On May 29, the Alumni Attorneys of Color Affinity Group (AAC) hosted its third annual Reuniting in Strength Event (RISE), with a program entitled “A Lawyer’s Journey to the Compliance and Ethics C-Suite.” Evelyn Yaffe ’07, who serves as senior vice president and senior compliance officer at Citigroup Global Ethics Office, moderated a conversation between Michael Blackshear ’99, the North America chief compliance officer at Chubb Insurance Group and Andy Hinton ’89, vice president and chief compliance officer at Google, about their respective career paths and experiences in the field. Blackshear shared with the audience that he recently accepted a position with Ryan Specialty Group as the SVP, Global Chief Compliance Officer; he will be starting with RSG at the end of this month.
Following opening remarks from Dean Matthew Diller and AAC Chair Brenda L. Gill ’95, Professor Robin A. Lenhardt awarded the first annual FLAA Ruth Whitehead Whaley Book Prize to Erandi Trevino ’21. The prize, funded by the Fordham Law Alumni Association, honors Whaley, who before graduating in 1924 entered an academic competition to win a set of law books while studying at Fordham, and despite outperforming all the other entrants, the librarian in charge of the prize chose to award it to another student, who was not a woman of color. This new book prize—to be awarded to 1Ls from diverse backgrounds who have made positive impacts on the law school—is a small act of reparation.
Next, Yaffe directed the discussion between Blackshear and Hinton, who have both worked in compliance for over 20 years. Before then, neither of them encountered more than a handful of corporations with ethics and compliance officers, let alone teams. Twenty years on, that has changed entirely—today, very few businesses operate without compliance or ethics officers. Hinton attributes that shift to how values shape today’s business landscape—no longer can a company remain competitive if their sole mission is to maximize profits or sell the best product on the market. Even huge corporations need core values to drive how they approach every aspect of their business—one of Google’s original operating tenets is “don’t be evil.”
The two speakers also outlined the complementary and sometimes opposing roles of a corporation’s legal team and its compliance team. Both work to protect the company’s reputation but in decidedly different ways. The role of the corporate lawyer is to apprise the business of the risks and issues that pertain to a particular matter and leave it to the business to accept such identified risk; while compliance works to identify any ethical or compliance risk issues and identify ways to mitigate, eliminate, or control such exposures.
Both agreed that the most important skills they utilize on a daily basis are not ones they learned in law school, but skills that depend on emotional intelligence: empathy, listening, projecting confidence their own skin. “You have to get them to confide in you,” Blackshear said. “At the end of the day, if you see someone who looks uncomfortable, you’re not going to tell them what you did wrong, and you may not have confidence that person will be able to help solve your problem.”
An audience member asked them how being a person of color has aided them in their roles as compliance officers. Hinton believes his experiences as a black man have helped to hone his interpersonal abilities. “Every day we work through adversity,” he said. “We are critical thinkers and we are problem solvers, because if we couldn’t figure out our way around the obstacles we face several times a day, we wouldn’t be here. I think those traits are fundamental when it comes to effective compliance.”
To close the event, Gill thanked AAC members for their involvement and support before inviting them to join her for a networking reception.