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.