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James Traut

James Traut


Adjunct Faculty

Jim Traut is an Adjunct Professor at the Heinz College.  He serves as a teacher and advisor in the Chief Risk Officer Certification and Master of Information System Management programs.

Jim is the Founder and President of RISK TRANSPARENCY and Traut Consulting. His business and research initiatives enable entities and functional areas to implement innovative key risk and reward awareness and management methodologies to create and protect value. Jim is passionate about building transparency through cross-discipline data analytics and decision support systems. Focus areas include strategy development and execution, operational governance, control, cultural, ethics, legal, and compliance efforts for near and long-term performance and resilience. 

Jim previously co-founded and served as CEO of a cloud-based motion graphics video production start-up. He also worked for the H. J. Heinz Company for 24 years in various global strategy, accounting, risk, control, audit, due diligence, and ethics leadership roles. His final position was Vice President Enterprise Reputation and Risk Management (ER²M) and Ethics and Compliance. For seven years he led the Heinz ER²M efforts including developing, implementing, and maintaining the global Enterprise Risk Management function. ER²M responsibilities included facilitation of the ongoing global and business unit risk assessments and applicable mitigation and process improvement efforts. Jim also served as the Heinz Assistant Controller Policies and Compliance with global responsibility for Sarbanes-Oxley Act Section 404 Internal Control over Financial Reporting compliance. 

He has served on the North Carolina State University ERM Advisory Board and the AICPA Advisory Panel for Risk Management and Internal Control. He is a Certified Public Accountant in Pennsylvania and a Chartered Global Management Accountant. Jim began his career at KPMG.  In 2010, Treasury & Risk Magazine recognized him as one of the "Top 100 Most Influential People in Finance." He has both presented and been quoted for a variety of professional publications and entities – see Publications.