The 2026 Rising Stars of the Profession: Austin Burlone

Austin Burlone is a technical consultant whose career began in Commercial Assurance at Ernst & Young after receiving his bachelor's degree from Bentley University and his master's degree from Northeastern University. At EY, he worked on finance and accounting topics for public and private clients, including revenue recognition and variable consideration, as well as inventory valuation, with a specialization in the technology and life sciences industries. Following EY, Austin joined a highly funded, tech-enabled startup in Boston, Perch. He leveraged his analytical background to shift into product and customer analytics. Leveraging data warehouse and visualization platforms, as well as advanced analytics, he drove customer insights that improved unit profitability and increased customer conversion across hundreds of SKUs, while discovering new product variations that grew total gross contribution margin for several brands.

Austin has worked in the Business Transformation practice at CrossCountry, leveraging his combined experience across finance, analytics and AI to help growth-stage and private equity-backed companies accelerate value-creation initiatives. Now working in the AI Lab, he works with stakeholders across FP&A, Accounting and IT/Data to identify value opportunities, design approaches that combine business and technology perspectives, then activate solutions powered by analytics, AI and automation that improve decision-making and operational efficiency.