Our Story > Partners > [Melinda DeCorte]
With 20 years of accounting, auditing, and government financial management experience, Melinda DeCorte directs, manages and serves in a quality assurance capacity for financial statement audits conducted in accord with government auditing standards. Additionally, she has extensive consulting experience with multiple governmental agencies, primarily focusing on internal controls and risk assessments, financial statement preparation, financial system implementation, and evaluating agencies for audit readiness and compliance with internal control standards and generally accepted accounting principles.
Melinda initially joined Cotton & Company in March 2003 and served as a Partner with the firm from 2007 – 2013. Prior to joining Cotton & Company, Melinda served as a commissioned officer in the United States Army, Finance Corps. Melinda moved back to Texas (her home state) in 2013 and served as a Partner with Crowe LLP from 2014 – 2017. Since 2017, she has actively supported Cotton & Company as a Colleague Partner on the USTRANSCOM engagement.
Melinda currently serves as the Chair of the AGA’s Professional Ethics Board; as the representative for the Dallas chapter for the AGA’s National Council of Chapters (NCC); and as the Chapter Director for Area 3 on AGA’s National Governing Board (NGB). She also served on the advisory council to the Government Accountability Office in updating the Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government (Green Book), has actively served on multiple committees of the Virginia Society of Certified Public Accountants, and taught introductory and intermediate‐level financial accounting for four years for the University of Virginia, Northern Virginia Center.
She has authored several articles on professional ethics in the AGA Journal of Government Financial Management and regularly speaks on ethics, audit, and internal control at professional development conferences and training seminars.
Melinda graduated from Georgia State University with a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration (Major in Economics), and completed an additional 30 semester hours in Accounting at the University of Virginia School of Continuing and Professional Studies. She is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA), Certified Government Financial Manager (CGFM), Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE), and Project Management Professional (PMP) and is the Elijah Watts Sells Gold Medal winner with the highest score in the country for the November 2002 Uniform Certified Public Accountant examination.
