Janie Whiteaker-Poe, Ph.D.

Dr. Whiteaker-Poe, a Springfield native, joined the Breech faculty in the Fall of 2020.  She did her undergraduate work at Missouri State University, earning a BS in Accountancy.  Despite her degree, she had no interest in becoming an auditor and decided to pursue a career in tax law, earning her JD at Washington University in St. Louis.  

After graduation she moved to Washington, D.C. to start her professional career.  Her first job was as a contract attorney with Cooper, Carvin & Rosenthal, a law firm with extensive experience arguing before the Supreme Court.  Her job involved sorting documents that would support damage models used in litigation related to the failed savings and loans crisis of the 1980s.  

While working for Cooper, Carvin and Rosenthal, she was approached by Ernst & Young about joining the firm’s Litigation Consulting group.  While with EY, Dr. Whiteaker-Poe continued working on the Winstar litigation that evolved from the failed savings and loans crisis of the 1980s.  She also worked with the New York state banking authority to find assets stolen from victims of the Holocaust during World War II.  

Her work with EY involved significant travel so she joined a small D.C. consulting firm, Watkins and Associates.  Her first assignment sent her straight back to New York to work on a Bank Secrecy Act audit of a hedge fund.  After that she found herself doing exactly what she went to law school to avoid, audits.  She was subcontracted out to a small San Diego CPA firm that did audits of Federal Executive agencies pursuant to the Chief Financial Officers’ Act of 1990.  Her first audit was of the Nuclear Regulatory Agency (NRA).  Fortunately, audit in practice was much different from audit in the classroom, and Dr. Whiteaker-Poe flourished in her career as a Federal auditor.  She eventually joined the small, San Diego CPA firm of Navarro & Associates and gained a second major client, the Department of Labor.

Navarro & Associates was a subcontractor on the audit for KPMG.  KPMG approached Dr. Whiteaker-Poe about joining their Federal Audit practice group as a manager and once again she was employed by a Big 4 accounting firm.  Her primary client with KPMG was FEMA, as part of the audit of the Department of Homeland Security.  Dr. Whiteaker-Poe was also involved in the audits of the U.S. Coast Guard (DHS) and DARPA.  In addition to CFO audits, she has also performed OMB-A133 audits.

Dr. Whiteaker-Poe earned her Ph.D. at the University of Kansas.  She was on the faculty at Baylor University prior to coming to Drury.  Her current classes include Principles of Managerial Accounting, Federal Taxation and Audit.  Her primary research interest is international taxation and how U.S. multinational corporations use foreign subsidiaries to manipulate their U.S. tax burdens. 

Drury University faculty member since 2020
Assistant Professor since 2020