Ezzell Receives Gold Medal Award for Distinguished Service

William F. Ezzell, former chairman of the board of directors for the AICPA and past president of its Foundation Board of Trustees, received the Institute’s 2009 Gold Medal Award for Distinguished Service.

The highest award granted by the AICPA, the Gold Medal is given to individuals who have made appreciable contributions to the CPA profession. The award was presented by Kathy G. Eddy, a member of the Awards Committee and a former AICPA chair, at the fall meeting of the AICPA governing Council.

Ezzell, national managing partner of legislative and regulatory relations in the Washington office of Deloitte LLP, was chairman of the AICPA from 2002–2003 and was a board member from 1998–2004. He was chairman when the Sarbanes-Oxley Act passed, and was committed to restoring credibility to the accounting profession and emphasizing the profession’s core values of objectivity, integrity and independence.

Ezzell began his career with Deloitte in Greensboro, N.C., was lead auditor on many public company audits, and led Deloitte’s audit practice for banks, savings and loans and mortgage banks as the firm’s national audit partner for financial institutions. In 1992, he established and was chairman of the Accountants Coalition, a special task force created to reform the liability laws affecting the profession. This body continues to work closely with the AICPA and state CPA societies on legislative and regulatory issues.

As president of the AICPA Foundation, he spearheaded its highly successful Accounting Doctoral Scholars Program, which supports CPAs pursuing Ph.D.s in accounting. Ezzell was chairman of the AICPA Accountants’ Legal Liability and Nominations committees and was a member of its Strategic Planning Committee and Special Committee on Mobility.

Ezzell is currently a member of the Research Advisory Board for the Center for Audit Quality, an autonomous public policy organization dedicated to enhancing investor confidence and public trust in the global capital markets, and the board of trustees for the Committee for Economic Development, a nonprofit, nonpartisan business-led public policy organization dedicated to policy research on the major economic and social issues of our time and the implementation of its recommendations by the public and private sectors. He also is a delegate to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Center for Market Competitiveness.