Yelena M. Talmazan is a senior managing director and senior advisor in K2 Integrity’s Financial, Internal Audit, and Risk Advisory practice. With 25 years of industry experience—the majority spent in the financial services (banks, broker dealers, asset managers, real estate), insurance, technology, and consumer business industries directing and managing internal audit (IA), Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), and intermediate holding company (IHC) compliance programs—Yelena works as a strategic partner helping clients proactively navigate the regulatory landscape and manage internal and external risks.
As a seasoned advisory leader, Yelena provides risk advisory and regulatory assistance, audit, strategic sourcing, and transformation services for clients, assessing each client’s particular needs and structure to identify the bespoke strategy for a successful roadmap to implement and mitigate risk by designing “fit for purpose” approaches that are meaningful and are aligned with industry best practices.
Before joining K2 Integrity, Yelena served as the head of audit for TP ICAP, where she built a new IA function and aligned IA strategy, goals, and objectives with the organization’s business plans, initiatives, and regulatory mandates. She advised management and the audit committee on organizational risks and how to enhance the internal controls and enterprise risk management frameworks. Yelena drove and delivered high-quality risk-based audit services and managed strategic stakeholder relationships while proactively supporting the organization’s audit, compliance, risk, surveillance, and IT committees and teams while identifying and creating value for stakeholders. She collaborated with professional practices to build/embed global audit methodology in conformance with the International Professional Practices Framework of the IIA, design policies and procedures/manuals. She monitored regulatory and business changes, assessed potential impact, and instigated appropriate monitoring, data analytics, and reporting.
Prior to her time at TP ICAP, Yelena was director of internal audit within the financial services and national IPO team at KPMG. Among her high-profile engagements, Yelena oversaw the outsourced IA function at a large multinational institution, where she led IA planning, risk assessment, firm audits, and reporting to the AC and other committees. Yelena also performed and oversaw EQAs of IA at multinational banks and foreign banking organizations (FBOs) with emphasis on the heightened prudential standards and Federal Reserve Bank (FRB) SR13-1, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), and IIA Standards guidance compliance. She led an integrated Internal Control over Financial Reporting (ICOFR) implementation to establish an IHC in accordance with COSO 2013 and several ICOFR implementations performed to assist companies to achieve SOX and IPO compliance readiness.
Yelena has an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School and a B.S. in computer science from Rutgers University. She is a Certified Internal Auditor (CIA) and a Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA).
