Dezan Shira & Associates Appoints Four New Partners to the Firm

Dezan Shira & Associates is pleased to announce the appointment of four new equity partners, bringing the firm now to eleven equity partners in total.

This year’s appointees consist of David Niu, Cathy Gong, Thomas Zhang, and Phoebe Yan, all of whom are leading teams critical to the firm’s future growth and strategic plans. This recent partnership expansion aims to thank and recognize our senior leaders for their important contributions over their many years.

Get to Know Our Four New Equity Partners 

David Niu is based in Beijing, China, holds a master’s degree in finance with the University of Wales and has more than 20 years of experience in the HR and advisory industry. Since joining the firm in 2014, David has helped grow our HR, Payroll, and Individual Tax capabilities. In the past three years, David played a key role in developing our payroll, executive search and recruitment, HR advisory and PEO services teams in China, and throughout Asia. He is additionally spearheading the development of asiaadmin™, our client portal for Asia multi-country HR and Payroll management.

David’s appointment recognizes HR as one of the fastest growing business units in the firm and marks the importance of both HR and technology services, as key growth drivers and as vital components to the continued driving of our business in the years ahead.

Cathy Gong is based in Shenzhen, China, is an accounting and financial expert with both CPA and CMA accreditations and has more than 20 years of experience practicing and managing in the field of finance. Cathy plans and manages the firm’s internal finances, including tax compliance, financial reporting, business analysis, and internal control matters, and also directs client ERP, accounting and finance digitalization projects from the finance perspective. This work greatly parallels her leadership of the firm’s internal finance-side digitalization, and how we deliver services to our accounting clients throughout Asia.

Prior to joining Dezan Shira, Cathy was the head of finance for two large multinational manufacturing companies.  Cathy is a Chinese Certified Public Accountant (CPA), a Certified Management Accountant (CMA), a graduate of Hunan University of Accounting, and is a member of IMA.

Thomas Zhang is based in Shenzhen, China where he directs the Technology IT and IS teams, who provide stable, secure and efficient IT infrastructure and customized application systems for clients and the firm’s own worldwide network of offices. Under Thomas’ direction, the company’s IT functions have transformed from a relatively basic internal support service in 2013, to having robust capabilities in IT advisory, information security, compliance, cloud and infrastructure design, systems administration, process control, and other areas. Today, Technology Services is one of the firm’s core client services and an important growth driver and competitive strength of the firm.

Thomas joined the firm in 2013 and has 20 years of IT experience, including holding previous positions as an information security consultant and IT Manager in a multi-national company. Thomas holds numerous IT sector certificates for compliance, security and infrastructure (CIPT, EXIN ISO, EXIN DPO, ISACA CDPSE, CISSP, CCSP, CISA, CCNP, Microsoft 365 Security Administration, MCSE, and MCDBA), and has a diploma in English Language Studies, a BSc in Computer Networking, and an MBA with Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Phoebe Yan is based in Dalian, China where she manages the IS team, which provides customized application systems and IS consulting services to clients and supports business operations across Dezan Shira & Associates’ network of offices worldwide.  Under Phoebe’s management, Technology Services and Information Systems has rapidly grown into a leading client service, and integral part of our service offerings. Phoebe has also played a key role in enabling the firm to continue its internal transformation and digitalization, including ERP, accounting, payroll, office automation and more.

Phoebe Yan joined the firm in 2010 and has more than 12 years of experience now in the IS industry. She specializes in Microsoft Dynamics 365 / AX ERP implementations, Power Platforms, and other applications development using ASP.NET and SharePoint. Phoebe holds a bachelor’s degree in Software Engineering with Dalian University of Technology and is a certified PMP (Project Management Professional).