© 2015 The Texas Lawbook.
By Mark Curriden
(Jan. 29) – JoAnn Harris is about to get a big raise.
Fort Worth-based TPG Capital is expected to announce Monday that Harris, an assistant director of enforcement at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in Fort Worth, is its new deputy director of corporate compliance.
“TPG’s footprint is around the globe,” Harris said. “It is definitely going to be a challenge, but it will be fun.”
Lawyers said that Harris is an ideal selection to lead compliance efforts for TPG Capital, which had been seeking a corporate compliance leader for nearly a year.
“JoAnn is very well regarded, extremely talented, hard working and she pays great attention to detail,” SEC Regional Director David Woodcock told The Texas Lawbook. “She is loved by her staff and she will be missed.”
Harris said she was contacted by a corporate headhunter in October and went through a series of interviews.
“It was a long, winding path,” she said.
Harris will report directly to TPG General Counsel Ron Cami.
“TPG is in a regulated industry, and so it goes without saying complying with the relevant regulations is a critical obligation that we have to and do satisfy,” Cami said. “So, all of what we do in compliance is important. JoAnn will have an important role in that effort.”
A 1999 graduate of SMU Dedman School of Law, Harris has been assigned to the SEC’s Asset Management Unit, which oversees hedge funds and private equity firms. In her new position with TPG Capital, she will have a compensation package exceeding $1 million – five times her annual salary at the SEC.
Harris is a certified public accountant who worked as a senior auditor at KPMG in Shreveport and Arthur Anderson in Dallas. She was a lawyer at Munsch Hardt Kopf & Harr for four years, before joining the SEC in February 2003.
“The work here is so good and complex and evolving,” Harris said. “I got to be at the forefront of some exciting cases.”
“Under David Woodcock and (SEC Associate Director) David Peavler, the Fort Worth Regional office is the place to be,” she said.
Toby Galloway, who was the chief trial lawyer in the SEC’s Fort Worth Regional Office, said TPG Capital made an excellent choice.
“JoAnn’s background – including experience as an auditor at Big 4 accounting firms, as a transactional lawyer at a top-notch law firm, and as a superb lawyer at the SEC in its Asset Management unit – makes her uniquely suited for a role in compliance at this tremendous private-equity firm,” said Galloway, who is a partner at Kelly Hart & Hallman in Fort Worth.
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