Principled

What you'll learn in this podcast episode

How do you know if your ethics and compliance program is successful? How are you capturing data and comparing it to industry benchmarks, or tracking your own company’s trends over time? In this episode of LRN’s Principled Podcast host Emily Miner, director of Advisory Services at LRN, talks about benchmarking E&C data with her colleague Derek Clune, product manager of Data & Analytics. Listen in as the two explore how benchmarking practices come to life and the role AI plays in LRN's new Catalyst Reveal solution.

 

Featured guest: Derek Clune

Derek Clune has been working in the ethics and compliance space for over 5 years with an emphasis on data and analytics. As a Product Manager at LRN, Derek is responsible for the vision of LRN’s new data and analytics platform; Catalyst Reveal. His main goal is to provide E&C professionals with more actionable data to understand their E&C program effectiveness better. Derek’s team works to create products that offer best-in-class prescriptive interventions to improve E&C programs and ease the administrative burden.

  Featured Host: Emily Miner

Emily Miner is a director of LRN’s Ethics & Compliance Advisory services. She counsels executive leadership teams on how to actively shape and manage their ethical culture through deep quantitative and qualitative understanding and engagement. A skilled facilitator, Emily emphasizes co-creative, bottom-up, and data-driven approaches to foster ethical behavior and inform program strategy. Emily has led engagements with organizations in the healthcare, technology, manufacturing, energy, professional services, and education industries. Emily co-leads LRN’s ongoing flagship research on E&C program effectiveness and is a thought leader in the areas of organizational culture, leadership, and E&C program impact. Prior to joining LRN, Emily applied her behavioral science expertise in the environmental sustainability sector, working with non-profits and several New England municipalities; facilitated earth science research in academia; and contributed to drafting and advancing international climate policy goals. Emily has a Master of Public Administration in Environmental Science and Policy from Columbia University and graduated summa cum laude from the University of Florida with a degree in Anthropology.

 

Principled Podcast Transcript

Intro: Welcome to the Principled Podcast, brought to you by LRN. The Principled Podcast brings together the collective wisdom on ethics, business and compliance, transformative stories of leadership and inspiring workplace culture. Listen in to discover valuable strategies from our community of business leaders and workplace change makers.

Emily Miner: Gone are the days of checklists, ethics, and compliance programs where one simply goes down a list of program features and elements. Now, regulators, employees, customers, leaders are asking, are our ethics and compliance programs effective? Are they successful? Well, how do you know? Hello, and welcome to another episode of LRNs Principled Podcast. I'm your host, Emily Miner, director at LRN. And today I'm joined by my colleague Derek Clune, product manager of Data and Analytics at LRN. We are going to be talking about ethics and compliance benchmarking and how organizations can track their own trends over time, as well as compare themselves to industry peers. We're going to talk about how all of this data comes together in technology environments like LRNs new Catalyst Reveal Solution which is launching soon. Derek is a real expert in this space. He's been working in that data and analytics vertical at LRN for a number of years, and is a key architect behind our product innovation and incorporating the insights of our industry collaborators at major corporations around the world. Derek, thanks so much for joining me on the Principled Podcast.

Derek Clune: Absolutely, Emily. Pleasure to be here.

Emily Miner: So before we get in, maybe just some definitions and level setting. So what is benchmarking? The way that we think about it, it typically means comparing what you do as an organization to a number of comparable organizations or individuals. And usually this is done in a quantitative way, so a more kind of a numeric databased way as opposed to a qualitative way. And benchmarking is helpful just for comparative purposes. And it can also help to identify best practices in the industry. And best practices referring to those behaviors, those practices systems, which some sort of research shows that the very top firms use in a way maybe beyond or to a greater degree than other organizations. So why do organizations benchmark or want to benchmark? Derek, I know that you have a lot of conversations with our client partners around their benchmarking requests and their needs. But sort of as an overarching point, why are companies interested in benchmarking? What's the value to them?

Derek Clune: Yeah, I think there's a number of reasons why we see it. In my conversations with our partners, obviously regulators are looking at ethics and compliance programs with much higher scrutiny than they ever have. And so organizations want better visibility into the wider space, whether that's how their ethics and compliance program measures against others within their industry, whether that's how it measures against others from an employee size or geographic footprint. So organizations use really two sets of benchmarks, internal company benchmarks. Their own data and organizational assessments and benchmarking those quarterly year over year to measure their own program. But also they want a broader audience to compare themselves to, to really see where they... For lack of a better term, rank within the pack so to speak. And so a lot of this we see is all around measuring ethics and compliance program effectiveness.

How do I know my program's effective? I have the parts and the components, the codes of conduct, the policies, the disclosure certifications, but how do I know that those are effective? And we're seeing more and more that data is being used as a key component in that measurement of program effectiveness.

Emily Miner: Yeah, I'm reflecting on some conversations that I've had with our partners where they've said, our calls to our hotline are X percent. Is that good? When we look at our... We can collect data on ourselves and measure it and certainly that's sort of where organizations have been heading for a while. This increased data collection and analysis. But sometimes doing that in a vacuum, you're sort of left wondering, okay, well, the number is four, is that good? Should it be five? Should it be one? Should it be 20? What does this mean? And I think that's where that comparison is helpful because you used the term kind of broadening the pool or broadening the lens. I don't remember exactly what you said, but that idea of broadening your view finder. And that's where I think the strive for this desire for being able to benchmark and compare a large place of where it comes from. And just also as humans, we like to compare ourselves to others in so many parts of our life. So there's maybe a human nature component to it too.

Derek Clune: Yeah. No, absolutely, you took the words right out of my mouth. None of these organizations while they all are unique operate in a vacuum. And so they need to have some sort of comparison just to know that they're below, above or equal to a number because we know the regulators don't give specifics. So the next best thing that we have really is this benchmarking tool of, in our case all of the LRN partners, which over 2000 partners in a number of different industries, Fortune 500, et cetera.

Emily Miner: Yeah. And so Derek, I know that you partake in a lot of voice of the customer type conversations, and you are the recipient of a lot of requests for information from others within our organization. What are some of the top requests or data questions that you hear from our partners? You talked about wanting to measure program effectiveness, how are people thinking about program effectiveness? What do they want to measure? What do they currently have versus what don't they have but they want it? What are some of the general themes?

Derek Clune: At a high level we know that all of these questions typically start with a risk assessment. A company will do a risk assessment from a third party to get at maybe their blind spots or to tell them some things that they already know. And so in most cases that serves as the initial roadmap of different topics to consider around benchmarking around these data questions. And so from there we see organizations typically focused on the course data. That's the most popular one. We're rolling out mandatory training, how are my employees performing on that training? It has some sort of test in it, are my employees performing better or worse than I expected or right on par with what the requirements are? And within that there's a lot of different sub context. So is a particular business unit outperforming or underperforming based on the average or the median?   

Is there a regional confusion around a question? So I would say the initial focus that people immediately go to is the mandatory training that is being assigned and the course performance metrics I'll say, how employees are performing within those courses. There are a lot of tertiary components that are critical to measuring program effectiveness. What we see also is culture being a critical component of ethics and compliance. And larger initiatives at an organization at measuring that overall learner sentiment of the communications and the courses that are being rolled out to the learners. So not only are we looking at the performance aspect of those but also the sentiment and learner feedback of wh

What you'll learn in this podcast episode

“Thirty years of innovation and influence” is the subtitle of the recent report issued by the United States Sentencing Commission. But what does that really mean in the context of the organizational sentencing guidelines? In this episode of LRN’s Principled Podcast, Eric Morehead, LRN Director of Advisory Services Solutions, is joined by one of the report’s authors: Kathleen Grilli, the General Counsel for the US Sentencing Commission. Listen in as the two discuss how the commission impacts business leaders and the creation of compliance programs. 

 

Read LRN’s takeaways from the report here. 

Principled Podcast Show Notes

coming soon

 

Featured guest: Kathleen Grilli

Kathleen Cooper Grilli is the General Counsel for the United States Sentencing Commission, having been appointed to the position on October 7, 2013. Ms. Grilli has been on the staff of the Commission since 2003, serving as an assistant general counsel from 2003-2007 and deputy general counsel from 2007-2013. As the General Counsel, Ms. Grill provides legal advice to the Commissioners on sentencing issues and other matters relating to the operation of the Commission. Ms. Grilli is the agency’s Ethics Officer and has conducted training on white collar crime and the organizational guidelines at numerous training events.Prior to working for the Sentencing Commission, Ms. Grilli was with the Office of Staff Counsel for the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Before relocating to Virginia, Ms. Grilli was a partner in a small firm in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, handling civil and criminal litigation. Her previous work experience includes serving as an Assistant Federal Public Defender in the Southern District of Florida and as an associate at Akerman, Senterfitt and Edison, handling commercial litigation. Ms. Grilli is a member of the Bars of Florida and Virginia. She received a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations, with honors, from Florida International University. She graduated cum laude from the University of Miami School of Law.

 

Featured Host: Eric Morehead

Eric Morehead is a member of LRN’s Advisory Services team and has over 20 years’ experience working with organizations seeking to address compliance issues and build effective compliance and ethics programs. Eric conducts program assessments and examines specific compliance risks, he drafts compliance policies and codes of conduct, works with organizations to build and improve their compliance processes and tools, and provides live training for Boards of Directors, executives, managers and employees. 

 

Eric ran his own consultancy for six years where he advised clients on compliance program enhancements and assisted in creating effective compliance solutions. 

Eric was formally the Head of Advisory Services for NYSE Governance Services, a leading compliance training organization, where he was responsible for all aspects of NYSE Governance Services’ compliance consulting arm. Prior to joining NYSE, Eric was an Assistant General Counsel of the United States Sentencing Commission in Washington, DC. Eric served as the chair of the policy team that amended the Organizational Sentencing Guidelines in 2010. Eric also spent nearly a decade as a litigation attorney in Houston, Texas where he focused on white-collar and regulatory cases and represented clients at trial and before various agencies including SEC, OSHA and CFTC.  

 

Principled Podcast Transcript

Intro: Welcome to the Principled Podcast, brought to you by LRN. The Principled Podcast brings together the collective wisdom on ethics, business and compliance, transformative stories of leadership, and inspiring workplace culture. Listen in to discover valuable strategies from our community of business leaders and workplace change makers.

Eric Morehead: 30 Years of Innovation and Influence is the subtitle of the recent report issued by the United States Sentencing Commission, but what does that really mean in the context of the organizational sentencing guidelines?

Hello, and welcome to another episode of LRN's Principled Podcast. I'm your host today, Eric Morehead, Director of Advisory Service Solutions at LRN. Today, Kathleen Grilli, the General Counsel of the United States Sentencing Commission is joining us. She's one of the authors of this recent report, and we're going to be talking about how the commission impacts business leaders and the creation of compliance programs across the world. Kathleen is a real expert in this space and is a guest of ours last season where we talked about the seven hallmarks of an effective ethics and compliance program enshrined in the US Sentencing Commission's federal sentencing guidelines. Kathleen Grilli, thanks for joining us again on the Principled Podcast.

Kathleen Grilli: Well, thanks for inviting me, Eric. I appreciate it.

Eric Morehead: The commission just released this new report, The Organizational Sentencing Guidelines: 30 Years of Innovation and Influence. Even after more than 30 years, there are still, I think, at least from my perspective, many people who, when they start their career in compliance, are confused a little bit about why the Sentencing Commission is involved in corporate compliance. Can you talk just a little bit about how the US Sentencing Commission came to assume the role it has regarding compliance standards?

Kathleen Grilli: Sure. You say that people in compliance are confused about it, but the truth is, even in the criminal justice arena where the commission operates... Our guidelines are used in federal courts for sentencing organizations and offenders. Even in that arena, there's not really widespread knowledge about Chapter 8 and the hallmarks for an effective compliance and ethics program. That's because there aren't a lot of organizational cases sentenced every year.

But the reason the commission got into the business of corporate compliance has to do with its statutory mission. The commission was created in 1984 through a bipartisan piece of legislation called the Sentencing Reform Act, and that act did a couple of things as it related to sentencing of organizations. It provided that organizations could be sentenced to a term of probation, sentenced by way of a fine, and it required that at least one of those be imposed. This was something new.

It also subjected organizations to orders of criminal forfeiture, meaning the proceeds of the criminal activity could be taken from them, order of notice to victims, and orders of restitution. That act also created the commission, which is a bipartisan agency and tasked the commission with developing guidelines for use in criminal cases for sentencing. It told us what the purposes of sentencing are, which is just punishment, deterrence, protection of the public, and rehabilitation of the offender. The commission had to decide what to do for sentencing of an organization. Obviously, you cannot put an organization in prison. Unlike individual offenders where sentencing ranges in terms of incarceration are something of the norm, you had to figure out what to do to sentence organizations.

With an organization, as we know, the bottom line is they're in business to make money. In developing the organizational guidelines, the commission came up with its notion that it should use fines to incentivize self-policing. It would punish organizations who were not self-policing or not trying to prevent a crime or commit the offense with certain aggravating factors more severely than those who were trying to prevent and detect crime. That's how we got into the business of corporate compliance.

Eric Morehead: Yeah. And it is interesting that the original writ was from the statute that you examine this. Can you talk a little bit about how the commission got specifically to those hallmarks, those programmatic pieces that we talked about a little bit on our last podcast a while ago? What was the process for the commission to get to those standards, those specific compliance pieces of the puzzle, if you will?

Kathleen Grilli: The commission started its work in 1986 on organizational guidelines with a public hearing at which it received testimony from a variety of witnesses across various different wakes of the world: academics, people in business, government agencies, and the like. Over about a five-year period, because as I said, the Commission started its business in 1986 and didn't actually promulgate the organizational guidelines until 1991. During that period of time, there were numerous public hearings attended by a wide range of witnesses from different areas of the law, academics, government agencies, business owners, representatives of just different industries, and the like. The Commission had these hearings, they heard testimony, the Commission went back and developed drafts with proposals for how organizations would be sentenced. They published those drafts. The process of publishing is really a solicitation for public comment, so they got public comment on the drafts. This went on for a good period of time.

In the meantime, the Commission was doing research. We had academics writing proposals and giving us ideas on how to implement the purposes of sentencing, which again, as I said, were just punishment, deterrents, protection of the public, and rehabilitation. Eventually, it came back to how does an organization get in trouble to begin with? An organization doesn't act alone. We have this theory in the law called vicarious liability where an organization is held responsible for the acts of its ag

What you'll learn in this podcast episode

Most of us have heard the phrase, “If you see something, say something.” But what does that look like when someone witnesses bad behavior in the workplace? How can companies help their employees be active bystanders in the face of misconduct? In this episode, LRN colleagues Felicity Duncan, senior instructional designer, and Kristen Motzer, learning director, share their expertise on bystander intervention training and how organizations can effectively give employees the knowledge and skills they need to step in and help their coworkers. Listen in as the two share insights from their latest course development for the training library at LRN.

 

Principled Podcast Show Notes

[1:22] - What does it mean to be a bystander, and why do organizations have bystander training?

[3:05] - Unpacking the idea of a “Speak up culture”.

[3:40] - Why don’t people get involved when they see problems?

[6:08] - How to train people to be active bystanders?

[9:36] - Why are scenarios so important?

[12:14] - How DEI relates to bystander intervention.

[15:26] - How having a robust bystanding and speak up culture will benefit partners.

 

Featured guest: Kristen Motzer

Kristen Motzer is an experienced leader in values-driven, empathetic behavior change. As Learning Director for the LRN Library she oversees course content development and online, blended, and facilitated learning experiences. She has expertise in human-centered learning design and has developed and managed education and learning programs at institutions such as NYU Langone Health, NeuroLeadership Insitute, Stanford University, Xavier University, and the Cleveland Clinic. Kristen holds a BA from Wright State University and an MA from Carnegie Mellon University and resides in Chicago.

 

Featured Host: Felicity Duncan

Dr. Felicity Duncan believes that training and communication interventions have the power to transform behavior, including driving people toward more ethical treatment of those around them.

Felicity graduated with a Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Pennsylvania. After teaching at the college level for several years, she transitioned to workplace education to have a bigger impact on working adults by providing them with the training they need to truly thrive in their roles. At LRN, she is focused on developing high-impact, behaviorally focused content for the LRN Library. Her most recent project saw her working with the Library team to create a powerful new DEI Program that includes not only LRN’s world-class Inspire courses but also a set of microlearning assets designed to support, reinforce, and guide behavior change.

 

Principled Podcast Transcript

Intro: Welcome to the Principled Podcast, brought to you by LRN. The Principled Podcast brings together the collective wisdom on ethics, business and compliance, transformative stories of leadership, and inspiring workplace culture. Listen in to discover valuable strategies from our community of business leaders and workplace change makers.

Felicity Duncan: Most of us have heard the phrase, "If you see something, say something." But what does that actually look like when someone witnesses bad behavior in their workplace, like bullying or harassment? And how can companies help their employees be active bystanders in the face of misconduct? Hello, and welcome to another episode of LRN's Principled podcast. I'm your host, Felicity Duncan, Senior Instructional Designer here at LRN. And today, I'm joined by my colleague Kristen Motzer, the Learning Director of LRN's Library Course Content. Kristen has over 20 years of experience in technology supported learning and development, and I am a PhD with a decade of experience working in both academic and professional training environments. Kristen, thanks for joining me on today's Principled podcast. So, let's start with the basics. What does it mean to be a bystander and why do organizations have bystander training? Can you explain the sort of core idea here?

Kristen Motzer: Sure. A bystander is someone who witnesses misconduct but isn't directly involved in the situation. So, they see something happening, but they're not actually a part of it. So, being an active bystander is about doing something as opposed to just standing by when you see someone being harassed or bullied or abused. And there's actually a lot of research showing that bystander intervention can have a major impact. When bystanders intervene in situations in the right way, they can stop abuse in its tracks, support victims, and really make perpetrators reevaluate their behavior.

However, very often bystanders witness abuse and harassment and say nothing. That's why we need active bystander training that equips people with the tools they need to intervene successfully when they see something wrong. So, recently we've seen a lot of interest in bystander training from our partners, and Chicago now has an requirement for our long bystander of training for employees in Chicago. But really beyond that, there's a recognition that engaging your workforce to do something, to fight back, to say this is not behavior that we want to have in our workplace can be really powerful. And it's creating a speak up culture.

Felicity Duncan: So, tell me a little bit more about this idea of the speak up culture. What do we mean by that?

Kristen Motzer: So, it's creating an environment where people feel safe to be able to speak up. Of course, speaking up is a little bit scary. You don't know what's going to happen. There could be retaliation, things could change. The folks that usually eat lunch with might not want to eat lunch with you anymore. Things might change an environment that we spend a lot of time in at work. So, creating a safe space where there's an expectation that you see something that you don't want in your workplace culture, you're going to speak up and say something.

Felicity Duncan: So, obviously acts of bystander intervention is really important. We really want this speak up culture that's going to help us build a better workplace environment. So, why don't people get involved when they see problems?

Kristen Motzer: It's a great question, and it's really important to understand that it's not because people don't care. It's not that we're bad people at work or wherever we might be. It's that we're human. And intervening can be really difficult. Psychology has shown research from the 60s and onward that people have good intentions, and people tend to actually believe that if they saw something happening like harassment, discrimination, that they would get involved. But when it actually happens, that intention that they would get involved disappears and they just freeze up. And it's because of our fight, flight, freeze response kicking in. We're facing an unknown situation. We don't know how the people involved will react, and we're just scared of looking stupid, upsetting someone, getting into trouble, being embarrassed besides the possible outcomes like having some kind of retribution losing our job or our workplace friendships. So, from a biological and neuroscience perspective, our brains flood with stress hormones and react as though we're facing something like a bear, a really dangerous situation even though it's a social threat, not an actual bear, it can feel just as intense.

So, when this happens, it's really hard for humans to overcome these instincts and get involved. So, we freeze. We try not to make eye contact, we put our heads down, try to hide, and if we're in a group, behavioral psychology research is found that it's even worse. So, when there's multiple people witnessing a situation, everyone's kind of expecting someone else is going to take action, and we sort of take the lead of kind of like group think. We take the lead from those around us, and if they're not doing anything, then we won't do anything. We have all these reasons why people don't intervene when they're bystanders. And Felicity, given these barriers, how do you train someone to be a bystander at work? I would love for you to take me through how you created the Inspire Active Bystander Training.

Felicity Duncan: Well, luckily for us, the research that you mentioned earlier that talks about why bystanders don't intervene also gives us hope. It shows us how we can overcome those barriers to intervention. At what it really boils down to is being prepared, right? Being ready to get involved in these situations. But the truth is, it's a long road to get learners to that point. So, I'm going to walk you through what we did and why we think that works. So, we begin our training by acknowledging that this is hard. As you said, a lot of people assume that if they're in a bystander situation, that they're going to do the right thing, and then when it actually happens, they're unprepared for how scary it is, and for how strongly and viscerally they react to that fear, right? And so what we try to begin with is getting our learners to understand what to expect, right?

We're really frank about the fact that it's going to be scary. Your palms are going to be sweaty, your heart is going to be pounding. You're going to be really afraid, all right? And telling them that feel the fear, but overcome it because that is not a reason not to intervene. It's just part of the experience. And so, in that way, we try to help prepare them for how it's actually going to be. What they're actually going to feel when a situation arises where they need to make some kind of intervention. Then what we do is we give learners some very practical strategies for how to intervene. And again, we're preparing them, right? We give them a literal list of step one, step two, step three, Here are four possible approaches to intervention. Here's ho

What you'll learn in this podcast episode

A few weeks ago, the United States Sentencing Commission (USSC) issued a report titled The Organizational Sentencing Guidelines: Thirty Years of Innovation and Influence. The publication summarizes the history of Chapter Eight’s development and discusses the two substantive changes made to the elements of an effective compliance and ethics program. So, what does this mean for compliance professionals? In this episode of the Principled Podcast, host Jen Uner, Strategic Communications Director at LRN, talks about the guidelines with Eric Morehead, Director of Advisory Services at LRN. Listen in as the two discuss how these updates—and the wider USSC—impact corporate governance.

The purpose of the U.S. Sentencing Commission is to study and develop sentencing policies for the federal courts. The Commission serves as an information resource for Congress, the executive, the courts, and the public on matters relating to federal crime and sentencing. Our episode today focuses on Chapter 8, which addresses organizational sentencing guidelines, not individual sentencing guidelines which is also a significant focus for the USSC.

 

 

Principled Podcast Show Notes

[1:24] – Explanation of the new publication from the U.S. Sentencing Commission and why it matters.

[6:42] - How the original standards have held up over the last 30 years.

[7:51] - Eric outlines some of the highlights of the most recent publication.

[12:53] - The real repercussions for organizations.

[14:58] - The relationship of the Sentencing Commission with the DOJ and SEC.

[18:33] - Steps organizations should take when crafting their own E&C programs.

[21:43] - The role of company culture in determining how effective the program will be.

  Featured guest: Eric Morehead

Eric Morehead is a member of LRN’s Advisory Services team and has over 20 years of experience working with organizations seeking to address compliance issues and build effective compliance and ethics programs. Eric conducts program assessments and examines specific compliance risks, he drafts compliance policies and codes of conduct, works with organizations to build and improve their compliance processes and tools, and provides live training for Boards of Directors, executives, managers, and employees.

Eric ran his own consultancy for six years where he advised clients on compliance program enhancements and assisted in creating effective compliance solutions.

Eric was formally the Head of Advisory Services for NYSE Governance Services, a leading compliance training organization, where he was responsible for all aspects of NYSE Governance Services’ compliance consulting arm.

Prior to joining NYSE, Eric was an Assistant General Counsel of the United States Sentencing Commission in Washington, DC. Eric served as the chair of the policy team that amended the Organizational Sentencing Guidelines in 2010.

Eric also spent nearly a decade as a litigation attorney in Houston, Texas where he focused on white-collar and regulatory cases and represented clients at trial and before various agencies including SEC, OSHA and CFTC.

 

 

 

Featured Host: Jen Üner

Jen Üner is the Strategic Communications Director for LRN, where she captains programs for both internal and external audiences. She has an insatiable curiosity and an overdeveloped sense of right and wrong which she challenges each day through her study of ethics, compliance, and the value of values-based behavior in corporate governance. Prior to joining LRN, Jen led marketing communications for innovative technology companies operating in Europe and the US, and for media and marketplaces in California. She has won recognition for her work in brand development and experiential design, earned placements in leading news publications, and hosted a closing bell ceremony of the NASDAQ in honor of the California fashion industry as founder of the LA Fashion Awards. Jen holds a B.A. degree from Claremont McKenna College.   

 

 

Principled Podcast Transcript

Intro:   Welcome to the Principled Podcast brought to you by LRN. The Principled Podcast brings together the collective wisdom on ethics, business and compliance, transformative stories of leadership, and inspiring workplace culture. Listen in to discover valuable strategies from our community of business leaders and workplace change makers.

Jen Uner: A few weeks ago, the United States Sentencing Commission issued a report titled The Organizational Sentencing Guidelines: 30 Years of Innovation and Influence. The publication summarizes the history of Chapter Eight's development and discusses the two substantive changes made to the elements of an effective compliance and ethics program. Hello, and welcome to another episode of LRN's Principled Podcast. I'm your host, Jen Uner, strategic communications director at LRN, and today, I'm joined by my colleague, Eric Morehead, director of advisory services solutions at LRN. We're going to be talking about the guidelines, and how it impacts corporate governance and what compliance professionals need to know. Eric Morehead is a real expert in the space as he once worked on these guidelines in a prior role at the US Sentencing Commission. He advises LRN clients now on these topics. Eric, thank you for coming on the Principled Podcast.

Eric Morehead: Thanks, Jen. It's good to be here.

Jen Uner: So hot off the press is this new publication from the US Sentencing Commission. Tell us about what it is, why it matters, and especially to owners of compliance programs at their organizations.

Eric Morehead: Well, it's sort of a look back over the last 30 years. The Sentencing Guidelines for organizations were first promulgated and came into effect in 1991, so technically the 30th anniversary was last year, but the report has just come out now, and over those 30 years, there's been about 5,000 organizations that have been sentenced under the US Sentencing Guidelines. The Sentencing Commission and the Sentencing Guidelines have to do with federal sentencing, so either individuals or organizations who have been charged with a federal offense and find themselves in a federal district court, somewhere in the United States, and they either have pled guilty, or been found guilty by a jury, or found guilty by a judge after a bench trial, and now they're being sentenced. So when you sentence an individual, obviously, that can include a fine in restitution, but also time in a federal penitentiary.

You can't jail an organization, but the Organizational Guidelines have put together over the last 30 years standards by which the judge can assess fines, restitution, and also order when necessary compliance reforms and implementation. Since you can't put the organization behind bars, you can however, put the organization on probation and require the organization to make some necessary reforms, if you will. So that's a kind of quick background of what the guidelines are for those of you who weren't sure, and why they matter to us, because the implementation of compliance standards is baked into any kind of probationary sentence or sentence that's handed down to an organization, or can be baked into, I should say.

Jen Uner: And you have personal experience at the USSC.

Eric Morehead: Yes, I worked at the Sentencing Commission from about 2007 to 2011, and during that period, there have been two amendments to the original guidelines that were first put out in 1991 for organizations. The first was in 2004, partly in response to Sarbanes-Oxley and the legislation that came out at that point around implementing reforms for organizations and their governance, but also there was back at the time in the early 2000s, a task force put together that the Sentencing Commission took some advice from. And so they made some amendments in 2004. The primary thing that happened in 2004 is that these compliance standards that are in the Sentencing Guidelines were put more front and center.

They had been what are called application notes before, and they were actually promoted, if you will, to an actual textual listing in the guidelines. Just making them more prominent is really what it boiled down to. Also, putting a little further definition around the components of an effective program, training, governance and oversight, written standards, and procedures in place, reporting mechanisms, that we all know most organizations have an anonymous reporting mechanism, a hotline or helpline out there. That comes out of these standards that were first put together by the US Sentencing Commission. They were the first national standard in the United States anyway that suggested having a reporting mechanism, including with an anonymous option.

Enforcement, discipline, and incentives often overlooked, but the Sentencing Guidelines have been talking about incentives for the past couple decades as well. And then in 2010 while I was there, the second amendment to the Organizational Sentencing Guidelines was undertaken, and that also strengthened that relationship between the governing authority of the organization, the board of directors, or whatever the oversight of a particular organization might be, because these guidelines affect not just public companies, but any kind of organization, so nonprofits, governmental agencies. Any kind of organizational structure is contemplated by the guidelines, and the 2010 amendments strengthened that relationship between the people actually responsible for the program and the governing authority of the organization, and also provided some incentives for organizations to come forward and to reform

What you'll learn in this podcast episode

How are boards of directors of major companies coping in 2022 with the increasing expectations from so many stakeholders? How can directors equip themselves to meet oversight challenges and ensure that their companies do business in the right way? In this episode of the Principled Podcast, guest host Dr. Marsha Ershaghi Hames explores the critical role of boards in shaping ethical corporate culture with Diana Sands, an accomplished corporate leader who currently sits on the boards of SP Plus Corporation and PDC Energy. Listen in as the two discuss the evolving responsibilities and tools for today's boards, including guidance from the latest report from LRN and Tapestry Networks: Assessing Corporate Culture: A Practical Guide to Improving Board Oversight.

 

Principled Podcast Show Notes

• [2:15] – Diana Sand’s background and its impact on her board roles.
• [8:07] - The push for board culture refreshment and ESG priorities.
• [12:06] - Thoughts on changing attitudes toward board culture.
• [15:37] – Board needs for transparency, accountability, and communication.
• [18:34] - Navigating structural impediments and the Assessing Corporate Culture report.

  Featured guest: Diana Sands

Diana Sands brings over 30 years of business experience to her board and advisory roles having held senior executive finance and governance positions across multiple industries. Diana currently serves on the boards of SP+ (Nasdaq: SP), PDC Energy, Inc. (Nasdaq: PDCE), and National Philanthropic Trust (the largest independent provider of donor-advised funds). She is the Board Chair for Start Early, a non-profit champion for quality early learning. She is also an advisor to New Vista Acquisition Corp. and to Ethisphere (a global leader in defining and advancing the standards of ethical business practices). Diana retired from The Boeing Company in 2020 where she was an executive officer and Senior Vice President, at the Office of Internal Governance and Administration. Reporting to the CEO and to the audit committee, Diana oversaw a diverse team including ethics & investigations, compliance risk management, internal audit, security, and internal services. Previously, Diana held senior finance roles at Boeing including corporate controller where she signed and oversaw the development of the company’s financial statements, and head of investor relations where she was the primary management liaison with investors and industry analysts. She also led financial planning & analysis and worked in corporate treasury. Prior experiences include leading financial planning & reporting for General Motors Corporation and working at several companies in audit and product line finance positions. Diana has an MBA from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, and a BBA from the University of Michigan Ross Business School.

 

Featured Host: Dr. Marsha Ershaghi Hames

Dr. Marsha Ershaghi Hames is a partner with Tapestry Networks and a leader of our corporate governance practice. She advises non-executive directors, C-suite executives, and in-house counsel on issues related to governance, culture transformation, board leadership, and stakeholder engagement. Prior to joining Tapestry, Marsha was a managing director of strategy and development at LRN, Inc. a global governance, risk and compliance firm. She specialized in the alignment of leaders and organizations for effective corporate governance and organizational culture transformation. Her view is that compliance is no longer merely a legal matter but a strategic and reputational priority. 

Marsha has been interviewed and cited by the media including CNBC, CNN, Ethisphere, HR Magazine, Compliance Week, The FCPA Report, Entrepreneur.com, Chief Learning Officer, ATD Talent & Development, Corporate Counsel Magazine, the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics and more. She hosted the Principled Podcast, profiling the stories of some of the top transformational leaders in business.

Marsha serves as an expert fellow on USC’s Neely Center for Ethical Leadership and Decision Making and on the advisory boards of LMH Strategies, Inc. an integrative supply chain advisory firm and Compliance.ai, a regulatory change management firm.

Marsha holds an Ed.D. and MA from Pepperdine University. Her research was on the role of ethical leadership as an enabler of organizational culture change. Her BA is from the University of Southern California. She is a certified compliance and ethics professional.

 

Principled Podcast Transcript

Intro: Welcome to the Principled Podcast brought to you by LRN. The Principled Podcast brings together the collective wisdom on ethics, business and compliance, transformative stories of leadership, and inspiring workplace culture. Listen in to discover valuable strategies from our community of business leaders and workplace change makers.

Marsha Ershaghi Hames: How are boards of directors of major companies coping in 2022 with the increasing expectations from so many stakeholders? How are boards equipping themselves to meet the challenges of overseeing organizations? And how can directors ensure that their companies are doing the right things and doing business in the right way?

Hello, and welcome to another episode of LRN's Principled Podcast, where we continue our conversations about the critical role of boards in shaping ethical corporate culture. I'm your guest host Marsha Ershaghi Hames, a partner at Tapestry Networks. And today, I'm joined by Diana Sands, an accomplished corporate leader who currently sits on the boards of SP Plus Corporation and PDC Energy. Today, we're going to talk about the evolving responsibilities of today's boards, many of which are outlined in the newest report, Assessing Corporate Culture, a report from LRN and Tapestry Networks. Diana, thank you so much for coming on the Principled Podcast.

Diana Sands: Thank you, Marsha. It's great to be here.

Marsha Ershaghi Hames: Let's kick off. Diana, you had an accomplished career, retiring as an executive officer and senior vice president in the office of internal governance and administration at the Boeing Company. And you have now turned to service on corporate boards. Your career has spanned a variety of leadership roles across multiple industries and disciplines. Maybe for our listeners, we can kick off by hearing more about, just tell us about your background and career and how this has informed your approach to serving as a director.

Diana Sands: Sure. And thank you again, Marsha, for having me. As you noted, across 30-plus years, I worked in various industries, including professional services, consumer products, and industrials, mostly in finance roles. I held several finance leadership positions, including corporate controller at Boeing. And my last role, as you alluded to, before I retired, was reporting to the CEO and the audit committee in a chief administration and chief ethics and compliance role. As you also mentioned, I currently serve on both public company and nonprofit boards.

Marsha Ershaghi Hames: How has this experience started to really shape or inform your approach to serving as a director?

Diana Sands: You know, Marsha, I think the breadth of my experience is mainly what shapes me as a director. I've been part of a lot of different business opportunities and challenges. And with that, I tend to think pretty holistically, whether it's assessing an opportunity starting with a strategy all the way to how it can be practically executed, or dealing with a particular challenge, which often means quickly yet systematically gathering facts, evaluating options, and then taking actions.

I do believe that the best way to leverage experiences is not to automatically duplicate what one has done in the past. In fact, I don't really love hearing a director simply stating, "This is what we used to do at XYZ Company." I think the greater value from past experiences is a director's ability, because of those experiences, to quickly absorb an existing situation and think through the possible outcomes. And that's the approach I tend to try to take in the boardroom.

Marsha Ershaghi Hames: We're going to dive into some of how you're transferring some of your unique background as a compliance and ethics officer into the boardroom. But first, I want to take a step back. I mean, when I look across 30 years, across all the sectors that you have developed your career in, you were probably or likely one of the few women executives in these fields. I'm just curious, as you look back, were there any mentors or, I'll use the term sponsors, that sort of provided more guidance, influence, coaching through developing your career journey?

Diana Sands: Yeah, definitely. And I think you're right. I was often the only female and/or minority in rooms during my career. I do think the good news is that it's changing, albeit maybe slowly, but it's changing across all sectors. But having said that, mentors are definitely important, and I had several great ones. Most of them, by the way, were white males because that's who I was primarily working with. But I remember one very early in my public accounting career, a manager who showed me tough love as he reviewed my work papers. He was really hard on me and my work, but it was formative in the way I think today. In fact, that holistic approach I mentioned earlier is in large part thanks to this person who taught me early on to always think about that bigger picture.

And then later in my career, another mentor, one of the CEOs I worked closely wit

What you'll learn in this podcast episode

What is top of mind with board directors when they think about corporate culture, ethics, and compliance? How can leaders best assess culture in the companies they oversee? In the season 8 premiere of the Principled Podcast, LRN Director of Advisory Services Emily Miner is joined by Dr. Marsha Ershaghi Hames and Dr. Eric Baldwin at Tapestry Networks to discuss how board members can improve oversight. Listen in as the group shares insights from Tapestry Networks and LRN’s joint report Assessing Corporate Culture: A Practical Guide to Improving Board Oversight, which draws from a working group of nearly 40 directors and executives representing over 60 public companies.

Principled Podcast Show Notes

• [0:29] - Emily welcomes listeners to this episode with Marsha and Eric of Tapestry Networks. 
• [1:46] - A discussion on the recently published report, “Assessing Corporate Culture: A Practical Guide to Improving Board Oversight.”
• [6:14] - Why the report offers a practical framework and what needs it seeks to address.
• [9:59] - The key findings or pillars of the report.
• [15:22] - How the report helps leaders answer “How?” questions.
• [20:30] - What is the potential broader impact of the report?

  Featured guest: Dr. Eric Baldwin

Eric Baldwin is a principal at Tapestry Networks, working with teams in the firm’s corporate governance and financial services practices. Prior to coming to Tapestry, he served for several years as a research associate at Harvard Business School (HBS), where he collaborated with faculty on a variety of research and writing projects covering topics ranging from organizational culture and change management to corporate strategy and healthcare policy. Prior to his time at HBS, Eric taught in the religious studies departments at Franklin & Marshall College and Boston University, while earlier in his career he served in engineering and operations roles at ON Technology Corporation, a software development firm based in greater Boston. 

Eric holds a PhD in religious studies from Boston University and a BA in history from the College of William and Mary.

 

Featured guest: Dr. Marsha Ershaghi Hames

Dr. Marsha Ershaghi Hames is a partner with Tapestry Networks and a leader of our corporate governance practice. She advises non-executive directors, C-suite executives, and in-house counsel on issues related to governance, culture transformation, board leadership, and stakeholder engagement. Prior to joining Tapestry, Marsha was a managing director of strategy and development at LRN, Inc. a global governance, risk and compliance firm. She specialized in the alignment of leaders and organizations for effective corporate governance and organizational culture transformation. Her view is that compliance is no longer merely a legal matter but a strategic and reputational priority. 

Marsha has been interviewed and cited by the media including CNBC, CNN, Ethisphere, HR Magazine, Compliance Week, The FCPA Report, Entrepreneur.com, Chief Learning Officer, ATD Talent & Development, Corporate Counsel Magazine, the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics and more. She hosted the Principled Podcast, profiling the stories of some of the top transformational leaders in business.

Marsha serves as an expert fellow on USC’s Neely Center for Ethical Leadership and Decision Making and on the advisory boards of LMH Strategies, Inc. an integrative supply chain advisory firm and Compliance.ai, a regulatory change management firm.

Marsha holds an Ed.D. and MA from Pepperdine University. Her research was on the role of ethical leadership as an enabler of organizational culture change. Her BA is from the University of Southern California. She is a certified compliance and ethics professional.

  Featured Host: Emily Miner

Emily Miner is the Director of Advisory Services at LRN’s Ethics & Compliance Advisory practice. She counsels executive leadership teams on how to actively shape and manage their ethical culture through deep quantitative and qualitative understanding and engagement. A skilled facilitator, Emily emphasizes co-creative, bottom-up, and data-driven approaches to foster ethical behavior and inform program strategy. Emily has led engagements with organizations in the healthcare, technology, manufacturing, energy, professional services, and education industries. Emily co-leads LRN’s ongoing flagship research on E&C program effectiveness and is a thought leader in the areas of organizational culture, leadership, and E&C program impact. Prior to joining LRN, Emily applied her behavioral science expertise in the environmental sustainability sector, working with non-profits and several New England municipalities; facilitated earth science research in academia; and contributed to drafting and advancing international climate policy goals. Emily has a Master of Public Administration in Environmental Science and Policy from Columbia University and graduated summa cum laude from the University of Florida with a degree in Anthropology.

 

 

Principled Podcast Transcript

Intro: Welcome to the Principled Podcast brought to you by LRN. The Principled Podcast brings together the collective wisdom on ethics, business and compliance, transformative stories of leadership and inspiring workplace culture. Listen in to discover valuable strategies from our community of business leaders and workplace change makers.

Emily Miner: What is top of mind with board directors when they think about corporate culture, ethics and compliance? How can leaders best assess culture in the companies they oversee?

Hi, and welcome to another episode of LRN's Principled Podcast. I'm your host, Emily Miner, director of advisory at LRN. And today I'm joined by Dr. Marsha Ershaghi Hames and Dr. Eric Baldwin partner and principal respectively at Tapestry Networks. We're going to be talking about corporate culture and how board members can improve oversight. Marsha and Eric have just collaborated with us at LRN on a report entitled, "Assessing Corporate Culture: A practical guide to improving board oversight." The report presents insights from a working group of nearly 40 directors and executives representing over 60 public companies, including some of the largest companies in the world: Cigna, Sony, McKesson, Lockheed Martin, CDW, Coca-Cola, Excel Energy and Palo Alto Networks included. Marsha, Eric, thanks for joining me on the Principled Podcast today.

Marsha Ershaghi Hames: It's great to be here.

Eric Baldwin: Thanks for having us, Emily.

Emily Miner: Okay, so let's jump right in. This report, a guide really, assessing corporate culture is the result of working group sessions of the ethics, culture and compliance network. Marsha, let me start with you. What is the ECCN, who are its members, and how did it come to be?

Marsha Ershaghi Hames: Sure. Great. We're happy to continue to share the Ethics Culture Compliance Network progress. This network was founded in the summer of 2020. I mean, it was during the thick of a pandemic. Companies were spiraling. It was just a lot of crisis management and companies were starting to take a real reflective step back. They were assessing where do we need to look? How do we need to assess our planning for longer term future? And the conversation emerged initially, Emily, as a forum. It was a safe space to convene. Public company directors and senior executives, namely chief ethics and compliance officers, to really start exploring values, corporate culture and the role of ethical decision making in business.

Emily, if I can highlight just a few key aspects that the stakeholders of ECCN started to really prioritize over the last two years, number one, the need for boards and executive teams to align and articulate culture so that management feels supported. Number two, to address the challenge of getting ethics and culture on board agendas and to really promote directors going deeper with management, we're going to get to shortly. Number three, ECCN stakeholders have continued to really want a forum to share peer to peer examples, pragmatic examples of the need for better communication and greater transparency between the CECO, the broader management team and the board.

Emily Miner: Thanks, Marsha. Having sat in on some of these sessions, I know that those specific examples that you just alluded to, those were among some of the most powerful conversation prompts. So I think that the members got a lot of value out of that. I certainly know I did. And so this report builds on a report that we, Tapestry Networks and LRN, collaborated on last year, activating culture and ethics from the boardroom, which was a really insightful temperature check on board's attitudes about culture. Eric, can you talk about that project and how it led to this latest one?

Eric Baldwin: Sure. With the last year's activating culture report, we had set out to understand the realities facing boards and their oversight of ethics and culture. What were their key concerns, the challenges they face, current practices. So to get at that, we interviewed 40 directors who occupied about 80 seats on public company boards with the aim of getting a really broad view of board oversight of ethics and culture. What we found was a pretty diverse range of practices across boards, in terms of what kinds of information they were receiving, their engagement with their management teams, including how often they heard from their chief ethics and compliance officer, a range of assignments of committee responsibilities and really it's just a variability and

What you'll learn on this podcast episode

Stories of compliance failures aren’t strangers to news outlets or entertainment networks. But while the circumstances can make for great media headlines, what is arguably more interesting is watching how those companies respond. In this episode of the Principled Podcast, host Emily Miner is joined by Carlos Villagrán Muñoz, Gerente de Compliance (Director of Compliance) at CMPC. Listen in as the two discuss how, over the past decade, CMPC has sought to not just recover from a significant compliance failure, but rebuild—stronger—by focusing on ethics, culture, and values.

 

To learn more, download the 2022 E&C Program Effectiveness Report.

 

Featured guest: Carlos Villagrán Muñoz

Carlos Villagran is a Chilean attorney who graduated from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile with a Master of Laws (LLM) degree from Georgetown University (US). He currently serves as Director of Compliance of CMPC, a 100 years old Chilean-based holding, one of the worldwide leading manufacturers of pulp, paper, packaging, personal care, and other forest products. With more than 19,000 employees, CMPC has industrial operations in 8 countries (LatAm) as well as commercial offices in the US, Europe, and China, selling and distributing its products to more than 45 countries around the world.

He has previously served as Compliance Officer for the Chilean operations of Liberty Mutual Insurance and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, as well as Legal Intern at the World Bank’s Integrity Compliance Office.

  Featured Host: Emily Miner

Emily Miner is the Director of LRN’s Ethics & Compliance Advisory practice. She counsels executive leadership teams on how to actively shape and manage their ethical culture through deep quantitative and qualitative understanding and engagement. A skilled facilitator, Emily emphasizes co-creative, bottom-up, and data-driven approaches to foster ethical behavior and inform program strategy. Emily has led engagements with organizations in the healthcare, technology, manufacturing, energy, professional services, and education industries. Emily co-leads LRN’s ongoing flagship research on E&C program effectiveness and is a thought leader in the areas of organizational culture, leadership, and E&C program impact.

Prior to joining LRN, Emily applied her behavioral science expertise in the environmental sustainability sector, working with non-profits and several New England municipalities; facilitated earth science research in academia; and contributed to drafting and advancing international climate policy goals. Emily has a Master of Public Administration in Environmental Science and Policy from Columbia University and graduated summa cum laude from the University of Florida with a degree in Anthropology.

What you'll learn on this podcast episode

Mobile devices influence nearly every aspect of our lives, including how we learn and process information. So, it’s no surprise that mobile is only becoming more important to ethics and compliance programs—especially when it comes to meeting employees where they are. LRN’s 2022 Ethics & Compliance Program Effectiveness Report confirms this. But how can organizations ensure that they are integrating effective mobile E&C solutions? In this episode of the Principled Podcast, host Carolyn Grace, content writer and podcast co-producer, talks with de Guise Vaillancourt, a lead project manager at LRN who specializes in mobile app development. Listen in as the two discuss how mobile solutions enhance E&C program effectiveness and what mobile considerations E&C professionals should take for the year ahead.

To learn more, download the 2022 E&C Program Effectiveness Report.

 

Featured Guest: de Guise Vaillancourt

de Guise Vaillancourt is a lead project manager at LRN who specializes in mobile app development. In this role, he serves as the main contact between clients and product developers throughout the entire mobile project lifecycle—including design, content, user experience, customization, technical requirements and troubleshooting. de Guise has helped LRN launch over 20 apps for client partners in the last three years alone, thereby playing a significant role in shaping LRN’s mobile offering and its evolution. Prior to LRN, de Guise worked on apps as vice president of international marketing for 20th Century Fox, where he contributed to development from predominantly the end-user perspective. Before that, de Guise was the executive director of global marketing at Avon Products. There, he managed and led the strategic planning, marketing, and product development for Avon's global product portfolio and built partnerships across 15 key international markets, helping transform Avon’s image into a modern beauty resource. de Guise earned his Master’s in I/O Psychology at New York University as well as a Master’s and B.A. in Macroeconomics and Finance from McGill University.

 

Featured Host: Carolyn Grace

Carolyn Grace is a content writer on LRN's global marketing team and co-producer of the Principled Podcast. She specializes in writing compelling stories about ethics and compliance that resonate across business segments, industries, and personas while hitting critical KPIs for traffic and engagement. Topics she frequently covers include ESG, data privacy and protection, DEI, the role of boards of directors and leadership, corporate training and e-learning, and ethical corporate culture.

Prior to joining LRN, Carolyn was a writer and content strategist at Thinkso Creative, a boutique creative agency in New York City. At Thinkso, she wrote internal and external communications for clients in technology, nonprofit, law, logistics, and financial services sectors. Before that, Carolyn conducted trend research and cultural strategy at Horizon Media, specializing in entertainment, travel, media and technology, health and wellness, and food and beverage categories. Carolyn graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. in American History and French Studies and a minor in Journalism.

What you'll learn in this podcast episode

Can we make diversity matter to everyone? If so, how can we overcome resistance to dealing with tough topics like racism and gender equality and really change people’s behavior? In this episode of the Principled Podcast, host Jen Uner talks with Senior Instructional Designer Felicity Duncan about a new LRN learning model and how it can drive behavior change to support diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Listen in as the two discuss effective DEI training as well as Felicity’s recent work on the new LRN DEI Program, a comprehensive learning campaign that includes a range of essential microlearning assets.

 

Additional resources:

LRN’s DEI Program provides companies with a multi-faceted training solution—a ready-to-deploy learning campaign with curriculums, asset packs, and customizable courses, plus the option to add bespoke content, learner experiences, and communications campaigns developed in association with LRN’s E&C experts. You can preview some of our most popular course content (just one piece of this program!) by clicking here. 

  Featured guest: Felicity Duncan, Ph.D.

Dr. Felicity Duncan, Senior instructional designer, believes that training and communication interventions have the power to transform behavior, including driving people toward more ethical treatment of those around them.

Felicity graduated with a Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Pennsylvania. After teaching at the college level for several years, she transitioned to workplace education to have a bigger impact on working adults by providing them with the training they need to truly thrive in their roles. At LRN, she is focused on developing high-impact, behaviorally focused content for the LRN Library. Her most recent project saw her working with the Library team to create a powerful new DEI Program that includes not only LRN’s world-class Inspire courses but also a set of microlearning assets designed to support, reinforce, and guide behavior change.

  Featured Host: Jen Uner

Jen Uner is the Strategic Communications Director for LRN, where she captains programs for both internal and external audiences. She has an insatiable curiosity and an overdeveloped sense of right and wrong which she challenges each day through her study of ethics, compliance, and the value of values-based behavior in corporate governance. Prior to joining LRN, Jen led marketing communications for innovative technology companies operating in Europe and the US, and for media and marketplaces in California. She has won recognition for her work in brand development and experiential design, earned placements in leading news publications, and hosted a closing bell ceremony of the NASDAQ in honor of the California fashion industry as founder of the LA Fashion Awards. Jen holds a B.A. degree from Claremont McKenna College.

 

What you'll learn in this podcast episode

The world of data privacy and protection continues to evolve at a rapid pace. From the growing number of US states adopting privacy laws to the growing list of rulings under GDPR, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, it’s a lot to keep track of. What can organizations do better to adapt to these regulatory shifts and adopt a greater culture of privacy? In this episode of LRN’s Principled Podcast, host Aitken Thompson talks with Andrew Lachman, the head of legal and data protection officer at Contentstack, about data privacy and protection and how to create a privacy culture in the modern workplace.

Learn how you can get involved in today’s conversations around data privacy and protection with these organizations mentioned:

• The International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP)
• Future of Privacy Forum
• TechGC

 

Featured Guest: Andrew Lachman

Andrew Lachman has nearly 19 years of experience in privacy space, having founded the privacy practices committee at Move.com and co-founding the Congressional Tech Staff Association while Legislative Director for Congressman Ted Lieu who represents most of the Silicon Beach area. He is currently Head of Legal and Data Protection Officer for Contentstack after running his own firm for a number of years working with startups and growing companies. Andrew is a co-founder and chair of the LA County Bar Association's Privacy and Cybersecurity Section, a member of TechGC, the California Lawyers Association Privacy Section and has been a member of the International Association of Privacy Professionals since 2007 when he received is Certified Information Privacy Professional certification. 

 

Featured Host: Aitken Thompson

After starting his legal career at Kirkland & Ellis, Aitken became interested in the then-nascent field of educational technology.  He left law firm life and co-founded Thompson Educational Consultants and, subsequently, Taskstream, LLC.  Taskstream quickly became a leading company in assessment and accreditation for higher education. Aitken served as Chief Operating Officer, leading the legal, human resources and finance functions of the business. Beginning in 2016, Taskstream underwent a rapid expansion, merging with five other ed-tech companies in a span on 18 months and, in the process, becoming Watermark, LLC, and creating the “Educational Information System” category of ed-tech.  During this period, Aitken’s legal and HR focus expanded to encompass private equity investment and the transition between primary sponsors, cultural and process integration amongst the various merged entities, and the management and harmonization of legacy client and vendor contracts.