Personal
Bio
Rich Lanza served as the
Conference Chair of the North Jersey IIA Software
Expo.
Rich Lanza (CPA, CFE, PMP) is a Manager of Internal Audit at a Fortune 200 retailer, where he focuses mainly on using computer assisted audit tools to improve business intelligence, increase efficiencies, and identify multi-million dollar bottom-line savings.
Rich is a leading authority on the use of audit and assurance software. He has devoted himself to freely providing information on the topic as his mission is to help auditors get recognized for their bottom-line results. To that end, he founded AuditSoftware.Net (www.auditsoftware.net/community) that works to increase organizational benefits from the use of audit software. The free site provides tools, case studies, a vendor discount program, newsletter, and a discussion area to visitors. The site recently announced project communities whereby anyone interested can share and collaborate on practical audit software tools and solutions. Rich has also written numerous articles, software products, and four test set books on how to practically apply ACL and IDEA software (http://www.richlanza.com/products/). He has commonly been referred to as “The Johnny Appleseed of the Audit Software Industry”.
Rich headed the Program Management Office, reporting to the Chief Operating Officer at the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, where he sewed a culture of project management into the fabric of the organization. On his last major project, Rich worked to coordinate various fraud-reduction initiatives to maximize their benefit for the AICPA and financial markets. Rich has drafted many of the project standards being used at the AICPA to manage projects and has implemented a project portfolio management process. He has also established a six-month intense training program for project managers. Prior to his program management work, Rich was a program/project manager in many Web and technology projects including leading the Y2K project.
Prior to joining the AICPA, Rich served as a Vice President-Audit Technology at AuditWatch where he was an ACL® and IDEATM trainer. He has also been an Internal Audit Manager for Lafarge and Disclosure and has served in the audit department at KPMG Peat Marwick. Rich received his undergraduate degree in public accounting from Pace University. He is a past President of the Northern Virginia Chapter of The Institute of Internal Auditors, and is a certified member of both the AICPA and PMI. He currently also maintains the New York/New Jersey Program Management Office Special Interest Group for PMI.
In 2003, for his data analysis work in the area of fraud detection, he was awarded the Outstanding Achievement in Commerce Award from the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners and he also won the Second Annual ACL Users Challenge. His interests include magic and collecting gadgets.
The author’s opinions expressed in this publication are his own and do not necessarily represent the policies or positions of his employer.
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