The journey has been amazing!

Five years ago this month, I bid farewell to a remarkable team and my 13^th Board of Directors at The IIA. After more than 12 years as the Global President and CEO, I was ready for a new chapter in my internal audit journey. As I said at the time, I was “stepping down but not sitting down.” Within a few weeks, I announced that I was joining forces with AuditBoard.

At the time, I called AuditBoard “the strongest possible partner with which to affiliate as I began my new chapter. I was looking for a proven collaborator with whom to join forces as champions for the internal audit profession.”

I have long said, “The experiences we treasure most are those we often don’t see coming.” That’s certainly true of my 5 years at AuditBoard. Since joining, I have seen AuditBoard’s revenues more than double, employees more than triple, and be the largest private equity acquisition of a venture-backed company of the year in 2024. Today, AuditBoard provides solutions of choice for 7 of the Fortune 10, and more than half of the Fortune 500.          

My tenure at AuditBoard has coincided with an era of unprecedented risk hypervolatility. Risk teams and their organizations have collectively navigated COVID, macroeconomic turmoil, geopolitical conflicts, third-party risk uncertainty, cyber risks, global trade protectionism, supply chain disruption, AI, and many more risks we didn’t see coming. Traditional risk management has been made virtually obsolete. Those organizations that have mitigated risks while seizing opportunities have created the most value for their stakeholders.

Meanwhile, I have had a front row seat as AuditBoard has redefined GRC through a single, AI-powered operating system. With honors like being named a leader in the Gartner GRC Magic Quadrant and being named to Deloitte’s list of Fast 500 Companies (a nearly unprecedented 7 times in a row), AuditBoard has established itself as the leader in the industry.    

And now for the “BIG” news: Introducing Optro

Today, AuditBoard takes another giant step forward by adopting a new name: Optro!

Optro reflects what our platform now enables: a single, coherent view across audit, risk, and compliance, where issues surface earlier, connections become visible, and decisions are grounded in truth. This is a bold and decisive change that reflects the company’s vision: to transform risk into opportunity.

The new name captured my imagination from the moment I saw it. For me, Optro symbolizes words that have always inspired our profession: optimal, optimizing, opportunity, and optical (vision, visibility, clarity), to name a few. These all invoke positive images that symbolize and reinforce the company’s legacy and future.    

Serving internal audit teams is still a core mission for our company

AuditBoard was founded by internal auditors for internal auditors, but just as our profession has elevated effective risk management in the 21^st century, AuditBoard’s solutions have become essential resources for more than internal auditors. AuditBoard didn’t outgrow internal audit; instead, we mirrored the evolution of the profession itself: to serve GRC teams across the three lines.

Our founders started the company with an idea, a problem worth solving, and a lot of determination. Then came AuditBoard, a company truly doing what the name suggested. Word soon spread about the power of our audit and controls solutions, and other GRC teams lined up for similar help.

Over the course of our journey, something became clear: we weren’t just building tools for internal auditors anymore. We were building THE platform enterprises rely on to manage risk. We needed a name that didn’t just inspire the third line: Optro is a name that will inspire all “three lines.”

Our values aren’t changing

An important thing to know about us going forward is that the core values of the internal audit founders are not going away: they will be ingrained in the DNA of the Optro brand.

• Customer obsession. For us, our mission starts and ends with creating value for our customers. That is as true in 2026 as it was to our founders in 2014.

• Drive innovation. We have a passion for learning, being bold, and evolving to create the future. We strive to continuously improve what we’ve created and invent what’s next.

• Gritty resilience. This value is close to my heart. As a leader in my profession for at least the last 40 years, I have instilled in those around me the desire to make it happen. Find a way. Move fast, stay positive, and do what it takes. In the words of Tom Petty: “don’t back down!”

• Growth mindset. At Optro, we think in orders of magnitude, not increments. That’s not just about our company’s growth. It’s about the performance of our solutions. We do so by seeking feedback, learning, and improving.

• Winning together. As Optronauts, we are keenly aware that we can’t win unless you do! As a company, we think of ourselves as one team. No silos, no egos. We strive to be the best and support the success not only of each other, but most importantly – of our customers!

Optro’s new chapter is just starting    

Throughout my career, I have been inspired by change. Whether as the CAE in multiple billion-dollar federal agencies, a practice leader at PwC, or the President and CEO of The IIA, I was never inspired by the status quo.

Optro inspires me in much the same way as my earlier assignments. We are positioned to drive the success of GRC professionals in an era of limited resources, incessant risk volatility, and the emerging imperative to integrate AI into GRC processes. AI is fostering greater enterprise uncertainty and even more opportunities than at any point in the 21st century. Optro will enable risk teams to transform from yesterday’s value protectors to tomorrow’s value creators.

It is not a coincidence that we are announcing our new name at The IIA’s Great Audit Minds (GAM) conference. We are committed to the success of the profession, and our legacy is rooted in internal audit and the GAM Conference (where we first introduced the AuditBoard name).

If you’re at     GAM this week, stop by our booth, share your thoughts about Optro with me, and learn more about our powerful solutions and plans for the future. If you’re not in Las Vegas, reach out to me via LinkedIn and let’s compare notes.

Together, let’s be the change we want to see!

Learn more about the vision behind the renaming from Optro’s CEO.