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 Louis Sapirman, Vice President, Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer and Chief Compliance Counsel for Panasonic Corporation of North America, the principal North American subsidiary of Panasonic Corporation. He oversees the company’s regulatory and compliance function, maintaining a culture of ethics, and ensuring all employees are upholding Panasonic’s longstanding values in their work.
Louis previously served as Associate General Counsel & Chief Compliance Officer for the Dun & Bradstreet Corporation. During his tenure as CCO, the company was recognized as one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies by the Ethisphere Institute. Prior to moving in-house, Louis worked in private practice with several law firms including Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr and Buchanan Ingersoll. Throughout his career, Louis has been recognized for his work. In both 2015 and 2016, the Ethisphere Institute named him to their list of Attorneys Who Matter in Compliance and Ethics, and in 2010 he was named International Employment Lawyer of the Year by the Association of Corporate Counsel.
In this final episode, going forward Sapirman says it will all be about the data, data and more data and the metrics to go along with it. However, it is not enough to simply track data, both from the government’s perspective and from the business case, your business unit folks need actionable insights. There will be greater scrutiny of both CSR and the Supply Chain and that 3^rd party compliance is not just about due diligence on your suppliers and finally the role of procurement in compliance. Sapirman believes there will be more professional in the field of compliance with schools having Ethics & Compliance. Compliance professionals will be more challenged with privacy issues, trade control challenges and economic sanctions as well the cultural realities of movements such as #MeToo and Black Lives Matter. We concluded with thoughts on the convergence of compliance and risk – the importance of compliance professionals understanding their position in an organization’s risk universe.