Somewhere amongst the clouds of his childhood dreams of becoming a private pilot, Mark H. Taylor bumped into the notion of accounting, which brought his feet right back to the ground. But that hasn’t stopped him from rising above the rest to land an academic fellowship at the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.
After graduating from the Marriott School with his MAcc and BS in accountancy, Taylor worked for a year before returning to his studies at the University of Arizona, where he earned his PhD. He is currently the John P. Begley Endowed Chair in Accounting at Creighton University, where he teaches auditing and fraud investigation.
Despite years of study and experience, he can’t help but be a bit jittery about such a prestigious position. “I’m a little bit nervous about it,” Taylor says. “You think you’re prepared for these kinds of things, but you never know until the rubber meets the road.”
Every year the SEC selects two or three professors for its one-year fellowship program. Taylor says he will probably work in developing new auditing standards or work with auditor independence issues as well as some projects associated with specific registrant filings with the SEC.
In the aftermath of the Enron and Arthur Andersen catastrophes, Taylor pushes for an improvement in rebuilding an auditing profession that investors can rely on. “The auditing profession specifically, and capital markets in general, have suffered a tremendous crisis in confidence” he says. “It shook the market’s foundations when market participants started to wonder whether the auditors’ work was reliable.”
Perhaps being a descendent of John Taylor, third president of the Church, has something to do with his zeal for good character. Taylor wrote Witness of the Martyrdom: John Taylor’s Personal Account of the Last Days of the Prophet Joseph. Taylor says it is interesting that he’ll be on assignment in Washington, D.C., following in the footsteps of John Taylor, who was sent there to petition for Utah statehood.
Taylor’s duties will have him move away from his wife, Rozann, and their four children for twelve months—at least during weekdays. Taylor will commute weekly from Omaha, Nebraska, to Washington, D.C., a situation not too dissimilar from his stint as a visiting associate professor at the Marriott School in spring 2004.
