Kevin R. Yeanoplos, CPA
Title: Founder
Firm: Brueggeman and Johnson Yeanoplos, P.C.
Location: Tucson, Arizona
Forbes Ranking: America’s Top CPAs in Valuations 2025
“We can change the world by choosing our words wisely to inspire, to dream, to do, to become and to lead.”
Kevin Yeanoplos’ rise to the Hall of Fame of CPAs providing valuation services has taken many turns—and has imbued him with the diversity of experience that informs the best of the profession. A 1983 Magna Cum Laude graduate of the University of Utah (BS) and 2021 graduate of the University of Denver (MBA), Yeanoplos is not just a Certified Public Accountant Accredited in Business Valuation (CPA/ABV) and Accredited Senior Appraiser in the Business Valuation, he is a university professor, author, expert witness, lecturer, singer/songwriter and active volunteer for his profession.
At the University of Denver’s Daniels School of Business, Yeanoplos teaches graduate level courses in advanced business valuation. His area of expertise has grown far beyond that, to include valuing diverse intangibles and businesses for various purposes, including litigation, financial reporting and M&A. He has served as an expert witness and court-appointed neutral in state and Federal courts, mergers and acquisitions. His firm has grown as well, now boasting offices in Tucson and Seattle. It’s all part of a larger plan.
“Knowledge is meaningless unless it is shared,” says Yeanoplos, the former chair of the AICPA’s ABV Credential Committee, where he helped the ABV designation become recognized as one of the premier business valuation credentials. As former AICPA Chair Marvin Strait said, “But for Kevin’s leadership, commitment and incredible passion, the ABV would be a mere shadow of its present stature, if it were to exit at all, and our profession would have conceded to others its influential role in this important and growing client service. Our CPA profession owes Kevin a deep debt of gratitude.”
It’s far from his only meaningful role. As a Regional Captain for the Advocacy Committee for the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, which oversees the Grammys, Yeanoplous sharpened his expertise in valuations of song catalogs and royalties, often lobbying in Washington, D.C. and various congressional offices within Arizona and New Mexico on the need for royalty reform.
For 40 years, he has also assisted clients nationwide on the valuation of a diverse array of intangibles including patents, trademarks and song catalogs, whether for divorce or other litigation, financial reporting, gift and estate taxes, mergers and acquisitions or ESOP’s, among others. The diversity extends to Yeanoplos’ extensive business valuation experience, with a partial client roster that includes healthcare companies, high tech companies, aircraft parts manufacturers, biomedical companies, construction companies, professional practices and automobile dealerships.
As both an expert witness and court-appointed neutral in state and Federal courts across the country, Yeanoplos has assisted triers of fact in understanding a variety of complex valuation, financial analysis and damages issues. Yeanoplos lectures throughout the United States on the topics of valuation, applied finance and financial analysis, has been a faculty member for the AICPA’s National Business Valuation School for close to 25 years and is currently on the faculty of the ABA Family Law Trial Advocacy Institute.
An author, Yeanoplos contributed to Valuing Professional Practices & Licenses, Forensic Accounting in Matrimonial Divorce, Financial Valuation: Application and Models, Guide to Personal v. Enterprise Goodwill, The Comprehensive Guide to Economic Damages, and Reasonable Compensation: Application and Analysis for Appraisal, Tax and Management Purposes, and recently co-authored the Financial Expert Guide for Family Law Judges and Attorneys. He is a former member of the AICPA’s Accredited in Business Valuation
(ABV) Examination Task Force, which is responsible for developing the exam that must be passed by those that hope to earn the ABV credential. He has been a faculty member for the AICPA’s National Business Valuation School for almost 25 years, and in 2006, the AICPA named him their 2006 Business Valuation Volunteer of the Year and inducted him into the AICPA Business Valuation Hall of Fame.
Above all those many accomplishments, though, Yeanoplos has devoted himself to helping others find their way and extending his influence beyond the CPA profession. “My experiences imbued me with a deep sense of empathy. I fully realized that by changing myself, I could change the world, even if only one person at a time. That small impact will change the world in ever increasing ripples of love and compassion.”
For the full list of America’s Top CPAs in Valuations, click here.
For questions about this list, please contact cpalist [at] Forbes.com.
Steel Rose, CPA is a senior editor who covers accounting, with a frequent focus on recognizing the top practicing CPAs in America in addition to investigating stories about audit failures.