Rethinking Financial Disclosure Steering Committee & Faculty Advisor

Steering Committee Members and Faculty Advisors

Linda E. Eddy
Director of Stakeholder Relations, Center for Audit Quality

Linda Eddy is the Director of Stakeholder Relations for the Center for Audit Quality (CAQ), which was founded in 2007 to serve investors, public company auditors and the capital markets. Ms. Eddy supports the objectives of the organization by developing strategies for promoting stakeholder engagement & education.

Prior to joining the CAQ, Ms. Eddy worked as the Director, Investor Relations at Freddie Mac, a public government sponsored entity created by Congress to support the secondary mortgage market. She also worked as the Manager, Investor Relations for Columbia Energy Group, Inc., a company engaging in the transmission and distribution of natural gas in the United Sates and was a Director of Market Services at The NASDAQ Stock Market. She began her career as an investor relations consultant where her primary focus was on ownership identification and targeting.

Ms. Eddy holds a B.S. in Finance and an MBA both from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech). She currently serves on the MBA Advisory Board of the Pamplin College of Business at Virginia Tech and is a member of the National Investor Relations Institute (NIRI), the Society of Corporate Secretaries and Governance Professionals, Women in Housing and Finance and the Girl Scouts Council of the Nation’s Capital.

John Forrer
Associate Director, ICR
School of Business, The George Washington University

John Forrer is Associate Research Professor of Strategic Management and Public Policy, School of Business; Associate Director of the GW Institute of Corporate Responsibility (ICR); and, Associate Faculty, Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration at The George Washington University.

As Associate Director of ICR, he manages the research and activities of the Center in four areas: Business and Peace, Governance, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Environmental Sustainability. He is also responsible for developing partnerships and funding support from sources outside GWSB.

His research examines issues at the crossroads of business, globalization, and policy. Research topics include: business and peace; public-private partnerships; integrated governance networks; sustainable global commodities; and, corporate governance.

His most recent publications are:

Cross-Sector Collaboration, with Jed Kee and Eric Boyer (Jossey Bass 2014); “Business Practices and Peace in Post-Conflict Zones: Lessons from Cyprus,” with John Katsos. Business Ethics: A European Review, 2014, 23 (2); and

“From Certification to Supply Chain: An Analytic Framework for Enhancing Tropical Forest Governance,” with Karen Mo. Organization and the Environment, 2013, 26 (3). He is currently writing a book on Global Governance Enterprises (Routledge 2015).

He received his B.A. from Miami University, MPA from Syracuse University, and Ph.D. in Public Administration from the George Washington University.

Susan Kulp
Associate Professor of Accountancy
School of Business, The George Washington University

Susan Kulp is associate professor of accountancy at GWSB. She earned a bachelor’s degree in commerce from DePaul University, an MBA from the University of Chicago, and a PhD in business administration from Stanford University. Kulp is an expert in the area of management accounting and control, with a focus on performance measurement and incentive issues in interorganizational relationships. Her studies have been published in numerous scholarly journals, including the Journal of Accounting Research, The Accounting Review and Management Science. Professor Kulp teachers in the MBA program and the executive MBA program. Additionally, she is the faculty director of On the Board, an executive program aimed at preparing executive women for corporate board service. Prior to joining the GWSB faculty as an assistant professor in 2007, Kulp spent eight years teaching at Harvard Business School.

Barbara Van Allen
Senior Director, Stakeholder Relations and Communications
Center for Audit Quality

Barbara Van Allen joined the Center for Audit Quality (CAQ) as Senior Director of Stakeholder Relations and Communications in February 2013. In this capacity, Van Allen leads the CAQ’s stakeholder relations and communications initiatives. Prior to joining CAQ, Van Allen was the Senior Vice President of Communications and Marketing at the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) and President of MBA’s Opens Doors Foundation.

Before joining MBA in November 2010, Van Allen was an award-winning chief marketing officer for AbilityOne at NISH. Van Allen has also served in senior management positions in New York and California with major corporations, including ITT Corporation and Cushman & Wakefield. In addition, she served seven years on Capitol Hill as a senior legislative adviser to several different members of Congress.

Van Allen graduated with honors from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. She holds an MBA in marketing from New York University and a master’s degree in legislative affairs from the George Washington University. Van Allen also serves on the Governing Board of the Bishop John T. Walker School for Boys in Anacostia, Washington, DC.