The Compliance Life

The Compliance Life details the journey to and in the role of a Chief Compliance Officer. How does one come to sit in the CCO chair? What are some of the skills a CCO needs to success navigate the compliance waters in any company? What are some of the top challenges CCOs have faced and how did they meet them? These questions and many others will be explored in this new podcast series. Over four episodes each month on The Compliance Life, I visit with one current or former CCO to explore their journey to the CCO chair. This month, my guest is Valerie Charles, partner at StoneTurn. We discuss Valerie’s journey to the CCO chair, then to a ComTech start up, to her current role at StoneTurn and look down the road at where ComTech and compliance will be in 2025 and beyond.

In this concluding episode, Valerie looks down the road at the compliance function. She believes there will be increased use of ComTech by compliance functions. Moreover, CCOs and compliance professionals will need learn how to use data and become more comfortable in leveraging data for insights to help prevent, detect and remediate corporate conduct. The corporate compliance function will become even more important in the corporate setting as it will bring together various corporate functions such as legal, HR and IT into collaborative actions.

Resources

Valerie Charles LinkedIn Profile

Valerie Charles at StoneTurn

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The Compliance Life details the journey to and in the role of a Chief Compliance Officer. How does one come to sit in the CCO chair? What are some of the skills a CCO needs to success navigate the compliance waters in any company? What are some of the top challenges CCOs have faced and how did they meet them? These questions and many others will be explored in this new podcast series. Over four episodes each month on The Compliance Life, I visit with one current or former CCO to explore their journey to the CCO chair. This month, my guest is Valerie Charles, partner at StoneTurn. We discuss Valerie’s journey to the CCO chair, then to a ComTech start up, to her current role at StoneTurn and look down the road at where ComTech and compliance will be in 2025 and beyond. 

From Gan Integrity, Valerie moved to StoneTurn where she saw an opportunity to leverage all the skill sets she had developed in her professional career or as she said “use all the tools in my toolbox”. In her work she is able to combine using data to provide insights into the continuous improvement of corporate compliance programs, such as using HR data together with traditional compliance data to prevent compliance violations before they arise.

Resources

Valerie Charles LinkedIn Profile

Valerie Charles at StoneTurn

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The Compliance Life details the journey to and in the role of a Chief Compliance Officer. How does one come to sit in the CCO chair? What are some of the skills a CCO needs to success navigate the compliance waters in any company? What are some of the top challenges CCOs have faced and how did they meet them? These questions and many others will be explored in this new podcast series. Over four episodes each month on The Compliance Life, I visit with one current or former CCO to explore their journey to the CCO chair. This month, my guest is Valerie Charles, partner at StoneTurn. We discuss Valerie’s journey to the CCO chair, then to a ComTech start up, to her current role at StoneTurn and look down the road at where ComTech and compliance will be in 2025 and beyond. 

Valerie made one very courageous move from an in-house position into the world of ComTech. She joined Gan Integrity. In this role she worked on the problem of the incredible inefficient way corporate compliance programs were managing data and set out to solve the problem. At Gan, she worked with 200+ global programs and helped to grow the company. 

Resources

Valerie Charles LinkedIn Profile

Valerie Charles at StoneTurn

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The Compliance Life details the journey to and in the role of a Chief Compliance Officer. How does one come to sit in the CCO chair? What are some of the skills a CCO needs to success navigate the compliance waters in any company? What are some of the top challenges CCOs have faced and how did they meet them? These questions and many others will be explored in this new podcast series. Over four episodes each month on The Compliance Life, I visit with one current or former CCO to explore their journey to the CCO chair. This month, my guest is Valerie Charles, partner at StoneTurn. We discuss Valerie’s journey to the CCO chair, then to a ComTech start up, to her current role at StoneTurn and look down the road at where ComTech and compliance will be in 2025 and beyond.

Valerie was a dancer from a young age and this passion helped inform her early academic career. Her civil rights work out of college lead to her to law school and that led to work in Big Law in white collar defense. From there she moved in-house, heading up a corporate compliance function. In this role she saw the need for an integrated tech solution for the corporate compliance function. 

Resources

Valerie Charles LinkedIn Profile

Valerie Charles at StoneTurn

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The Compliance Life details the journey to and in the role of a Chief Compliance Officer. How does one come to sit in the CCO chair? What are some of the skills a CCO needs to success navigate the compliance waters in any company? What are some of the top challenges CCOs have faced and how did they meet them? These questions and many others will be explored in this new podcast series. Over four episodes each month on The Compliance Life, I visit with one current or former CCO to explore their journey to the CCO chair. This month, we have our first Director of Trade Compliance, Matt Silverman, Director of Trade Compliance at VIAVI. We discuss Matt’s journey to the Director’s chair and look down the road at where trade compliance will be in 2025 and beyond.

After law school at Loyola, Silverman practiced, rather unhappily for four years as a personal injury and asbestos litigator in Chicago for a couple small defense firms. He then went back to school to get an LLM in international business law at Georgetown Law. It was this experience that drew him to trade compliance where during his LLM program I took temporary positions/externships in a variety of disparate positions including the US Senate, the Office of the US Trade Representative, the World Bank and the law firm of Baker Hostetler.

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The Compliance Life details the journey to and in the role of a Chief Compliance Officer. How does one come to sit in the CCO chair? What are some of the skills a CCO needs to success navigate the compliance waters in any company? What are some of the top challenges CCOs have faced and how did they meet them? These questions and many others will be explored in this new podcast series. Over four episodes each month on The Compliance Life, I visit with one current or former CCO to explore their journey to the CCO chair. This month, we have our first Director of Trade Compliance, Matt Silverman, Director of Trade Compliance at VIAVI. We discuss Matt’s journey to the Director’s chair and look down the road at where trade compliance will be in 2025 and beyond. 

In this concluding episode, Silverman looks at the role and function of trade compliance in 2025 and beyond. He notes that currently at many organizations still falls under the logistics or supply chain function but down the road he believes it will be an integral role in every legal/compliance department with much more high-level visibility in the C-Suite, and trade compliance becoming a bigger factor in risk management considerations.

He also feels that Trade Compliance Directors will likely need significant experience and a legal background, particularly given the trend toward greater enforcement actions taken by DOJ and OFAC. We concluded with some of Silverman’s thoughts on the intersection of ESG with trade compliance.  As ESG gains more popularity and attention in the C-Suite, trade compliance will become more important and one of its roles will be in fulfilling ESG initiatives.

Resources

Matt Silverman LinkedIn Profile

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The Compliance Life details the journey to and in the role of a Chief Compliance Officer. How does one come to sit in the CCO chair? What are some of the skills a CCO needs to success navigate the compliance waters in any company? What are some of the top challenges CCOs have faced and how did they meet them? These questions and many others will be explored in this new podcast series. Over four episodes each month on The Compliance Life, I visit with one current or former CCO to explore their journey to the CCO chair. This month, we have our first Director of Trade Compliance, Matt Silverman, Director of Trade Compliance at VIAVI. We discuss Matt’s journey to the Director’s chair and look down the road at where trade compliance will be in 2025 and beyond.

His first role as a Trade Compliance Director role was at Solvay. In this role, Silverman learned to balance individual employee management and employee development along with day-to-day compliance issues. Silverman then moved to VIAVI in the role of Global Trade Director & Senior Counsel. In this position he handles a wide variety of trade issues including import, export, sanctions and antiboycott. He also looks for ways to get involved in other areas that may intersect with trade compliance. 

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The Compliance Life details the journey to and in the role of a Chief Compliance Officer. How does one come to sit in the CCO chair? What are some of the skills a CCO needs to success navigate the compliance waters in any company? What are some of the top challenges CCOs have faced and how did they meet them? These questions and many others will be explored in this new podcast series. Over four episodes each month on The Compliance Life, I visit with one current or former CCO to explore their journey to the CCO chair. This month, we have our first Director of Trade Compliance, Matt Silverman, Director of Trade Compliance at VIAVI. We discuss Matt’s journey to the Director’s chair and look down the road at where trade compliance will be in 2025 and beyond. 

Silverman Had to “start from the bottom” after my LLM; taking contract positions and non-attorney positions in trade compliance to get practical experience. From there he moved to his first in-house counsel role was at Baker Hughes in Houston as their international trade counsel.  At BH, he worked directly for the Director of Trade Compliance, gaining experience in sanctions work, customs issues and antiboycott law. He also got to study ‘at the feet’ of the Director of Trade Compliance and see how she ran the BH Trade Compliance program and interacted with the BH CCO and GC. 

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The Compliance Life details the journey to and in the role of a Chief Compliance Officer. How does one come to sit in the CCO chair? What are some of the skills a CCO needs to success navigate the compliance waters in any company? What are some of the top challenges CCOs have faced and how did they meet them? These questions and many others will be explored in this new podcast series. Over four episodes each month on The Compliance Life, I visit with one current or former CCO to explore their journey to the CCO chair. This month, my guest is Wendy Badger, CCO at Tennant Company. 

In this concluding episode, Wendy reflected on leaving her CCO position immediately preceding the pandemic and the time she had for reflection about that decision and what she learned about herself. She talked about her new role a Tennant and some key lessons learned she has been able to put into places such as the criticality of cross-functional collaboration, why technology should not be seen as the “cure all” to compliance woes and how to both layer and leverage data. 

Resources

 Wendy Badger LinkedIn Profile

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The Compliance Life details the journey to and in the role of a Chief Compliance Officer. How does one come to sit in the CCO chair? What are some of the skills a CCO needs to success navigate the compliance waters in any company? What are some of the top challenges CCOs have faced and how did they meet them? These questions and many others will be explored in this new podcast series. Over four episodes each month on The Compliance Life, I visit with one current or former CCO to explore their journey to the CCO chair. This month, my guest is Wendy Badger, CCO at Tennant Company. 

Wendy was recruited for head of compliance role at a non-profit financial services organization. She emphasized the collaborative nature of the role and some of the key lessons she learned. She discussed some of the challenges and successes she had in the role and her eventual decision to step away from the position. 

Resources

 Wendy Badger LinkedIn Profile

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