3rd Official Migrates From the SEC to Audit Quality Center

The Center for Audit Quality, an accounting industry trade group based in the District, last week hired the third official of the Securities and Exchange Commission to join its staff since opening in January.

Lori Schock, acting director of the SEC's Office of Investor Education and Assistance, will become the center's director of outreach, the SEC said. Robert Burns, chief counsel in the SEC Office of the Chief Accountant, will be the director of research beginning May 7. Jane Cobb, who left her job as the SEC's congressional liaison in January, is already on staff as the center's director of operations.

"The SEC obviously has a very qualified staff, and we are thrilled that Bob and Lori and Jane see the importance of what we're doing," said Cynthia Fornelli, the center's executive director. They "will help us in our mission to seek a broader perspective," she said.

The center, backed by PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu and Ernst & Young, was established to "foster confidence in the audit process," according to its Web site. Fornelli, a former SEC lawyer, has said the group is focused on the accounting industry's legal liabilities, changes in the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate governance law and how companies report financial information.

Schock joined the SEC as a staff attorney in 2001. Susan F. Wyderko, her predecessor as head of the investor education office, left the SEC in June to become executive director of the Mutual Fund Directors Forum in Washington.