Financial advisors who are disciplined by the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards can now file appeals to a newly created commission.

The CFP's Appeals Commission will have the authority to adjudicate appeal hearings, the board announced yesterday. The commission was created through changes to CFP Board’s procedural rules that were released in November and will become effective Feb. 21. With the change, responsibility for adjudication of appeal hearings shifts from the board’s Code and Standards Enforcement Committee to the Appeals Commission.

The first members of the five-person commission also were announced:

• Denise Voigt Crawford has been named chair of the commission. She is a former member of CFP Board’s board of directors. a four-year member, three-year chair of the board’s Code and Standards Enforcement Committee and former chair of the board's Independent Task Force on Enforcement. She served as the Texas Securities commissioner for 17 years and was twice elected president of the North American Securities Administrators Association. She will serve a two-year term.

• Shelly-Ann Eweka is chair of the board’s Sanctions and Fitness Commission and a former chair of the CFP Boards Disciplinary and Ethics Commission. As a planner at TIAA, she works to engage the firm’s customers. Eweka also partners with financial wellness teams at TIAA to create messaging and guidance through its different platforms. She will serve a three-year term.

• Susan MacMichael John is a former chair of the board of directors of CFP Board and a two-term chair of the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors. She currently serves as managing director of financial planning at FLPutnam in Wolfeboro, N.H. She will serve a two-year term.

• Gary Strickland, a lawyer, is a member of the CFP Board’s Disciplinary and Ethics Commission and is a partner at Warner Angle Hallam Jackson & Formanek in Phoenix. In addition to handling probate and civil litigation, he serves as a Maricopa County Superior Court judge and acts as arbitrator and mediator in a variety of fields. He will serve a three-year term.

• Jeffrey Weekes is a member of the CFP Board’s Sanctions and Fitness Commission and a former member of the board’s Disciplinary and Ethics Commission. He serves as a vice president, financial advisor and senior portfolio manager with Morgan Stanley in Stroudsburg, Pa. He will serve a four-year term.

The CFP Board has the authority to ban advisors from using the CFP mark if they violate CFP standards, as well as restricting advisors’ use of the mark for various periods of time or issuing letters of reprimand to the advisors. The actions are made public on the CFP Board website.

CFP Board CEO Kevin R. Keller said in a statement, "The extensive professional experience [of the commission members] across diverse business segments and their commitment to CFP Board’s high ethical standards will help ensure that our appeals process remains credible to the public and fair to those whose conduct is being evaluated.”