Extraordinary Circumstances, Custom Edition - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Cynthia Cooper was one of Time's 2002 Persons of the Year. She was the vice president of internal audit for WorldCom and subsequently MCI. Cynthia was featured as one of twenty-five influential working mothers in Working Mother, and earned the distinction of being the first woman to receive the AAA Accounting Exemplar Award and to be inducted into the AICPA Business & Industry Hall of Fame. Cooper resigned from MCI in 2004, following the company's successful emergence from bankruptcy, and now shares the lessons she has learned through her experiences with professionals and students. She and her husband Lance reside in Mississippi with their two daughters.

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Praise for Extraordinary Circumstances

"Outstanding! This page-turning account of the WorldCom fiasco reads like a suspense novel. I was on the edge of my seat to the last page.... This book should be required reading for leaders everywhere."
―Ken Blanchard, coauthor of The One Minute Manager

"Cooper's willingness to reveal her innermost thoughts as she dug makes for gripping reading."
―BusinessWeek

"Extraordinary Circumstances is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the dynamics of an accounting fraud."
―Bloomberg.com

"Readers...will find it easy to identify with both the employees who manipulated the telecommunications giant's financial statements and those who caught them."
―Reuters.com

"After reading the first few paragraphs of this compelling book, readers are motivated to set aside other tasks and continue to read the entire book....a compelling present-tense narrative that would actually make a good work of fiction...One of the biggest advantages of this storytelling style is that the action keeps moving ...."
―ScienceDirect, The International Journal of Accounting

"Extraordinary Circumstances is a terrific read....I highly recommend it."
―Joseph T. Wells, CFE, CPA, founder and Chairman, Association of Certified Fraud Examiners

"For executives, Cooper's experiences...offer lessons that are as fresh today as when the scandal first broke."
―CFO magazine

"...trumps other WorldCom accounts with a perspective available only from a business-smart insider."
―Publishers Weekly

Aus dem Klappentext

My team and I were ordinary people who found ourselves facing extraordinary circumstances.
―Cynthia Cooper, former Vice President, WorldCom

The longer WorldCom Chief Audit Executive Cynthia Cooper stares at the entries in front of her, the more sinister they seem. But the CFO is badgering her to delay her team's audit of the company's books and directing others to block Cooper's efforts. Still, something in the pit of her stomach tells her to keep digging. Cooper takes readers behind the scenes on a riveting, real-time journey as she and her team work at night and behind closed doors to expose the largest fraud in corporate history. Whom can they trust? Could she lose her job? Should she fear for her physical safety?

In Extraordinary Circumstances, she recounts for the first time her journey from her close family upbringing in a small Mississippi town, to working motherhood and corporate success, to the pressures of becoming a whistleblower, to being named one of Time's 2002 Persons of the Year. She also provides a rare insider's glimpse into the spectacular rise and fall of WorldCom, a telecom titan, the darling of Wall Street, and a Cinderella story for Mississippi.

With remarkable candor, Cooper discusses her struggle to overcome these challenges, and how she has found healing through sharing the lessons learned with the next generation. This book reminds us all that ethical decision-making is not forged at the crossroads of major events but starts in childhood, "decision by decision and brick by brick."

At a time when corporate dishonesty is dominating public attention, Extraordinary Circumstances makes it clear that the tone set at the top is critical to fostering an ethical environment in the work-place. Provocative, moving, and intensely per-sonal, Extraordinary Circumstances is a wake-up call to corporate leaders and an intimate glimpse at a scandal that shook the business world.