{"id":16258,"date":"2002-11-01T06:00:53","date_gmt":"2002-11-01T12:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/?p=16258"},"modified":"2015-03-10T16:31:57","modified_gmt":"2015-03-10T21:31:57","slug":"women-of-influence-awards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/women-of-influence-awards\/","title":{"rendered":"Women of Influence Awards"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"\"The Business Journal<\/strong><\/em>
\nBy Marci Pelzer<\/p>\n

White-collar crooks, beware. Sequence Inc., Tracy Coenen\u2019s nearly 3-year-old forensic accounting business, has grown 300 percent in 2002. It\u2019s as if she looked into a crystal ball and saw the fates of Enron, Tyco and Worldcom coming before anyone else did.<\/p>\n

\"\"When attorneys, claims adjusters and CEOs need to document embezzlement and fraud, win contract disputes, or resolve tax controversy, they call on Coenen to document misdeeds and testify in court. \u201cMy clients tell me to go find the money,\u201d she says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Coenen studied accounting and criminology at Marquette University. A class exploring the different kinds of white-collar crime piqued her interest, but at the time she was unsure of a practical application for her quirky passion. \u201cI\u2019m a numbers person,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

After graduation she continued to pursue a dual education \u2013 informally studying the crime scene in a probation officer day job while pursuing her MBA and CPA on the side. She honed her accounting skills at firms large and small \u2013 Arthur Andersen and Peters & Associates, Brookfield \u2013 before striking out on her own in January 2000.<\/p>\n

Coenen, who is also a certified fraud examiner, sees forensic accounting as an emerging field, but she has found marketing such a specialized service to be challenging. She devotes 15 hours of her 60 \u2013 70 hour workweek to client development. \u201cMy biggest challenge is one-on-one relationship building. There is so much trust necessary in my line of work. It\u2019s a matter of being patient while relationships mature,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Many of her clients are attorneys, including Foley & Lardner and Domnitz & Mawicke. \u201cIt\u2019s harder to get to the decision-makers in the insurance industry,\u201d Coenen says.<\/p>\n

She attributes recent growth to wider awareness of corporate fraud, cultivating contacts over the long term and an image makeover that included a company name change, slick materials and a move downtown from her home office.<\/p>\n

Coenen says reading \u201cEncyclopedia Brown\u201d mysteries as a child may have been a formative experience, but she definitely caught the entrepreneurial bug early on. \u201cI always knew I was the kind of person who wanted to be in charge of my own destiny,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

She chose Sequence, Inc. as the company name because it communicates the sense of putting things in order. John Peters, shareholder at Peters & Associates, Coenen\u2019s former firm, says many accountants are attracted to forensic accounting \u2013 a field that has been known as litigation support services. \u201cTracy was always energetic and excited,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cOwning my own business is even more exciting than I thought. I realize that I could have set my goals even higher in the beginning,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

About the Awards: <\/strong>Each year, the Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee sponsors the Women of Influence awards to honor leaders in ten different categories. In 2002, over 150 nominations were received. Sequence Inc.\u2019s owner was chosen as a winner in the category of \u201cInnovation\u201d, both for her entrepreneurial style and for her vision within the field of accounting.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Business Journal By Marci Pelzer White-collar crooks, beware. Sequence Inc., Tracy Coenen\u2019s nearly 3-year-old forensic accounting business, has grown 300 percent in 2002. It\u2019s as if she looked into a crystal ball and saw the fates of Enron, Tyco […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2777,2778],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forensic-accountant","category-media-profiles"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Z0e-4ee","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16258\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}