With nearly 30 years of combined in-house and Big Four consulting experience, Maurice Crescenzi Jr. has joined CohnReznick LLP as principal and Risk Advisory Practice leader in the firm’s Global Consulting Solutions Practice.
Crescenzi, who will be working from the firm’s Parsippany office, will work with organizations across industries to help them assess, design, implement and enhance their governance structures and a wide variety of risk-based programs.
As a former industry professional, Crescenzi earned a reputation for driving compliance and risk-management programs at a strategic level, aligning these efforts within the broader contexts of sustainability and corporate responsibility, while right-sizing initiatives to fit within an organization’s culture. He has held leadership-level compliance and risk management related positions in global companies such as the Altria family of companies (then a Fortune 15 company composed of Philip Morris, Kraft Foods, Miller Brewing and other operating companies), Schering-Plough Pharmaceuticals and the DeVry Education Group Inc.
A significant part of Crescenzi’s in-house tenure involved working on the ground in more than 35 countries, helping his organizations’ local business units implement the programs designed at a global level.
As a consultant, Crescenzi has helped numerous Fortune 500, Russell 2000 and startup organizations across industries develop and optimize their enterprise risk management; ethics and compliance; environmental, social and governance; and third-party risk management programs. He is well-versed in a variety of risk domain areas, as well, including antibribery and anticorruption; antiharassment and antidiscrimination; antitrust and competition law; anti-money laundering; conflicts of interest; gifts and entertainment; human rights issues; information management; social media compliance; and more.
His consulting experience includes building client-facing, risk advisory practices from the ground up, including strategy development; service offering and methodology development; marketing and branding; thought leadership publication; and building, mentoring and developing teams.
“Maurice brings a broad, global perspective to risk advisory and to the cultural, ethical, and financial issues that are most concerning to businesses today,” notes Kristen Soles, managing partner, Global Consulting Solutions, and the firm’s Government Contracting Industry leader. “He will play an integral role in advancing our integrated risk advisory strategies and in helping clients achieve their operational, financial and compliance-related risk objectives in an effective and sustainable manner.”
Before joining CohnReznick, Crescenzi served as managing director for a multibillion-dollar global, publicly-traded professional services firm. In this role, he helped clients assess, design and implement ethics and compliance and third-party risk management strategies and programs intended to prevent, detect and respond to legal, regulatory, contractual and policy violations and other forms of misconduct across a range of risk areas.
Crescenzi earned a B.A. in political science from Seton Hall University, and an M.A. in law & governance from Montclair State University. He is a Certified Ethics and Compliance Professional through the Compliance Certification Board and holds a certification in Executive and Ethical Leadership from Rutgers University. Crescenzi serves as a graduate adjunct professor for the Rutgers Business School MBA program and Montclair State University’s Law and Governance Master of Arts program.
