Grant Thornton named Trent Gazzaway as the national managing partner of quality and innovation for audit services.

In this newly created role, Gazzaway will join the firm’s senior leadership team and oversee all quality control functions within Grant Thornton’s audit services practice.

“Quality is critical to the accounting profession and to Grant Thornton,” said Jeff Burgess, national managing partner of Audit Services. “Trent will strengthen our unwavering commitment to quality, while also driving quality through emerging technologies such as analytics, artificial intelligence, robotics and blockchain.”

Gazzaway has more than 26 years of audit, professional standards, public policy and corporate governance experience. He is a certified public accountant in North Carolina and Hawaii and is a member of the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA). He is also a member of the Institute of Internal Auditors, the National Association of Corporate Directors, and the American Accounting Association.

Gazzaway, who previously served as Grant Thornton’s national managing partner of Professional Standards, will be succeeded in that role by Bert Fox.

Fox will oversee the continued growth of the professional standards practice and will lead the firm’s national office teams over accounting principles, audit methodology, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and regulatory matters, and independence and ethics.

Fox has more than 20 years of accounting, audit, transaction advisory and risk management experience. He is a CPA in Illinois and North Carolina and is a member of the AICPA. From 2007 to 2009, Fox served as a professional accounting fellow at the SEC.