Mr. Nick A Shepherd

Nick grew up in England but emigrated to Canada over 40 years ago. He lives near Ottawa with his wife, where they both enjoy retirement in their log home on the banks of the Ottawa river. Nick spends the majority of his time writing and researching as well as hobbies such as woodworking, family trees and other time consuming activity. Nick and his wife have three children, one a VP at a large financial services company in Toronto, one a Finance Manager in England, and one a special education teacher living near Guelph, Ontario. They also have three grandchildren.

Nick had over 50 years of business experience in the UK and Canada. Just as he was ready to leave school his father's business failed and he started a career as an engineer in the entertainment business. After a few years he moved on to work in retail. During this time he obtained a business diploma and not knowing what to do next, he started training as an accountant. After about 2 years someone suggested that maybe he should get a job in accounting, which he did, joining a large manufacturing company. After 3 years he completed his designation and promptly emigrated with his wife and 2 children to Canada - without a job. He obtained a job in the high tech industry in Ottawa and qualified (again) in Canada. He gradually grew his career rising to VP Finance of a major computer company. He then joined a private family owned industrial distribution business where he sorted out a set of major financial issues and within a year became President. After 3 years in this role he left to start his own consulting and professional development business, which he ran for over 25 years.

Nick has worked and consulted in a wide variety of organization's in both public and private sector, and in large and small business. His work took him across Canada and the US and to the UK, Germany, Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, South Africa, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Spain and Italy. His volunteer work for the professional consulting associations also took him to Singapore, England and Ireland; he also spent about 10 years as a volunteer with the American Society for quality where he chaired the Quality Costs Committee for a period.

Nick is a UK certified FCCA, a Canadian FCPA, FCGA and is also an FCMC. He has also been a member of MENSA for many years. Nick trained thousands of professional accountants over the years, focusing mainly in management areas such as Controllership. He also developed a number of ethics programs. While he has a solid financial background, built upon a base of other experience his passion has become the area of Human Resources management, His two areas of focus are to build awareness on the importance of intangibles that create value in todays business, especially the impact of human resources, and to bring about change in the accounting profession.