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Great Women in Compliance

Great Women in Compliance: Defying the Odds: Cláudia Massaia on Betting on Yourself

They told her compliance was a dead-end career. They told her she’d never make it in the United States, that landing an internship with a U.S. government agency was impossible, and that passing the New York bar exam was a long shot.

Cláudia Massaia proved them wrong—every single time.

In this inspiring episode of Great Women in Compliance, host Sarah Hadden sits down with the Brazilian-born attorney and compliance professional whose remarkable journey is a master class in persistence, self-belief, and the power of simply refusing to take no for an answer.

From launching her career amid Brazil’s historic Operation Car Wash corruption scandal to earning dual master’s degrees, securing permanent U.S. residency, and becoming a New York-licensed attorney, Cláudia shares the setbacks, sacrifices, and occasional spectacular failures that shaped her success.

Along the way, Sarah and Cláudia explore how corporate compliance has evolved, why being a trusted business partner beats being the “department of no,” and what American executives misunderstand about doing business in Brazil.

But the biggest takeaway is personal: Bet on yourself. Invest in your future. And don’t let someone else’s definition of what’s possible become your own.

As Cláudia reminds us, discipline and consistency will take you further than intensity ever could.

A joyful, candid, and energizing conversation for anyone who’s ever been told, “You can’t do that.”

Connect with Cláudia on LinkedIn and subscribe to Great Women in Compliance wherever you listen to podcasts.

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Great Women in Compliance

Great Women in Compliance: The Paradox of Ethics & Compliance: Corporate Conscience or Façade?

Is your organization designed to hear the truth—or to explain it away?

Corporations have Enterprise Risk Management, established Ethics & Compliance Programs, Internal & External audits, risk assessments, multiple risk and compliance heat maps and dashboards, and boards charged with oversight.

So why do major corporate scandals keep happening?

What if the problem isn’t a lack of controls but the organizational structures that prevent those controls from making a difference?

In this episode of Great Women in Compliance, we speak with Astrid Yee-Sobraques, Risk Sherpa and author of The Structural Capture of Corporate Conscience, about the uncomfortable relationship between ethics, commercial pressure, corporate governance, and power.

We explored whether the Ethics & Compliance functions can identify risks but cannot meaningfully influence how the risk will be mitigated, and whether the Ethics & Compliance Program is effective—or simply a system for documenting concerns.

We asked:

  • Can a company with ethical people still be structurally designed to produce unethical outcomes?
  • When does legitimate business risk acceptance become a way to rationalize unacceptable conduct?
  • If Ethics & Compliance can identify the risk but cannot change the outcome, is that independence—or an illusion of it?
  • How can boards uncover the risks that management’s reporting and assumptions may obscure?

For Ethics & Compliance professionals, the discussion raises difficult questions about independence, professional responsibility, escalation, and the pressure to protect revenue-producing relationships.

For directors and board members, it challenges the assumption that more reporting and better dashboards do not necessarily translate into better oversight and decisions.

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Great Women in Compliance

Great Women in Compliance: SCCE Recap 2026

In this episode, Lisa, Hemma, and Ellen are taking us back to last week at the 25th Annual SCCE Compliance & Ethics Institute.  They took the opportunity to speak with other attendees to share their experiences–whether as a first–time attendee, a first-time speaker, someone coming back after a long time, someone traveling from Europe to attend, or one of the long-time leaders in the field.

We discussed what they’re learning, what’s changing in the profession, and—perhaps most importantly—why community matters.  Thank you to Doel Kar, Emily Frank, Lizette Arias, Maria Lancri, Carrie Penman, Terri Stringer, and Amarilys Gott for taking the time to speak with us about the evolution of ethics and compliance, AI, neurodiversity, leadership, and, of course, the amazing community of dedicated Ethics & Compliance professionals

We hope you enjoy this episode half as much as we enjoyed connecting with these fabulous Great Women in Compliance.

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Great Women in Compliance

Great Women in Compliance: Together, What We Can Do: Sharon Seivert on Ethics, Systems and the Six Powers

What if ethics and compliance weren’t something we bolted onto organizations but something built into how the organization actually works?

In this episode of Great Women in Compliance, Dr. Hemma R. Lomax talks with Sharon Seivert, Founder and CEO of Core Coaching & Consulting and creator of the SIX POWERS® framework, about organizational health, human agency, and building integrity from the inside out.

For Sharon, the work is deeply personal. She shares how the loss of her brother John in a workplace accident shaped her commitment to healthier systems and raises a question at the heart of the conversation: when something goes wrong, do we focus only on the individual event, or do we allow what happened to teach the system?

Sharon and Hemma explore what becomes possible when organizations are treated as living systems capable of learning, adapting, and recovering, and why ethics and compliance professionals should not have to do that work alone.

Highlights include:

  • Sharon’s personal connection to ethics, compliance, and workplace safety
  • The SIX POWERS® framework: Core, Vision, Mission, Interactions, Structure, and Synergy
  • Why purpose and principles can act as an organizational “tuning fork”
  • The difference between individual responsibility and systemic responsibility
  • Finding and using your own “hub of power”
  • The hidden costs of ethical compromise
  • Why near misses should teach the system, not simply disappear into a case file
  • Building organizations with enough “wobble” to adapt, recover, and evolve
  • Why, ultimately, together we can do hard things well

Further reading from A Thinking Game

Sharon Seivert: Powering the Future: A Six Powers Roadmap & Compass. Evolve Organizations. Activate Leaders. Ignite Purpose.

Available on Amazon

This conversation also helped inspire Hemma’s latest A Thinking Game article, “A Community of Many Splendid Torches,” which explores what becomes possible when individual acts of courage, care, and participation are understood as part of a larger human system.

A Thinking Game on LinkedIn

A Thinking Game on Substack

Bio

Sharon Seivert is the Founder and CEO of Core Coaching & Consulting, LLC, where she works at the intersection of leadership, systems thinking, and organizational health. A former CEO in healthcare and business consulting, Sharon brings decades of experience helping leaders, teams, and organizations navigate complex change.

She has written multiple books on her signature SIX POWERS® framework, a holistic approach designed to strengthen leadership and organizational health from the inside out. Her work brings together purpose, strategy, relationships, and systems thinking to help individuals and organizations become more integrated, resilient, and capable of lasting transformation.

Sharon is also a leadership coach, business consultant, and speaker, working with organizations ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies and with a global community committed to healthier ways of living and leading.

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Great Women in Compliance

Great Women in Compliance: Setbacks, Second Acts, and A Return to Purpose

Sarah Hadden sits down with Cindy Hennessy for a candid, funny, and deeply human conversation about career loss, reinvention, and what can happen when the next chapter of your life isn’t the one you planned. Cindy talks openly about being laid off late in her career—and refusing to let her employer call it “retirement”—and the long “hallway” between that ending and the unexpected opportunity that eventually brought her full circle to mission-driven work at Make-A-Wish. Along the way, Sarah and Cindy talk about resilience, the luxury and importance of waiting for work that aligns with your values, the surprising gifts that can come from rejection, and the power of writing to help us make sense of difficult experiences. There’s also an emotional-support Pomeranian, a lifelong love affair with the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, and a reminder that sometimes joy, hope, and a willingness to laugh at yourself are pretty good tools for navigating whatever comes next.

Takeaways:

  • Losing a job can be deeply personal—especially when work has been an important part of your identity—and there’s no reason to sanitize the experience or pretend it didn’t hurt.
  • Cindy describes the uncertain period after a major life disruption as “the hallway”: one door has closed, the next hasn’t opened yet, and sometimes the only way forward is simply to live through the space in between.
  • A late-career transition can also create an opportunity to get much more intentional about what you want—including the freedom to say no to work that doesn’t align with your values.
  • Cindy’s path back to Make-A-Wish, where she had worked 25 years earlier, wasn’t something she carefully engineered. In fact, she initially wasn’t sure she wanted the job—a good reminder to stay open to possibilities that don’t look quite right at first.
  • Mission matters. After years of interesting but sometimes less personally aligned work, Cindy talks about the joy of using her experience to serve an organization whose purpose she deeply believes in.
  • Writing has been one of Cindy’s lifelong tools for processing difficult experiences. She shares her experience with the 100-Day Reckoning, a structured writing practice that helped her step outside a painful situation and find greater perspective, kindness, and understanding.
  • Reinvention doesn’t necessarily mean chasing another bigger title. Cindy is deliberately thinking about how to do meaningful work while also making more room for travel, friends, family, writing, Mahjong—and eventually a life that isn’t organized around a W-2.
  • And finally: Never give up on the Wienermobile. Cindy certainly hasn’t.
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Great Women in Compliance

Great Women in Compliance: AI, Compliance & Thinking Outside the Box

AI is a key topic for all of us these days, and for ethics and compliance professionals, it is a challenge and an opportunity. In this episode, Lisa Fine and Hemma Lomax speak with Mara Senn, founder and CEO of Ethakos, and Audrey Harris, Managing Director at Affiliated Monitors; both have deep experience across investigations, enforcement, in-house compliance, and monitorships. We focus on what AI means for compliance – from how it is changing how companies operate to how it can help us work smarter while keeping humans in the AI loop.

They share insights from their experience on many topics, including:

  • Moving beyond AI as a time-saving tool and thinking bigger about how it can transform compliance.
  • Why compliance needs to understand the business, its systems, and its data.
  • The risks of staying safely inside the “compliance box.”
  • How better data and AI can help compliance see risk differently—and connect the dots.
  • Why tech and data skills are becoming essential for the next generation of compliance professionals.
  • Finding the balance between innovation and risk management.

This is a great discussion for novice AI users and experienced professionals alike. 

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Great Women in Compliance

Great Women in Compliance: Beyond the Balance Sheet: Ethics Lessons from Australia’s Accounting Scandals

For this #GWIC roundtable episode, Lisa Fine and Ellen Hunt spoke with two renowned experts, Francine McKenna and Ursula Schmidt, about what Ethics & Compliance professionals should learn from recent accounting firm scandals in Australia.

Listen in as our guests help us unravel:

  • why similar scandals keep happening,
  • how the incentives and pressure at play in these scandals are universal,
  • the important role that culture plays,
  • how auditors and others should live up to their professional standards, and
  • why we still ignore those that bring issues forward.

There are lessons in these scandals for every #Ethics and #Compliance professional on how to improve your culture and program. A huge thank you to Francine and Ursula for sharing their insights, expertise, and wisdom with us.

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Great Women in Compliance

Great Women in Compliance: Curiosity at the Complexity Café

Career journeys are rarely linear—and sometimes our most valuable lessons come from the unexpected turns.

In this episode of Great Women in Compliance, co-host Dr. Hemma Lomax sits down with Amybeth Garcia-Bokor to explore a career spanning public service, legal and compliance leadership, and an inspiring pivot from law to baking before returning to the profession with a renewed perspective. Together, they discuss how curiosity, resilience, and thoughtful leadership help compliance professionals navigate increasing complexity while building trust and enabling better decisions.

Key Takeaways:

  • Why judgment is one of the most important capabilities in modern compliance.
  • How an unconventional career path can strengthen leadership and perspective.
  • The evolution of compliance from enforcement to strategic business partnership.
  • Building cultures where curiosity, learning, and open dialogue thrive.
  • Leading confidently through ambiguity without sacrificing integrity.
  • Preparing compliance programs—and ourselves—for a future shaped by constant change and AI.
Bio

Amybeth Garcia-Bokor is a leader who helps organizations navigate complexity, build trust, and make sound decisions where strategy, governance, and innovation intersect. Her career spans government, private practice, entrepreneurship, and nonprofit organizations, giving her a distinctive perspective on how organizations grow, manage risk, create lasting value, and innovate responsibly in rapidly evolving environments. She currently serves as Senior Vice President of Legal and Compliance at Emergent, where she helps shape the governance of the emerging global market for forest carbon finance.

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Great Women in Compliance

Great Women in Compliance: GWIC x Everything Compliance – Summer 2026

We are back with another GWIC x Everything Compliance crossover, with Hemma and Lisa joining Kristy Grant-Hart and Karen Moore to talk about what’s on their minds and the compliance news of the day. They discuss everything from Scoular Company entering into a Deferred Prosecution Agreement and paying over $10m for FCPA violations, lessons for Ethics & Compliance professionals from the World Cup, the resolution of the allegations against Alibaba and AUS Merchant Services, and what we can take from the leaked draft of the EU’s New Public Procurement Regulations.

And, of course, it wouldn’t be Everything Compliance without the rants and raves.

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Great Women in Compliance

Great Women in Compliance: Paula For the People: Let Go to Reach Further

What does it look like when your job title and your soul are perfectly aligned? For ethics & compliance officer Paula Young, the answer has always been simple: it’s about the people.

In this conversation, Paula Young and Sarah Hadden dive into what it really means to lead with humanity—how she earned the nickname “Paula For the People,” why she believes compliance is less about rules and more about winning hearts and minds, and what it took for her to stop being the person everyone handed work to and start being the person everyone looked to for vision.

A moment that has stayed with me is Paula’s story of a mud run she almost didn’t do. Standing at the base of a wall, covered in mud, holding on with everything she had—until her cousin screamed from the top, “You have to let go.” What she learned in that moment has carried her through divorce, reinvention, and every transition since.

We also talk about her work with Junior Achievement; her involvement with What Moves Her—a community that empowers women in leadership; and where she finds herself now: in a season of listening, learning, and gathering the courage for whatever comes next.

This episode begins cold—no introductions, no small talk—just Paula, at her most authentic, telling us exactly why she loves what she does. Enjoy.