Featured Speaker

Mr. Kendall Helfenbein, MBA, CPA

Kendall Helfenbein is the former CFO of Romacorp, Inc. (which relocated to Florida from Dallas) which owns and operates (“Franchisor”) the Tony Roma’s Restaurant Chain with locations in over 30 countries Worldwide.  Before that he was CFO for 18 years of a group of 15 privately owned companies in Dallas with 630 H&R Block Locations (“Franchisee”) locations and 7,500 employees.  He spent the first 10 years out of college in public accounting starting with KPMG.  He earned a BBA in Accounting from West Texas A&M, MBA from UTD in 2004 and Masters in Accounting from UTD in 2006.  He has been active in the Dallas CPA Society for 30 years and is past VP and Director.  He has been active for many years in FEI-Dallas and is currently President Elect.  He is also a long time Director of the TSCPA and serves on their “invitation only” Professional Standards Committee.  He was DBJ CFO of the Year 2014, DCEO Outstanding CFO of the Year 2015 and named in DCEO “Dallas 500 Business Leaders” in 2016.  He has been a member of Toastmasters for over 10 years and has completed over 20 Triathlons to keep in shape.  He was featured in FEI’s Financial Executive magazine in 2013 and interviewed for an article in Forbes in 2015 called “Managing the M&A Process as CFO”.  He has studied body language for the past 20 years, has given several speeches on the topic.