Compliance Officers on the Move: Sept. 16

Here is our weekly roundup of compliance professionals on the move, for the week ending Sept. 16. I gather these bits of gossip from LinkedIn, news alerts, and friends emailing me something to include.

If you have a tip or want to brag about your new job, promotion, career milestone, or whatever—just email me at [email protected] or find me on LinkedIn.

New Jobs

Convercent, the GRC software vendor headquartered in Denver, just hired its first chief compliance officer: Katie Smith, who previously was chief ethics officer at financial services firm USAA. Smith will report directly to CEO Patrick Quinlan.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Western New York has named Joseph Simpson director of enterprise risk management and continuity planning.

Gaetan Heuchamps has a new job as senior manager of forensic audit at Johnson Controls, working in Belgium. Heuchamps previously spent 13 years in various accounting and auditing positions at Tyco.

In Burlington, Mass., pharmaceutical firm Flexion Therapeutics has hired Carolyn Scimemi as chief compliance officer. She comes to Flexion from Dyax, where she was also chief compliance officer. Flexion is in clinical trials with a drug for knee pain.

OCC in Chicago has announced a few executive appointments. John Fennell has been promoted from EVP for financial risk management to chief risk officer. He will be responsible for implementing OCC’s risk management strategy, as well as model validation, business continuity, vendor risk management, and the like. He replaces John Grace, who has left the company.

Also at OCC, Dale Michaels will move up to replace Fennell as EVP for financial risk management. He came to OCC in January, after a long career in risk management at the CME Group. And Adi Agrawal has been promoted from first vice president for internal audit to chief audit executive.

Enrique Aznar has begun a new role at VimpelCom, the Dutch telecommunications giant that settled FCPA charges earlier this year for a whopping $795 million. Aznar is now group chief group values and culture transformation officer. He previously was group chief compliance officer—a role that has now been filled by Dan Chapman (great guy), who used to be head of ethics and compliance at Cameron International.

New Business

Two software developers, CGI Federal and Wynyard Group, have won a contract from the Interior Department to install an ERM platform at the department’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. We’re likely to see more such customer news in the future, since the federal government is working on a larger plan to move all agencies to ERM by 2018.

Deloitte reported fiscal year results last week, and the firm is going like gangbusters. Global revenue was a record $36.8 billion, up 9.5 percent from the prior year. Leading the way was the Risk Advisory group, which saw revenue jump 22 percent.

Milestones

Jennifer Marietta-Westberg, deputy director and deputy chief economist at the SEC’s Division of Economic and Risk Analysis, is leaving the agency after 10 years in various roles there. She is returning to the private sector, but the SEC did not elaborate on her next career move. 

John Panagopoulos is celebrating his one-year anniversary at HSBC as managing director of U.S. financial crimes compliance for wholesale banking.

David Cass is celebrating one year at IBM as chief information security officer for its cloud and software-as-a-service unit.

Over at Apple, Jane Horvath just hit five years as senior director of global privacy.

Michael Miller is celebrating five years as senior director of ethics and compliance at Aerojet Rocketdyne. He wins the prize this week for coolest company name.

And bringing us home this week is Stuart Sumner in London, who is celebrating 20 years in various supply chain, compliance, and controller functions at DHL.

If you have any career moves you want the world to know, feel free to email me at [email protected]. (Also find me on LinkedIn.) I’m always happy to give credit to the many hard-working people here in our corner of the business universe.