions in the financial services and health care arenas. Frank is a graduate of Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations with nearly 36 years of experience in human resource management. He is a certified Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR), a Certified Association Executive (CAE), and a frequent presenter of human resource topics across the state and nationally.

Sales Consultant focusing on CPA firm partnerships, 6+ years at ADP Upstate New York region.

As a Certified Digital Workplace & Wellness Educator, Rijul’s vision is to enable others to gain a healthy relationship with technology. As a speaker, coach & author, Rijul has delivered his message via TEDx, to corporations like Sony, and media houses like YES Magazine and NPR. He also works with EY and helps clients across sectors in end-to-end technology transformation focusing on aspects like Digital Workplace and IT Strategy. He has 10+ Microsoft Digital Workplace certifications, including VIVA Insights and Microsoft 365. Rijul has keen insight, as he has experienced technology from all sides: going from fully addicted to total abstinence to establishing the healthy balance & relationship he now teaches & shares. Rijul also heads LookUp India, a youth-for-youth social venture dedicated to helping young people thrive in the digital world. Working with leading companies in the space of Digital Wellness like UnPlugHQ, Screen Time Action Network & Digital Wellness Institute, Rijul is an ardent advocate of using tech in moderation with a focus on digital wellbeing & personal growth.

David Levine is co-chair of the firm’s employer-focused practice. He advises plan sponsors, advisors, and other service providers on a wide range of employee benefits matters, from retirement and executive compensation to health and welfare plan matters. David advises on the design and redesign of complex retirement, executive, and health and welfare plans; ongoing, day-to-day counseling of plan sponsors; in-depth compliance reviews of corporate and governmental benefit programs; alternative products and assets, including venture capital, private equity, and cryptocurrency, for IRA, HSAs, and 401(k) plan service providers; products and compliance for retirement and health service providers, and representation of tax-exempt organizations with respect to issues involving corporate governance, executive compensation, and unrelated business income tax liability. David was previously the Chair of the IRS Advisory Committee on Tax Exempt and Government Entities (2011-2013) and is currently a member of the Executive Committee of the Defined Contribution Institutional Investment Association and serves in a number of leadership roles in the American Bar Association Tax Section’s Employee Benefits Committee. David regularly speaks on plan design, fiduciary governance, and legislative issues and contributes a recurring column to NAPA Net — The Magazine. He is recognized in the Chambers USA guide for Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation.

Christopher Preble is a Vice President, Permanent Placement Services for Robert Half Finance & Accounting. Besides managing the Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo, NY permanent placement teams, his area of responsibility currently includes placing accounting, HR and operations professionals into full-time career opportunities, liaising with companies to determine their staffing needs and networking with professional associations in the Syracuse, Utica, Southern Tier and North Country area (i.e. the Syracuse market territory). Christopher is an experienced accounting professional and worked for two of the Big 4 accounting firms prior to joining Robert Half in 2009. He is thoroughly familiar with the staffing skills that are currently in demand and is an expert in employment trends within the industry, having finished in the top 15 worldwide for the majority of his career at Robert Half (including a Number 1 in the World finish). He started his career in the Toronto, Canada Robert Half office and was quickly promoted to manage the Accounting Operations and Robert Half Finance & Accounting downtown Toronto team just 18 months after starting. He internally transferred to the Syracuse, NY Robert Half office in 2014 to build out the Permanent Placement divisions for the Central and Western NY markets.

Ron Bates, Managing Director, AscentLogic.com has over 35 years of technology and complex solutions sales experience that also includes +20 years of retained executive search and global executive coaching experience. His clients include multiple C-Level and EVP-titled execs to include CDO, CIO, CPO, CMO, CFO, CRO, CSO, et al. titles at ABB, Bayer, AIG, IPG, T-Mobile, Dow, Amazon/AWS, Dell EMC, Disney, Cognizant, HPE, PayPal, Intel, Cisco, American Express, CVS, Warner Bros., Ericsson, Novartis, GE Healthcare, Bloomingdale’s, London Stock Exchange Group, J.P. Morgan, Barneys New York, HCL, Booz Allen Hamilton, Coca-Cola, Manulife, Adobe, Citco, MunichRE, PTC, NBCUniversal, Oracle, SAP, Cigna, Wells Fargo, Qualcomm, BNP Paribas, Revlon, Stanley Black & Decker, IBM, Make a Wish, Xerox, Smith+Nephew, Boeing, Reckitt, the National Basketball Association, Farmers, Arizona State University, Vanderbilt University, et al. as wells as CEOs and other executives at pre-IPO and PE backed companies. A number of Ron's clients are Top 100 Chief Financial Officers, Top 100 Women in Technology, Power 50 National Diversity Council, Top 25 Women Leaders in IT Services, CDO Magazine Top Executives, Top 50 Most Powerful Women in Technology, Top 100 Data & Analytics innovators, Top 100 Women in Procurement, Corporate Change Champion of the Year, LifeSci Top 100 Industry Leaders, Top 100 Inspirational Women, and 100 Women in Tech Leaders to Watch awardees.