Michael Kraten

Michael Kraten, PhD, CPA specializes in the development of business strategies that stimulate the generation of long term sustainable value. He maintains areas of expertise in communication techniques, corporate social responsibility, decision analysis, enterprise risk management, entrepreneurship, financial modeling, forensic analysis, sustainability, and valuation.

Dr. Kraten began his career in the assurance, advisory, and management consulting practices of Deloitte, one of the “Big Four” global accounting firms. After serving as a Management Consulting Partner in the New York headquarters office of BDO, then the sixth largest global accounting firm, he co-founded the entrepreneurial consulting practice AQPQ. The acronym refers to the academic and practitioner qualifications of the firm.

He is also a senior Professor at Houston Baptist University, where he designed and now teaches the graduate courses in entrepreneurial finance, advanced international accounting, and accounting theory, and the undergraduate course in advanced financial accounting.

In addition, Dr. Kraten serves as the Director of Accreditation for all business school programs. Furthermore, he is the Founder and Director of the Faculty Learning Community on Sustainability, and the Founding Faculty Adviser to the Student Accounting, Finance, and Economics Initiative.

Dr. Kraten previously served as an Associate Professor for eight years at Providence College in Rhode Island, where he designed and taught the graduate capstone course for public accounting students and the undergraduate interdisciplinary colloquium on sustainability. The colloquium was sponsored by the Western Civilization program; it integrated content from business and the natural sciences with content from theology, philosophy, history, and english.

He previously taught at Suffolk University in Boston, Maastricht University in the Netherlands, the University of Massachusetts, Sacred Heart University, and the University of Connecticut. He has also presented his work at Dartmouth College, Harvard Law School, Johns Hopkins University, Yale University, and other institutions.

Furthermore, Dr. Kraten founded and directed the Certified Sustainable Value Professional (CSVP) program of the Rhode Island Society of CPAs. He now develops and presents customized accounting, business planning, leadership, risk management, and sustainability seminars for the Business Learning Institute and IHRDC, a global human resources development firm in the energy industry.

These activities have enabled Dr. Kraten to deliver consulting services, courses, keynote addresses, presentations, and workshops for a wide variety of organizations around the world. His client organizations and collaborative partners have included entrepreneurial start-ups, multinational corporations, government organizations, global charities, and international universities on six continents.

Dr. Kraten has published in the Journal of Banking and Finance, the International Journal of Accounting, Research in Accounting Regulation, the CPA Journal, the Journal of Financial Planning, Accounting and the Public Interest, and other major outlets. His handbook Business Planning and Entrepreneurship: An Accounting Approach is published by Business Expert Press.

In addition, Dr. Kraten serves on committees and task forces of the American Accounting Association, and is an officer of the Public Interest Section of the Association. He is on the Editorial Advisory Board of the CPA Journal, the Planning Committee of the Sustainability Investment Leadership Council, and the Advisory Board of the Center for Professional Accounting Practices at Fordham University in New York City.

Dr. Kraten has earned a PhD in Behavioral Accounting from the University of Connecticut and a MPPM in Public and Private Management from Yale University. Previously, he earned a BBA in Public Accounting from Baruch College of the City University of New York. He is licensed as a Certified Public Accountant in the state of Connecticut.