Stuart Ferguson leads Pointe Advisory, a boutique strategy consultancy with 15-plus years of experience advising leading professional services firms, including the Big Four. Pointe is a market leader in growth strategy, M&A diligence and value creation for CPA+ firms across the US and Europe. Over the last 5-years, Pointe has advised the largest PE funds on active processes around 15 of the top 25 US accounting firms and currently advises >10 of the T100 CPA firms’ leadership teams on strategy and operating model optimization.

Prior to joining Pointe, Stuart led diligences in Bain & Company’s Private Equity Group. Before that, he was an accountant at KPMG, specializing in hedge fund accounting and tax.

Stuart holds an MBA with distinction from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business and graduated magna cum laude with a BBA from the College of William & Mary. Stuart is also a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) in Virginia.

Koltin Consulting Group, Inc. is a Chicago-based consulting firm that specializes in working with professional and financial services firms in the areas of practice growth, practice management, human capital, and mergers and acquisitions. Highly sought for his ability to engage and inspire audiences, Allan enjoys delivering keynote addresses at conferences throughout the professional services industry. His passion is facilitating strategic planning retreats for firm leadership and partners. His specialties include strategy, governance, profitability, compensation, growth, human capital, succession, and mergers and acquisitions.

For the last twenty-four years, Allan has been named by Accounting Today as one of the Top 100 Most Influential People in the accounting profession. In 2023, he was listed as the “Second Most Influential” in the profession. For the past twenty-three years, Allan was voted as one of the Most Recommended Consultants in the “Annual Survey of Firms” conducted by INSIDE Public Accounting. For the past decade, Allan has been named by CPA Practice Advisor as one of the Top 25 Thought Leaders in the profession and, in 2016, they also inducted Allan into the Accounting Hall of Fame. Allan was one of the first to be inducted into the Accounting Marketing Hall of Fame by the Association for Accounting Marketing (AAM). A nationally recognized speaker and industry analyst, he has appeared on CNN, WGN and FOX TV and has been quoted frequently in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Financial Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, USA Today and New York Post.

Previously, Allan was the CEO of PDI Global, which was the largest provider of marketing products and services for CPA firms. Allan sold PDI Global to H&R Block in 1998, buying it back in 2008, and then selling it to Thomson Reuters in 2011. Prior to that, Allan was a partner in the Chicago-based CPA firm of FERS, where he served as leader of the Investment Banking and Law Firm Services Groups, as well as the Executive Committee.