Lorie Thomas joined Eastern in 2015 as an adjunct teaching Federal Income Tax and is excited to be a full time faculty member. Lorie teaches accounting, finance and tax courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. She enjoys interacting with her students and discussing current business issues, relating textbook theory and concepts to actual business situations and current events. She loves the energy on campus.

Lorie chose Eastern because she enjoys helping her students learn to interpret and analyze financial statements, determine how taxes impact many personal and business decisions, and analyze data to draw out the story it is telling about a business.  She challenges them to think more broadly about who are the stakeholders impacted by various business decisions and what they can do as managers to reduce negative impacts.  The students at Eastern are a special group:  they are hard workers with empathy and a strong ethical compass that is needed in the business world.  She enjoys interacting with them and watching them grow into thoughtful and capable young adults.  The College of Business and Leadership (CBL) has a great faculty culture:  it is collaborative, friendly and encouraging.  She enjoys being a member of this community of learners and listeners.

Lorie worked for the Big Five public accounting firms of Andersen and KPMG for more than 13 years primarily as a tax consultant. In this role, she worked with many Fortune 500 companies as well as smaller businesses. After leaving the public accounting world and obtaining her MBA, she started up a downtown hotel in a failed condominium project on behalf of a private foundation. The success of the hotel has turned around the community where it is located. Lorie has been CFO of the hotel for 9 years after serving as the General Manager for its first year of operations. She is also on the Board of the condominium association in which the hotel is located.

Lorie is an elected official of her local government and has helped financially turn around the small Borough from cash reserves of only $20,000 to approx. $300,000 in the four years she has been on Council. She enjoys working with the other members of Council to make the Borough financially stable and more efficient.

She also previously served as Finance Committee member, Treasurer (3 years) and Board Member for Habitat for Humanity of the Lehigh Valley from 2005-2010. She helped guide them through the financial crisis of 2008. HFHLV obtained ranking in the top 10% of charities in the nation under her financial leadership.

She has 3 adult children and lives with her husband and their pets in Easton, PA.