Jess Filosa Receives the Outstanding Auditing Dissertation Award

Jess Filosa (Virginia Tech Ph.D. Alum ’24)—currently an assistant professor at the University of Alabama—is the recipient of the 2026 Outstanding Auditing Dissertation Award for her dissertation titled “An Examination of the Audit Implications of Third-Party Risk.” This prestigious award honors the author of the dissertation judged to make the most outstanding contribution to auditing knowledge. Jess was presented with this award at the AAA Auditing Section Midyear Meeting in January 2026. In her dissertation, she uses an innovative approach to provide initial evidence on the audit consequences of third-party risk, defined as the threat of suffering an adverse event stemming from outsourcing systems or services that could otherwise be managed internally. Her findings demonstrate that companies acknowledging third-party risk are more prone to cyber incidents and incur higher audit fees in the initial year of discussing third-party risk. These results highlight the tangible costs stemming from third-party risk, which is informative for outsourcing companies that are in the early stages of developing third-party risk management practices and for auditors determining the relevance of third-party risk to financial statement and internal control audits.

Following receipt of this award, Jess provided the following statement:

I’m incredibly honored to receive the Outstanding Auditing Dissertation Award. Thank you so much to the selection committee for recognizing my work. This award has been given to many scholars I admire, so being included alongside them truly means a lot.

I’m deeply grateful to my dissertation committee, especially my chair, Sarah Stein, for their guidance, support, and mentorship throughout this process. Thank you to everyone at Virginia Tech for the encouragement I received during my Ph.D. I’m also thankful for my time at the EY Richmond office, where working on SOC reporting first sparked my interest in outsourcing and third-party risk—an area of practice that plays a critical role in auditing but has received relatively little attention in academic research, and one that has become increasingly important in my teaching as I prepare students for real-world audit challenges.

And finally, thank you to my colleagues at Alabama for creating a culture that encourages me to pursue the questions I care about and bring that curiosity into the classroom. I’m incredibly grateful to be part of a community that supports both my research and my teaching.

Congratulations to Jess!