Sarah Zechman
Tisone Memorial Fellow • Professor • Senior Associate Dean for Faculty
Accounting

Koelbel - 402P

Sarah Zechman is interested in firm communications, financial reporting choices, and managerial incentives. Before joining the Leeds School in 2015, she taught at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Zechman is currently an editor at The Accounting Review and a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Accounting Research and the Review of Accounting Studies.  Her research has been cited in various press outlets including the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and Bloomberg Businessweek.  In 2015 and 2020, she was awarded the Best Paper in financial accounting (for “Executive Overconfidence and the Slippery Slope to Financial Misreporting” and “Run EDGAR Run: SEC dissemination in a high-frequency world,” respectively) and in 2009, she was awarded the Best Dissertation in financial accounting (for “The Relationship between Voluntary Disclosure and Financial Reporting: Evidence from Synthetic Leases”), all from the American Accounting Association.

Prior to earning her PhD, she spent several years at KPMG LLP, where she worked in transaction structuring services and business management processes. She is also a certified public accountant. Zechman earned a BSBA in accounting in 1998 from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, graduating first in her class. In 2008, she completed a PhD in accounting from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.