Alan J. Ruben

Mr. Ruben is copresenting Workshop W4, “Award-Winning Risk Management,” on Wednesday morning. He is the chief financial officer for all of the DRI Companies. Mr. Ruben joined the organization in 2001 after working as the chief financial officer at a publicly held high-technology enterprise. Previously he was employed as the CFO at a large multinational transportation conglomerate and at a small medical device software entity. Mr. Ruben began his career with Coopers & Lybrand, leaving there as an audit manager to form his own CPA practice. He later merged his practice into a CPA firm and served as partner in charge of audit and accounting at that firm and another firm that specialized in providing services to construction contractors, for a combined 9 years. Mr. Ruben earned a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Southern California and a master’s in Business Administration from California State University—Long Beach. He is also a CPA licensed in the state of California.

Mr. Ruben currently conducts in-house training for the Companies in areas such as risk management, insurance, and understanding financial statements. Previously, he was a part-time instructor of accounting at California State University, Fullerton, and taught in-house national training courses at Coopers & Lybrand. He also taught numerous accounting courses at the local CPA firm level. He is a member of the American Institute of CPA’s, the California Society of CPA’s, and the Construction Financial Manager’s Association. He has also served as the chairperson of the Orange County Financial Counsel of the California Association of Specialty Trade Contractors.

As chief financial officer, Mr. Ruben is responsible for overseeing all financial, tax, IT, legal, human resources, and insurance matters. Risk management responsibilities also fall under his direction. He brought a new perspective to the entire risk management process and has been instrumental in implementing new risk management concepts to the Companies. These included not only all of the workers compensation and safety initiatives but changes in other coverages (general liability, excess coverage, employment practices, etc.). He has also been extremely involved with the Companies’ strategic planning efforts. The Companies’ combined revenue has grown by more than 150 percent since Mr. Ruben joined the organization. Mr. Ruben recognized the importance of proper strategic planning and control and has achieved great success in this regard with the Companies.