Academic Career & Executive Search Seeking Chief Compliance Officer for The University of Texas Permian Basin

December 7, 2023 – The chief compliance officer is a corporate executive within the C-suite responsible for overseeing and managing regulatory compliance issues within an organization. The CCO typically reports to the CEO of the chief legal officer. The responsibilities of the chief compliance officer include: Leading enterprise compliance efforts; designing and implementing internal controls, policies, and procedures to ensure compliance with applicable local, state, and federal laws and regulations, as well as third-party guidelines; managing audits and investigations into regulatory and compliance issues; responding to requests for information from regulatory bodies; and promoting a culture of compliance and ethical behavior within the organization.
In recent months, executive search firms have been busy recruiting chief compliance officer for all types of organizations. Higher education focused executive search firm Academic Career & Executive Search (ACES) was recently selected to recruit the next chief compliance officer at The University of Texas Permian Basin. Jennifer Muller, managing partner, will be leading the search.
Reporting directly to the president, the firm notes that this is an exciting opportunity to join a highly collaborative and supportive team at The University of Texas Permian Basin. The chief compliance officer provides leadership and oversight to the office of institutional compliance, which includes the campus-wide functions of compliance, and Title IX Initiatives.
The successful candidate will have demonstrated leadership of a comprehensive institutional compliance program and has demonstrated skills in developing and implementing compliance-related policies, procedures, and education programs.
The University of Texas of the Permian Basin is a general academic university of the University of Texas System. It offers 35 undergraduate and 18 graduate programs of study across five colleges and schools. As a comprehensive institution and part of the prestigious 14 institution UT system, The University of Texas Permian Basin serves a diverse community of students from the region, the state, and globally.
Based in West Hartford, CT, Academic Career & Executive Search focuses on executive search services, career planning, and candidate coaching. Specializing in faculty to senior administrative positions, the firm offers six a la carte services spanning full search, candidate generation, interim, multi-hire, and contingency search. Candidate support services include webinars, career planning, and candidate coaching. Its team has served in virtually every capacity in higher education including president, vice president, provost, dean, chief human research officer, and faculty members across all types and sizes of institutions. Sixty-six percent the firm’s placements are women and/or from underrepresented groups.
Ms. Muller has more than 20 years of research and development experience in higher education and Fortune 500 companies. She has led over 70 higher education searches both domestically and internationally spanning presidents, vice presidents, associate chancellors, deans, directors, chairs, and faculty level positions. She is former vice chair of the American Council on Education (ACE) Executive Search Roundtable and serves as an advisor in the numerous ACE leadership development forums.
Compliance Recruiting
Finding senior leadership within the compliance function is exceedingly complex today, as companies face intense pressure under the current regulatory environment. Leaders must be able to foster close collaboration between compliance and other corporate functions as well as communicate to a more complex and sophisticated set of stakeholders, internally and externally.
According to a recent Heidrick & Struggles report, sharply rising demand for compliance talent, the absence of a clear career path in the discipline and greater need for compliance executives with leadership and influencing skills are creating difficult challenges for organizations seeking to identify and retain talent in a world of increasing regulation.
Academic Career & Executive Search Recruits Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer for California State University, Stanislaus
After a national search, Academic Career & Executive Search (ACES) has assisted in the recruitment of Sacha Joseph-Mathews as founding chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer at California State University, Stanislaus (CSU). Dr. Joseph-Mathews has over 15 years of experience training executives, managers, and organizations in unconscious bias and diversity, equity, and inclusion. She joins CSU, Stanislaus from University of the Pacific, where she has served as the assistant dean of diversity, equity, and inclusion and community engagement in the school of business since 2020. Dr. Joseph-Mathews has also served as an associate professor at University of the Pacific since 2006, teaching courses ranging from DEI in business to services marketing and management.
“The demand is so great for internal auditor and compliance executives that recruiters are looking outside the financial services industry for candidates,” said Michael P. Kelly, president of New York-based Michael Kelly & Associates, which specializes in financial services. “The skill-sets are transferrable but there is a learning curve to understand the sector they are auditing.”
Maurice Gilbert, managing partner of Dallas-based Conselium, a boutique search firm that specializes in recruiting compliance professionals, has also seen a major uptick in activity, particularly for chief compliance officers.
“About nine years ago companies that were in highly regulated industries like financial services, medical devices and pharmaceuticals saw a critical need to bulk up in the compliance area,” said Mr. Gilbert.
The result: Mr. Gilbert has seen a 20 percent, year-over-year growth rate for compliance professionals as a direct result of ongoing or potential measures being taken by the U.S. government to investigate companies they potentially deem as having behaved improperly or who have not been compliant with new regulatory measures.
Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief; Dale M. Zupsansky, Executive Editor; Lily Fauver, Senior Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media