Wolfe and her coauthors' award-winning work finds that committees are increasingly assigned responsibilities beyond their traditional role, which can improve governance while also creating overwork, weaker oversight, and a “box-checking” mentality.
Karneisha Wolfe, assistant professor of accountancy at Gies College of Business, has been named a recipient of the 2026 American Accounting Association/Deloitte Foundation Wildman Medal Award (AAA Award). Wolfe was selected as part of a research team that explores the evolving responsibilities of corporate audit committees.
Wolfe shares the honor with Lauren Cunningham of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, along with Sarah Stein and Kimberly Walker of Virginia Tech. The award was granted in recognition of their work together, including the 2022 Center for Audit Quality release “Audit Committee: The Kitchen Sink of the Board” and their 2025 article “Redefining Perceived Boundaries: Insights into the Audit Committee’s Evolving Responsibilities” in The Accounting Review.
“This award is very meaningful to me,” said Wolfe, “because it highlights how we, as researchers, can produce material with practical impact.”
Established in 1978 to commemorate John Wildman, the Wildman Medal Award is conferred to encourage research “relevant to the professional practice of accounting which much of Mr. Wildman’s life was devoted.” Winners are selected by a committee of leaders and experts within the American Accounting Association. The award was presented in August 2026 at the American Accounting Association’s 2026 Global Connect event in Las Vegas.
The audit committee’s role, write the researchers, has shifted significantly in recent years. They interviewed audit committee members and chairs from across industries to investigate “how and why audit committees’ oversight responsibilities have evolved.” Continually “assigning emerging risks” onto audit committees, what the scholars call the “kitchen sink” approach, can lead to poor oversight, overworked audit committees, and a “box checking” mentality.
“From a research perspective, I believe this project highlights how useful and important it is to learn about a topic directly from practitioners in the role, which is a big advantage of qualitative research,” said Wolfe. “From a topic perspective, we learn that audit committees play a significant role on the board of directors, as they often take on broad roles outside of their traditional background. This expansion of duties can have both negative and positive consequences.”
Wolfe joined Gies Business in 2023. Before coming to Illinois, she earned her PhD at Virginia Tech. Before her time in academia she worked as a controller at a large public company and as an auditor for Ernst & Young. She uses experimental and qualitative research methods to pursue questions about audit teams, corporate governance, and judgment and decision-making. Previously she won the 2021 Deloitte Foundation Doctoral Fellowship. Despite her success, Wolfe hopes “to continue to work on research that has a practical impact.”
