SoCal: The SCCE Offers an Inspiring Day of Ethics & Compliance in Irvine!

Yesterday I spent a wonderful day with my fellow Southern California SCCE, Society of Corporate Compliance Ethics, colleagues as we gathered in Irvine! The morning began with welcoming remarks from Conference Co- Chair, Laura LaCorte, Associate Senior Vice President, Compliance at the University of Southern California.

The EU's General Data Protection Regulation - Top Line Global Privacy is Key

This panel was led by Megan Duffy, Assistant General Counsel, Privacy at Intuit (who was just completing her first week at Intuit) and Dominique Shelton, Partner, Alston & Bird, Los Angeles. In the short span of an hour, they provided excellent tips and guidance on how to be prepared for the May 28, 2018 official adoption of the EU's General Data Protection Regulations.

Dominique shared that whether you have a deep in-house Privacy function and have been preparing for months, or if you are just starting today, that there is still ample time to prepare your team and your company to comply. As with any other E&C policies, it is all about "Documentation, Documentation, Documentation". She suggested that there is no need to reinvent the wheel and GDPR training and documentation can piggyback on other and training already being used in your companies. It's more a matter of knowing where the information already resides and creating a folder on your C: Drive for it to be collected and cataloged.

Megan shared her deep experience from having worked within the legal departments of media and technology firms. She suggested that with all of the fear associated with GDPR compliance, that you should reach out to your engineers and ensure them that they will still be able to create great products!

State of DOJ/SEC Guidance and Compliance Implications

Robert Dugdale, Partner, Kendall Brill & Kelly LLP in Los Angeles and John McCoy III, Group Chief Compliance Officer, 21st Century Fox shared the perspective of their collective DOJ and SEC backgrounds and provided some insight into how the DOJ's recent permanent adoption of the Compliance Program into the US Attorney's Manual as the FCPA Corporate Enforcement Policy should affect corporate decision making. They both agreed that the continued transparency provided by the DOJ has given companies more information as to what is expected in a best practices ethics & compliance program.

In a humorous moment, Bob shared a key takeaway, that based on the recent penalties paid in resolving the Telia matter, that as a best practice is not advisable to do telcom deals with Uzbeks partners :)

John geared his remarks to two reasons why a company needs a robust Compliance Program:

1. To identify risk and identify problems and
2. Because you need a Compliance Program!

Engaging Your Board

This was one of my favorite panels! Malissia Clinton, SVP, General Counsel and Secretary, The Aerospace Corporation in El Segundo and Dixie Johnson, Partner, King & Spalding, Los Angeles, who Co-leads securities enforcement practice, defending companies and individuals under government investigation, took a deep dive into how to best prepare your board for their expanded ethics & compliance duties brought along by today's headlines of #MeToo, as well as recent troubles at companies ranging from Uber to Wells Fargo. By using current headlines and stories you can incentivize your Boards to take action and develop the internal skillsets required to deal with these issues afflicting other companies.

One of my key takeaways is that in order for the Board to fulfill their fiduciary responsibility, they must THEMSELVES go through a tailored onboarding training of how to be on a Board. Malissia shared helpful strategies as to how to get the Board to consider certain discussions to fulfill their fiduciary duties, especially having the Board considering certain subject matters that would trigger potential D&O insurance coverage.

For Board minutes, they suggested that this does not need to be a "word for word" recap of discussions, but should demonstrate the dialogue that occurred. Dixie suggested that it would be a best practice to produce minutes that are not privileged, so they can be released to the public and shareholders in a non-redacted format.

High Risk Markets & FCPA

In the first session back from lunch (the potentially dreaded "food coma" slot) Confernece Co-Chair Brian Michael, Partner, King & Spalding in the Special Matters and Government Investigations group and Conference Co-Chair was joined by Tedra Foster, Senior Director, Ethics and Compliance at Herbalife and Julie Myers Wood, CEO Guidepost Solutions.

The panel held a lively discussion which looked at 3 topics:

1. Effective Strategies for Hiring Third Parties with Government Ties in China
2. Recent Developments in Brazil and Mexico and
3. Practical Considerations Regarding Adherence to ISO 37001.

These experts shared relevant examples from their careers spanning from government service, in-house legal, ethics and compliance as well as consulting.

Immigration

Richard Yemm, Partner, Wolfsdorf Rosenthal LLP, and Julie Myers Wood took a deep dive into various immigration issues that are top of mind especially with DACA issues and the multiple iterations of the Administration travel bans. The discussion ranged from how ICE agents looks at their jobs to how companies fill out their I-9s.

Why Marketing & Communication drives more impact than Training Alone

Dr. Marsha Ershaghi-Hames, Managing Director, Strategy & Development at LRN, took the mic and congratulated us for making it through and attending the last session of the day! While she realized that she and 60 minutes were the only thing keep us form the bar... she proceeded to deliver an envigoring and enlighting look at how "old school" powerpoint and online training just doesn't cut it anymore.

With a global, diversified employee base as well as those colleagues who are in the field, do not have a computer or never go into an office, training must re-callibrated and designed to meet each person on their own terms. Marsha led the group through a jam-packed presentation which highlighted the following training goals:

1. Design E&C training that your organization can scale globally without losing the personal feel and engagement
2. Explore ways to market and brand your E&C program message and purpose by leveraging internal social media platforms and tapping into user-generated content and
3. Gain insight into leveraging front-line management as the MarComm envoys (Compliance Champion, Ethics Ambassadors) on the ground.

As Marsha, predicted we did finally make it to the bar, to reacquaint ourselves with old friends and get to know new ones. As much as SCCE is about content and learning, this organization equally values the power of personal connections and how we as SCCE members must take the enthusiasm of our in-person conference experience and not only share them with colleagues but allow the fire to burn in our hearts and to power us through the remainder of 2018 or at least until the next conference when we meet again!