Longtime investor protection advocate Barbara Roper has joined the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as a senior advisor on broker/dealer issues, investor protection oversight, examinations and policy issues. She is now a righthand person working closely with SEC Chairman Gary Gensler, according to the WSJ.

Roper comes to the SEC from the Consumer Federation of America (CFA), which she joined 35 years ago, in 1986. Roper is well known nationwide for her steadfast work on behalf of consumers, particularly investors. At the CFA, Roper was most recently director of investor protection.

According to Roper’s biography on the SEC’s website, CFA is an alliance of approximately 300 pro-consumer organizations, which, in turn, represent more than 50 million individual consumers. Throughout her career, Roper has conducted studies on: abuses in the financial planning industry, state oversight of investment advisers, state and federal financial planning regulation, financial planning software, the financial education needs of low-income older persons, the need for audit reform in the wake of the Enron scandal, and the need for mutual fund reform in the wake of trading and sales abuse scandals uncovered in 2003 by then New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

Roper has testified before Congress and supported federal and state legislative and regulatory initiatives on a broad range of small investor protection issues. She began her career as a newspaper reporter in Colorado Springs, after graduating from Princeton University with a degree in art history.

Her biography also lists her as a current board member of Fund Democracy and as a former member of: the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s Standing Advisory Group, the SEC's Consumer Affairs Advisory Committee, the national advisory board of the American Association of Retired Person's Money After Fifty program, and the board of directors of Motor Voters, a grassroots auto safety group.