Washington, DC, September 18, 2007 – Kayla Gillan, a founding Board Member of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, today announced that she will leave the Board by the end of January 2008.
"Since opening our doors in January of 2003, the PCAOB has been focused on protecting investors who rely on the audits of U.S. public companies. I'm extremely proud of the organization that we built from scratch, and am honored to have been part of it," said Ms. Gillan.
Ms. Gillan leaves a lasting impact upon the Board. She spearheaded the Board's small business program, called Forum on Auditing in the Small Business Environment. Board members and key staff travel around the country to meet representatives from smaller auditing firms and directors and executives from smaller public companies. Since the inception of the small business forums in late 2004, more than 2,000 members of the small business community have attended the forums.
"The PCAOB's programs and culture have been strongly influenced by Kayla's clear-headed approach and innate sense of fairness," said PCAOB Chairman Mark Olson. "Kayla has been invaluable in sensitizing the Board to investor issues as they relate to our work. She also designed and led our outreach to smaller issuers and auditors. She leaves a strong legacy here and will be greatly missed."
Prior to her appointment to the PCAOB, Ms. Gillan worked in the pension field, specializing in trust, securities, governance, administrative, policy and operational matters. She spent 16 years at the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), the last six as General Counsel. She was a principal architect of CalPERS' corporate governance program, managed all aspects of the fund's legal services, and oversaw a staff of internal auditors. In 1995, the National Law Journal named Ms. Gillan one of the nation's top 40 attorneys under 40; in 1998, the Journal named her one of the country's top 50 women lawyers. She also was named one of Business Finance magazine's 50 top influencers in 2005. Just this month (Sept. 2007), Directorship magazine named her one of the top 20 most influential U.S. leaders in corporate governance.
Ms. Gillan currently serves on the Independent Advisory Board to the NACD Corporate Directors Institute. She is a past member of the Legal Advisory Committee to the Board of Directors of the New York Stock Exchange and both the Executive Board and Investment Section of the National Association of Public Pension Attorneys.
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The PCAOB is a private-sector, nonprofit corporation, created by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, to oversee the auditors of public companies in order to protect the interests of investors and further the public interest in the preparation of informative, fair, and independent audit reports.