Karen Aavik
Karen Aavik is the Director of Data Privacy for Bank OZK, where she is responsible for developing and maintaining an enterprise-wide Data Privacy Program. Prior to that she served as the Chief Compliance Officer of Stratos Wealth Partners. As CCO, Ms. Aavik oversaw all brokerage and advisory compliance matters for Stratos, focusing on ensuring that its advisers, partners, and staff operated in accordance with SEC and FINRA rules and requirements. Other previous roles include serving as an Enterprise Risk Officer at Wells Fargo and a Compliance Executive with KeyBank, N.A., where she led a compliance team that provided support for, and oversight of, numerous bank- and investment-side lines of business, functions and disciplines across the organization. Ms. Aavik was the Wealth Management Compliance Officer, the Ethics Officer and the Privacy Officer for First Niagara Financial Group, and an Assistant General Counsel in the First Niagara Legal Department. She also held a number of embedded and oversight compliance risk roles in support of the Investment Group of M&T Bank.
Ms. Aavik holds a J.D., LL.M. with Honors and M.B.A. from the State University of New York at Buffalo and is a member of the New York State Bar. She has the CCEP, CFE, CAMS, CGSS, and NRS IACCP designations; earned the CIPP/US, CIPP/E, CIPT, and CIPM privacy credentials; and was FINRA Series 4, 7, 24, 53, and 63 licensed. Ms. Aavik has contributed to articles regarding cybersecurity requirements within the investment industry and authored the “Compliance in a Bank Investment Program Environment” chapter for Modern Compliance: Best Practices for Securities & Finance (Vol. 2). She was featured in the January 2018 edition of Compliance & Ethics Professional Magazine, and currently serves as an Editorial Board Member for the Journal of Financial Compliance.