Annette K. Pridgen
Annette K. Pridgen is a graduate of Jackson State University and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Mississippi. She taught for five years at Ole Miss before returning to Jackson State University in 2013. Before going into academe, Annette was employed by the Office of the Mississippi State Auditor. In 2015, Annette was honored by receiving the Association of Government Accountants' Cornelius E. Tierney Research Award for her research in governmental accounting. She has received numerous other awards including the Faculty Excellence Award for the College of Business at Jackson State University, the outstanding dissertation award from the Government & Nonprofit Section of the American Accounting Association, and the Doctoral Teaching Award from the E. H. Patterson School of Accountancy at Ole Miss. Her service at the national level has included her 2013 selection as a member of the Government Accountability Office's (GAO) Green Book Advisory Council to update the standards for internal control of the United States government. In 2016, she was asked to serve on the GAO Yellow Book Advisory Council to update the government auditing standards. Annette retired from Jackson State University in the summer of 2019. She has chaired the MSCPA Awards, Education & Scholarships Committee of which she had been a member of since 2003. Dr. Pridgen is a past secretary of the MSCPA (2017-2018). She is also the past Chairman of the MSCPA (2020-2021). In 2022, Dr. Pridgen was appointed by Governor Reeves to serve on the Mississippi State Board of Public Accountancy.
Shad White
In his time as State Auditor, Shad White's team has stopped the largest public fraud in state history, made the largest civil recovery after an auditor's investigation in the history of the office, and concluded cases that, collectively, led to hundreds of years of prison sentences for fraudsters.
White, a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE), grew up in Sandersville, Mississippi, population 731, in a blue-collar family. His father and grandfather were oilfield pumpers, and his mother and grandmother were public school teachers. On the weekends, his father was music minister at their small country church, and his mother played the organ. Shad went on to earn degrees from the University of Mississippi, the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar, and Harvard Law School.
White was appointed the 42nd State Auditor of Mississippi in July 2018 and won election to the office after establishing a tough, no-nonsense reputation. Prior to becoming Auditor, White served as a special prosecutor, won ethics cases against politicians who broke the law, and earned a certificate in forensic accounting (the use of accounting to discover fraud) from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He also serves in the military as a captain in the Mississippi National Guard.
