Audit Group Adds Two SEC Directors

The Center for Audit Quality, the group backed by the profession's six largest audit firms as well as the American Institute of CPAs, has lured aboard a pair of high-level staffers from the Securities and Exchange Commission. Lori Schock, the SEC's acting director of investor education, and general counsel Robert Burns will join the new group in May. Schock will assume the post of director of outreach, while Burns becomes the CAQ's new director of research. The group, which evolved from the AICPA's Center for Public Company Audit Firms, currently has about 800 members. Its executive director, Cindy Fornelli, and director of operations, Jane Cobb, are both former senior-level directors at the SEC. Fornelli served as deputy director of the SEC's investment management division, while Cobb helmed the regulator's legislative affairs office. Fornelli and several of the CAQ board are scheduled to embark on a multi-city "listening tour" to elicit feedback from investors, regulators, academics and business leaders to hone the business reporting model.