Gerry Zack (gerry.zack@corporatecompliance.org) is Incoming CEO of SCCE & HCCA in Minneapolis, MN. He was interviewed in January 2018 by Adam Turteltaub (adam.turteltaub@corporatecompliance.org), Vice President, Strategic Initiatives and International Programs at SCCE & HCCA, based in Minneapolis, MN.
AT: Gerry, welcome aboard. We’re all excited about having you as the Incoming CEO, and I know there are a lot of questions people have about your background, what you’ll be doing over the next year, and how the transition will work. I think the first thing people are going to want to know about is your career and what led you to us. Briefly can you walk us through what you were doing before you joined the association?
GZ: Thanks. I’ve been involved in compliance in one form or another virtually my entire career, even from the very beginning when I started out as an auditor. I was mainly doing compliance auditing, along with financial auditing and auditing government contractors, financial institutions, and organizations that got federal funding. So it was very heavy on compliance. I really had a taste for compliance from the get-go. That, ultimately, led to more of an investigative career.
I was trained as an accountant and was in forensic accounting doing investigative work, fraud investigations, regulatory compliance investigations, corruption investigations, things of that nature. That’s where I really began working with Compliance departments and compliance functions within large organizations and began learning how they really operated. It was through that angle that I dove head-long into the Compliance field.
I had my own forensic accounting and investigative practice for a number of years. I eventually got into the more proactive sides of compliance and fraud in terms of doing risk assessments, awareness and training programs, and things of that nature.
Most recently, I was with BDO in their global forensics group. The nice thing about that is it exposed me to the larger global organizations that I had limited exposure to when I had my own boutique practice.
AT: It must have been quite the broadening experience. I think it’s interesting that you started in investigations, and so many compliance professionals struggle with the internal investigations part of the job. It’s great that you have that experience. You mentioned that you spent a lot of time working in audit firms. Audit and Compliance tend to work very close together, as you well know. Do you see opportunities for them to work even closer together?