Welcome to Great Women in Compliance. In this Part 1 of a two-part series, Mary Shirley is joined by Michelle Shapiro. Mary and Michelle are not strangers to presenting together, having previously run a three hour workshop on due diligence for life sciences companies in the past.  Today they join forces again in a special two part series.  In the first episode of this two part-series, Michelle talks about the aspirational goal of many young lawyers – to become a partner in a law firm and explains what it was like as a young professional knowing that she wanted to be successful, but not necessarily sure of what that might look like exactly or what form it might take. Michelle shines the light on the Womens White Collar Defence Association which she is heavily involved in and shares the origin story and motivator for such an association.  Mary and Michelle discuss options available to in-house lawyers and Compliance professions wanting to start up their own such networking group. Listen in to this episode where Michelle turns the tables on Mary and throws in some surprise questions of her own!

In this two part series, Mary speaks with Michelle Shapiro, a partner at Arent Fox about her Compliance experience from the perspective of external counsel.  Episode two with Michelle opens with interesting insights from Michelle based on her experience volunteering on the WomenLEAD Committee and Diversity and Inclusion Committee at a previous law firm. She shares details of the success stories of those committees which is timely information for anyone thinking about setting up similar committees in their own workplace.  The conversation to asks us to think beyond a token gesture initiative in these areas and consider what companies can do to show that they are truly invested in the advancement of women leaders and valuing diversity and inclusion.

Mary asks Michelle to draw on some of her benchmarking oversight (one of the aspects of working in consultancy that Mary really misses is getting insight into what several other companies are doing first hand) and share developments she has observed of companies evolving their due diligence program.

To wrap up the episode Mary and Michelle talk about a couple of the key things they look out for when conducting investigations across borders.