Hi Oles,
Commencement is just around the corner, and the good news is that we have an outstanding commencement speaker. He is Mark W. Olson, who graduated from St. Olaf in 1965 with a major in Economics. Mr. Olson is Chairman of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, a non-profit corporation formed by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. That law was enacted in response to numerous corporate accounting scandals, including the collapse of Enron. Its mission is "to oversee the auditors of public companies in order to protect the interests of investors and further the public interest in the preparation of informative, fair, and independent audit reports."
Before taking on this post in 2006, Mr. Olson was a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and the Federal Open Market Committee. He has also served on the staff of the Senate Banking Committee, worked for national auditing companies, been a banker, and started off working as a legislative aid for Bill Frenzel, who was elected from Minnesota to the U.S. House of Representatives in the early 1970s.
St. Olaf named Mr. Olson a Distinguished Alum in 2003.
His talk will focus on ethics and values in the workplace, and will include a salutory message to the Class of 2007 and to all Oles who aspire to do good work.
