Speakers
Gary Shamis is a highly experienced and accomplished business advisor, entrepreneur, and Certified Public Accountant with over 40 years of experience in the accounting and consulting industries. As the Managing Director of Winding River Consulting, Gary provides strategic guidance and support to accounting firms, helping them navigate the complex challenges of the modern business landscape.
Throughout his career, Gary has worked with hundreds of accounting firms across the United States, ranging from small local practices to large international organizations. He has a deep understanding of the challenges facing the industry, and has helped countless firms overcome those challenges and achieve long-term success.
Gary is a recognized thought leader in the industry and a frequent speaker at industry events. He has authored numerous articles and publications on topics related to accounting firm management, leadership, and growth. He is passionate about helping accounting firms achieve their full potential and has dedicated his career to this mission.
Prior to founding Winding River Consulting, Gary was a co-founder of SS&G, a top 50 accounting and consulting firm, where he served as Managing Partner for over 30 years. Under his leadership, the firm grew from a small local practice to a regional powerhouse with multiple offices and a diverse portfolio of clients.
Gary is a licensed Certified Public Accountant and a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the Ohio Society of Certified Public Accountants. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Accounting from the University of Akron.
With his extensive knowledge, experience, and passion for the industry, Gary has earned a reputation as a trusted advisor and mentor to accounting firm leaders across the country. He works closely with his clients to develop customized strategies that drive growth and profitability, and he is committed to helping accounting firms thrive in the face of the challenges and opportunities of the modern business world.
David Toth built his marketing expertise around a strong digital comprehension. Understanding the importance of data, he reasoned, should guide each step of the process, using informed decision making to adapt when and where necessary. Armed with the evidence, David challenges the status quo to drive results.
He is a strategic-thinker and believes the path to successful outcomes includes integrating technology with tried-and-true practices. As David sees it, when it comes to digital transformation there will always be new dots to connect. The challenge is having the discipline to make the connections that close the gap between marketing dollars and sales revenue.
David has served as an outsourced CMO, agency executive, and change agent for organizations in sectors from fast-growing start-ups to well established Fortune 500 companies. He has a knack for building meaningful relationships. David has found that while each business and industry is unique, the foundation to success is always the same — know your audience.
Brian is a visionary strategist who believes that sustainable firm growth begins with people and an outward mindset. At Winding River, Brian works with private equity firms, individual businesses, and accounting leaders to craft intentional growth strategies, integrate acquisitions, and align leadership teams around shared outcomes.
From launching new markets to transforming go-to-market teams, he brings both a strategic and operational lens to leadership. Brian’s belief in people-first culture and transparent metrics reflects WRC’s core values of clarity, collaboration, and impact. His approach is data-informed, people-driven, and built to last. A natural collaborator and industry thought leader, Brian brings decades of experience driving transformational change across professional services.
As former Chief Growth Officer at Wipfli LLP, he led the firm’s growth from $227M to more than $590M, building a nationally recognized go-to-market model rooted in industry specialization, innovation, and client value.
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David Cohen is chief sales officer at HubSpot. He joined the company in 2025 to lead its global sales organization and drive growth by delivering exceptional value to customers around the world.
David brings more than two decades of experience in building and scaling high-performing go-to-market teams. Prior to HubSpot, he served as chief revenue officer at Sword Health, where he helped accelerate growth in the digital physical therapy space. Before that, David spent 15 years at LinkedIn, joining as one of its first 250 employees and playing a key role in the company’s expansion. He led LinkedIn’s Talent Solutions business across North America, growing it fivefold to $3B in annual recurring revenue, and previously tripled the EMEA business to $300M ARR while based in London. He also spearheaded the company’s geographic growth, opening new offices in Chicago and Canada.
In addition to his operating experience, David is an active advisor and investor in high-growth technology companies. He serves on the Chicago Board of Directors for Braven, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting first-generation college students on their path to strong careers. Earlier in his career, he held roles at Accenture, worked in venture capital, and founded his own consulting firm.
David holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Emory University and an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. He lives in the Chicago area with his wife and three children.
With 40 years of experience in the accounting industry, Suzanne specializes in accounting, tax and business consulting services. In addition to her client work, Suzanne is the managing partner for the firm, which provides her with a business owner’s understanding of day-to-day responsibilities that she leverages for her clients. Suzanne advises in areas such business acquisitions, mergers or dispositions, profit enhancement, cash flow analysis, cash management, business forecasts and projections, financing and investor options, and accounting systems design and controls. She is also a member of our Real Estate Services Team, which focuses on developers, assets managers, lessors and real estate operations.
Suzanne’s passion lies in nurturing economic development and using her creative side to help businesses grow. Her consulting work has included fostering employment opportunities, retaining professionals in the community and finding supportive resources for companies. In one instance, she helped a client find and obtain over $100,000 in economic incentives.
Suzanne’s work with the community is also borne out of this passion. She serves on the Board of the DeLand Area Chamber of Commerce, is a former Chair of the Daytona Beach Chamber of Commerce and is currently on that organization’s economic development committee. She is also active with the Daytona Beach Community Foundation and previously served on the Daytona Beach Checkered Flag Committee. Throughout her career she has also authored articles on accounting and income tax issues and has conducted numerous courses on these topics.
Her accomplishments have led to several recognitions over the years. Florida Trend has twice named her one of the top 500 influential business leaders in the state (in 2021 and 2023), and the Daytona Beach News Journal named her its Private Sector Woman of the Year in 2020.
Tom Angelo is an entrepreneur turned CEO who is leading one of the nation’s Top 50 accounting firms through a defining period of growth and transformation. As Chief Executive Officer and Managing Principal of HBK CPAs & Consultants - a multidisciplinary financial services platform with approximately $184 million in revenue, 20 offices across six states and in Delhi, India, and more than 750 professionals - Tom is executing a strategic vision that is reshaping what a regional firm can be.
Tom’s path to the CEO role is anything but traditional. He began his career in 1995 at a four-person firm in New Jersey and built it into the award-winning Spire Group before merging it into HBK in 2018. Along the way, he founded the firm’s technology services practice—now known as Vertilocity—and expanded HBK into the New York metropolitan market. Selected as only the second CEO in HBK’s 75-year history in 2024, Tom brings a rare combination of entrepreneurial instinct, deep technical acumen (he holds the CITP credential), and a practitioner’s understanding of the clients and markets the firm serves.
Under Tom’s leadership, HBK is pursuing growth on multiple fronts: completing strategic acquisitions, deepening industry specialization across key verticals, and building an integrated advisory model that extends well beyond traditional compliance. HBK’s platform now spans accounting, tax, and assurance services; wealth advisory through HBKS Wealth Advisors (a Top 100 RIA with more than $8 billion in assets under management); technology advisory through Vertilocity; outsourced accounting and HR, and valuation and forensic services. Tom’s mandate is clear: help clients navigate complexity through coordinated expertise, not siloed service lines.
A passionate advocate for digital transformation in the profession, Tom believes the firms that will thrive are those willing to transition from leveraging relationships and referrals for compliance work to leveraging expertise and tangible experience to deliver true advisory value.