Zoe-Vonna Palmrose

ZOE-VANNA PALMROSE is the PricewaterhouseCoopers Professor of Auditing and Professor of Accounting in the Marshall School of Business and Leventhal School of Accounting at the University of Southern California. She was a member of the faculty at the University of California at Berkeley prior to joining USC.

From 2006 to 2008, Zoe-Vonna served as Deputy Chief Accountant for Professional Practice in the Office of the Chief Accountant at the Securities and Exchange Commission. In 2008, she was named one of the 100 most influential people in finance by Treasury and Risk Magazine; and, she was included among Business Finance Magazine’s influencers in 2004, 2005, and 2007.

Zoe-Vonna has published and spoken extensively on a variety of issues related to the quality of financial reporting and auditing, including restatements, materiality, regulation of the profession, audit litigation, the pricing of audit services, and non-audit services. She co-authored with Mike Brown, former Microsoft CFO and past NASDAQ Chairman, the book—Thog’s Guide to Quantum Economics: 50,000 Years of Accounting Basics for the Future.

Zoe-Vonna’s research has been recognized by the American Accounting Association (AAA) Competitive Manuscript Award and the California Society of CPAs Accounting Faculty Fellow Award. Her monograph and companion database, Studies in Accounting Research #33: Empirical Research on Auditor Litigation: Considerations and Data, was honored with the Deloitte & Touche/AAA Wildman Award in 2003. She again received the Wildman Award in 2006 for her coauthored study on auditor independence, non-audit services, and restatements published in the Journal of Accounting Research.

Zoe-Vonna served as Vice President-Research and a member of the Executive Committee for the AAA, and she has been a member of or chaired a number of AAA committees. She served as a member of the Public Oversight Board’s Panel on Audit Effectiveness; and, she was a member of the ASB Fraud Task Force, which developed SAS No. 99, Consideration of Fraud in a Financial Statement Audit. In 2003, she received the AAA Auditing Section’s Distinguished Service Award in recognition of her significant and sustained contributions to the academic auditing profession.

A CPA, Zoe-Vonna has worked in public accounting and private industry. She received her B.S. from Oregon State University, and her MBA and Ph.D. from the University of Washington.