Meet Our Instructors

Cassy Budd, MAcc, B.S.

Cassy Budd is a Teaching Professor at Brigham Young University in the Accountancy School. She has more than 10 years of experience in public accounting (with PricewaterhouseCoopers) and 16 years of experience teaching accounting at the University level (3 years at USU and 13 years at BYU). Through the years, she has been honored to win the Norm and Cindy Nemrow Excellence in Teaching Professorship (2017), Advisor of the Year at Utah State University School Of Accountancy (2004), the Service Learning Engaged Scholar award (2004), the Mark Chain/FSA 2016 Innovation Graduate Teaching Award (2016), the Teaching Excellence Award from the Marriott School of Management (2015), and the Dean Fairbanks Teaching and Learning Faculty Fellowship at Brigham Young University (2012).

She speaks Italian and has a wonderful husband of 30 years, 4 amazing children, and a darling grandson. Together, they love to spend time outdoors hiking, biking, skiing and simply enjoying nature. Cassy currently serves as the President of the Teaching, Learning and Curriculum section of the American Accounting Association.

Kari Joseph Olsen, Ph.D., CPA, CMA

Kari Joseph Olsen, Ph.D., CPA, CMA is an Associate Professor of Accounting at Utah Valley University and has published research on management control systems and personality characteristics in the The Accounting Review, Journal of Management, Journal of Management Accounting Research, Accounting Horizons, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of the America Taxation Association, and in Issues in Accounting Education. He teaches management accounting, and his research interests are in management control systems, performance feedback, and personality characteristics. Through his years of teaching, he has received various awards, including the UVU MBA Outstanding Faculty award (2019), the USC Mary Pickford Foundation Doctoral Teaching Award (2014), and the USC Marshall Ph.D. Teaching Award (2013).

Participant: I became a CMA initially. This may sound cheesy but my professor at BYU was Monte Swain. I worked as his research assistant and I’d see his business card lying in the office and had
Monte Swain, Ph.D., CPA, CMA. I said I want nine letters behind my name. What I do is created a profile for me of where I could fit professionally, the Ph.D. so that I would be a researcher involved in academia. But the professional credentials were important, the CPA, especially the CMA because that’s where I was going to teach management accounting. I wanted credibility with my students.

I wanted to know what they would go through as I help prepare them for those professional certifications. It also helps me connect to large professional organizations, such as the Institute of Management Accountants. That’s been important for my career because they provide two things for me. One is a research grant. They want practice-based research and my research fits. I’ve received some research grants for them, which has been nice to support my research and get a little stipend money. Secondly, related to that it gives me an avenue to connect to practitioners.

They ask as part of our grants to write a practitioner article as published in their strategic finance practitioner magazine. That’s allowed me to connect with the profession and understand what’s happening in the management accounting world. That then in turn informs my research. It’s a symbiotic relationship and it’s very useful to me to have a CMA.

Monte Swain, Ph.D., CPA, CMA, CGMA

Monte Swain, Ph.D., CPA, CMA, CGMA, is the Deloitte Professor of Accounting at Brigham Young University. He offers advanced instruction and research in management accounting and strategic performance measures. His specialties include behavioral issues in decision support systems, activity-based costing, and activity-based management, among others. Through his career, he been the recipient of a number of teaching awards, including the Brummet Distinguished Award for Management Accounting Educators from the Institute of Management Accountants (2016) and the Core Professor of the Year Award from the BYU MBA Program (2021). Additionally, he is a licensed CPA and Certified Management Accountant.

Monte: The more options we have in our professional career the more opportunity we have to grow our career for in, do interesting work, find interesting work and make that work impact other organization. I often have students ask me, “What about the CMA, should I do it? How should I do it?” Let me say it one word, options. You need to have a reason why this exam, this certification is going to matter in your life. It needs to say something specific to your career, something specific to who you want to become.

If you know the reason why, you’re going to have the motivation to do something that’s going to impact your life immeasurably for the rest of your professional life. Let me tell you why you want to go with Willey’s CMAexcel product. There is actually special relationship between the institute of management accountancy and Willey and their CMAexcel product. They established a partner there to give heads up probably earlier than any other provider can give.

And when the exam is going to shift and evolve, and it does shift and evolve just like the world of business does. So, if you want to be absolutely current in your preparation for the exam that’s coming up, no one can be Willey CMAexcel to that push. That is for certain.

Marjorie Yuschak, MBA, CMA

Marjorie Yuschak is an adjunct professor at The College of New Jersey. She teaches Financial Accounting and Managerial Accounting courses and leverages her 20+ years of experience as a former finance manager to help train executives to effectively present ideas that positively influence business outcomes, having begun her career at Johnson & Johnson developing an expertise in cost/managerial accounting, financial reporting, and employee stock option programs. She has also facilitated the CMA classes for Villanova University and runs a consulting business that provides coaching for accounting, communication skills, and small business management. She is also a member of the Raritan Valley Chapter of the IMA in New Jersey.

Participant: What I do outside of working with UWorld is I teach accounting at the College of New Jersey. I teach two courses, intro to financial accounting, and introduction to managerial accounting. Also, I teach at Villanova University and I’m using the IMA, CMA Excel product to prep students for taking both parts one and part two of the exam. Well, I have a few things I’d love to do. Well, first of all, I have to be outside, I mean, that’s a given. I love to ride horses. That’s been a recent hobby that I took up and just absolutely love it. There’s such freedom in doing that.

You can find me on the Jersey shore sitting on the beach, going for swims. I like to ride my bike; I like to hike and walk and anything that’ll get me outside is pretty much what I’m doing. I became a CMA because, at the time when I did this, I was working for Johnson & Johnson. Clark Johnson, no relation to the Johnson family was the CFO at the time. He was one of the people who started the IMA, the Institute of Management Accountants and helped in getting a CMA exam so that people could get certified. Now, why he did that was because he had so many accountants working for him.

There are more managerial accountants out in the world than there are CPAs or audit tax accountants that he felt it was really important that it gets recognized. He was such a great promoter of getting certified and then having those continuing education units to keep you current with all the accounting updates. He just was a wonderful person who motivated me and a lot of my colleagues to put forth that effort and study for the exams and then take the exams.