PROFESSOR WILLIAMS PRESENTS HER CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECT ON AUDITOR REGULATION AT THE 2024 WOMEN IN LAW AND FINANCE CONFERENCE IN PHILADELPHIA, PA
September 2024 — Professor Sarah Williams presented a draft of her current work-in-progress, Transparency Transition in Auditor Oversight, at the 3rd Annual Women in Law and Finance Conference, co-sponsored by the Wharton Initiative on Financial Policy & Regulation and the U. Penn Carey Law Institute for Law and Economics’ Women in Business Law Initiative in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on September 26-27. In her presentation, Professor Williams contrasted the disclosure regime set forth in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act for public company auditors with recent transparency initiatives proposed by the agency responsible for overseeing the auditors, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. In this project, Professor Williams continues the research she has developed regarding auditor regulation, and leverages her scholarship calling for additional transparency in the area of Congressional insider trading. Professor Williams is thankful to the conference attendees for their feedback.
Sarah J. Williams is an Associate Professor of Law at Penn State Dickinson Law with over 25 years of experience as a securities regulator. She has served as Deputy Director at the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, Commissioner’s Counsel and Enforcement Branch Chief at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and Associate General Counsel at NASD (now FINRA). She previously authored The Alchemy of Effective Auditor Regulation, 25 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 1089 (2022), Regulatory Personhood: The Elixir for Redundancy Between the SEC and the PCAOB, forthcoming 97 St. John’s L. Rev. (2024), and Regulating Congressional Insider Trading: The Rotten Egg Approach, forthcoming 45 Cardozo Law Rev. (2024).