Kayla J. Gillan, a senior adviser to SEC Chairwoman Mary Schapiro, is resigning to take a job at PricewaterhouseCoopers, according to people familiar with the matter.
Ms. Gillan, who was general counsel of the $230.1 billion California Public Employees’ Retirement System, Sacramento, until 2002, will be a principal in a new group at PwC focusing on regulations affecting auditing firms, according to one of the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the move hasn’t been announced.
Ms. Gillan was hired to be Ms. Schapiro’s deputy chief of staff in 2009 as an advocate of the investor community. The Securities and Exchange Commission had noted then that Ms. Gillan had experience regulating auditors as one of the founding members of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, the industry’s U.S. watchdog.
She becomes the first former PCAOB member to later work for one of the so-called Big Four accounting firms that she once regulated. Other ex-SEC officials also have moved to the firm, including Lori Richards, the agency’s former inspections and compliance chief. Her replacement, Carlo di Florio, came from PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Ms. Gillan joined the PCAOB in 2003. In February 2008, she became chief administrative officer of RiskMetrics Group, now a unit of MSCI Inc., and left a year later for the SEC.
Ms. Gillan didn’t respond to an e-mail seeking comment. Steven G. Silber, a PricewaterhouseCoopers spokesman, declined to comment.
Timothy Inklebarger contributed to this story.
