John Harkness Email & Phone Number

Chicago, Illinois, Us

Responsible for leading teams to ensure the organization demonstrates compliance with SEC, CFTC, and Federal Reserve regulatory obligations, implementing enterprise wide regulatory compliance risk frameworks, supporting regulatory compliance risk remediation initiatives, and serving as a trusted regulatory compliance advisor.

Chicago, Illinois, Us

• Responsible for independent “second line of defense” compliance assurance and monitoring activities across the regulatory and internal control environment.• Assist in setting the strategic direction and objectives of the compliance monitoring and assurance programs. • Establishment of compliance monitoring and surveillance program and tools, requiring analysis of SEC and CFTC authoritative regulations, industry frameworks (COBIT, NIST-CSF, COSO, PFMI), risk management frameworks and internal policies, and process-level risks and controls. • Oversee, facilitate, and support comprehensive internal control management self-testing and management attestation programs, routinely interacting and coordinating with over 100 individuals on a quarterly basis, including senior management.• Perform compliance and risk management advising activities to support the development and maintenance of policies, procedures, processes, and internal controls.• Develop and prepare regular reporting to Compliance Management, Senior Management, and Board of Directors regarding assessments of the internal control environment.• Participation in the development of regulatory and legal framework initiatives, with an emphasis on enterprise and operational risk management topics.• Continuous internal process improvement and implementation of compliance initiatives, including development and use of of new automated tools, business process applications, and business intelligence tools (Archer, Appian, Robotic Process Automation, Tableau).• Development of automated, data-driven, real-time compliance risk assessment capabilities.• Managing a team of 2-4 individuals, including mentoring, training, and performance management.

Chicago, Illinois, Us

• Advised the organization on the design, update, and implementation of internal controls• Developed recommendations/direction to business units on process and control improvements• Documented and maintained high quality business process flows and internal control data across 188+ processes• Analyzed new projects and efforts for impact to business processes and controls• Monitored production problems/incidents for impact to business processes and controls• Performed COSO control framework review to ensure effectiveness of internal controls• Implemented an organizational-wide Management Self-Testing program, including the development of automated executive reports and dashboard• Developed educational content on Internal Control for the entire organization

Menlo Park, California, Us

• Led multiple Sarbanes-Oxley compliance efforts involving process walkthroughs, test plan preparation, documentation requests, control testing, and delivery of findings and recommendations within the financial services, manufacturing, distribution, and technology industries.• Performed IPO readiness assessment involving process owner interviews, creation of procedures documentation, identification of control gaps, development of key controls, and SOX compliance testing.• Assisted with a year-end financial statement audit, as a member of the internal audit department working on behalf of an external audit firm, involving various substantive testing including sales validation, sales cutoff, sales completeness, sales pricing, and journal entries. • Performed extensive Accounts Payable spend data analytics for multiple organizations including a Fortune 500 technology corporation, a large private technology corporation, a large private manufacturing corporation, and a Fortune 1000 energy corporation. These efforts focused on cost reduction opportunities, forensic anomalies, efficiency improvements, trending statistics, and policy compliance.• Assisted with forensic investigations involving targeted email review, internal interviews, background checks, and data imaging leading to identification of misappropriation of assets, fraudulent expense reporting, and undisclosed conflicts of interest.• Developed a complex scorecard system and subsequent automated reporting for tracking employee compliance with travel and expense policies

Chicago, Il, Us

• Recorded month-end journal entries for payroll, sales, cash, and expense accounts• Developed multi-functional sales databases utilized to perform monthly and ad hoc analysis• Expanded asset lists based on historical records for company-wide asset tagging program• Revised, developed, and performed monthly account reconciliations for 13 payroll accounts• Performed daily inventory costing procedures to apply material costs to new inventory items• Initiated new accounting processes related to reversing accruals and payroll withholdings• Performed year-end lease capitalization analysis for 2011 and identified prior misclassifications

Dekalb, Il, Us

• Managed daily operations of the Financial Cents program• Developed and lead an innovative Financial Cents Peer Educator Program • Coordinated an ongoing campus-wide financial literacy workshop series• Presented and prepared numerous financial literacy workshops and presentations• Verified, updated, and rectified all 63 NIU degree paths with NIU catalog requirements• Performed multifaceted general office support in an efficient manner

B.S., Finance

Education record