One of ECI’s greatest resources is its members. A pillar of our organization, we are proud to have E&C practitioners from industries across the globe in our community. Our new Member Spotlights are an opportunity to highlight just a few of our many great members, showcase their achievements and show our appreciation for their support of the incredible ECI community. This month, meet two winners of the Carol R. Marshall Award, Nancy Higgins and Katie Lawler!
TRANSCRIPT
Shayla Woodson
I’m happy to welcome both Nancy Higgins, former VP [and] Chief Ethics and Compliance officer at Bechtel, and Katie Lawler, who is the Executive Vice President, Global Chief Ethics Officer at U.S. Bank.
We’re going to talk to them about winning the Carol R Marshall Award. Nancy won the award in 2014 and Katie is our 2023 award winner.
Before we begin, there might be some compliance professionals that do not know about the late Carol R Marshall. In honoring her legacy, I want to let the ECI community know that Carol was an innovator in the ethics & compliance field and was very passionate about volunteering and mentorship. She was a pioneer for the ECI Fellows Program, and a member of the ERC Board of Directors. Her smile and presence remain infectious to all that knew her and worked with her. During the interview, I will give each of you the opportunity to speak on Carol and her legacy.
So, without further ado, ladies, let’s jump into this informal interview and talk about all things Carol R. Marshall Award and our ECI community. So, first question, I’m going to stick to the topic of Carol R Marshall since I just brought up Carol…Can each of you share a bit about your relationship with or knowledge of Carol R Marshall and her legacy within the ethics & compliance field? Nancy, I’m going to start with you because I think you had a relationship with Carol.
Nancy Higgins
Yes, I did. I first ran into Carol in the DII, the Defense Industry initiative, after the merger of Lockheed and Martin Marietta, when she became their first, I think it was called Director of Ethics and Compliance, maybe vice president? I can’t recall. I was at Boeing then, and we’d actually had a visit from 2 very senior folks to come out and find out how to do an [ethics & compliance] program. So it was wonderful when I saw her next to get to chat with her. And we seemed so much alike, and had so much in common that we did become friends. Later, she left Lockheed Martin and I was then chairing the DII working group and suggested that she come on as a consultant to the DII because we just changed directors and [our current director] was not familiar with that organization. So I got to work with her in that capacity, and later I went to Lockheed Martin and took her job. And before that, though, come to think of it, I probably gave Carol her first consulting job because we needed to have someone come in and do an external review of the ethics and compliance program at Boeing and I thought Carol was very well respected and [knew that with her] we’d get somebody who knew what a program should be like.
And I remember talking to her and she’s saying that I don’t know what to do. Fortunately, I had experience in what to do so could send her out. She did a great job for us and it was delightful to work with her in all respects. Then when I left Lockheed Martin to go to MCI after the WorldCom debacle, I hired Carol to come in and work for me. So we had an opportunity to work as colleagues in all sorts of different ways. She was a great addition to our program.
And later, when we were getting ready to sell the company, she went back on her own. And I think it was after that that she joined and was more active in the Ethics Resource Center, that time in the Ethics Research Center Fellows program.
But Carol just had such a marvelous attitude. She was always interested in trying something new and what she, I think, really did best was give her staff a free hand. She had a lot of really creative people, and they enjoyed working with her, and it was terrific to have her as a member of the ethics and compliance community.
Katie Lawler
You know, I never met Carol. And I feel like it’s one of the great losses of my career because everyone I have spoken to about Carol has assured me that we would have gotten along, we would have gotten on like gangbusters. She was just a remarkable human being, and the legacy she’s left, I mean, as you said, Nancy giving your team free rein and empowering them to be creative. I think that’s part of what innovation is about, is letting people have that freedom to try things, and so everything I’ve ever heard about Carol from those who knew her and cared for her just reminds me more how much I wish I had had that opportunity to know her.
Shayla Woodson
That being said, you bring up innovation, Katie, and one of the central traits of the Marshall Award recipients is their innovation in the ethics and compliance field.
I would like for each of you to talk about – what does that mean? What does an innovative approach mean to ethics and compliance? What does that mean for you, as far as how you go about your work now? Nancy, I know that you’ve retired, but I do know, in knowing who you are, that you’re still out here mentoring and looking at the next generation of E&C. So if both of you can kind of talk about that, Katie, I’ll lead with you because you’re still in the space.
Katie Lawler
Sure.
Starting with what is innovation, it’s finding new ways to add value and sometimes it’s even solving problems you didn’t know you had, or bringing value that people didn’t know they were seeking. So I look at it as being willing to try things that may or may not work.
Now I’m largely in the ethics space not the compliance space, not to say that I don’t have compliance responsibilities. But I think where we’ve been most innovative in my world right now is more on the ethics side, the thinking about culture, thinking about what drives decision-making at the individual level and how do we help people ultimately make better decisions. So it is finding new ways to reach employees, leveraging new and different ways of doing things and, I do think, what we were just talking about, letting people have a little free rein to try things. We went down a path last year on something and I shared with my manager at the end of the year, it didn’t work out quite as well as I’d hoped. But we learned a lot. You know, it wasn’t as effective as we wanted it to be. But we learned a lot that we can continue to apply.
So I think innovation is that willingness to try new things with the goal of learning and bringing value and seeing that whole innovation journey as one of learning. For me, focusing on those drivers of decision-making, understanding how culture drives conduct and [asking], how do we address that? Finding new and unique ways of training and reaching employees, making ethics something that’s not this esoteric, theoretical topic but really helping people understand: [ethics is] how we treat each other every single day. It’s how we build trust. It’s keeping our commitments. It’s being honest, it’s being vulnerable. There’s a lot that goes into that, so for us it’s been taking this very expansive view of what ethics means and just trying stuff and seeing what sticks.
Shayla Woodson
Nice. I love that. Nancy?
Nancy Higgins
I do too. I love what you said. I think one of the things that I’ve learned over the years is it’s important to remember you don’t have to do it all. You don’t have to do it yourself, and it’s much more effective if you can, you know, piggyback on to other organizational plans. For instance, if communications is going to be involved in a big promotion about something in the company, trying to bring the ethics part into that so that you’ll take advantage of their communications effort.
And you know, it’s really true what they say: You can get a lot done if you don’t want the credit, and work with others. I remember something I learned at a management class many years ago. We brought in some people from emergency services and doctors and they talked about how they would triage people if there was a big accident. And there was always somebody who was getting in the way and arguing about this or that. So what they would do is, instead of getting into that, they would bring [that person] into the team and they said, “We really need someone to hold the gauze. Can you hold the gauze for me?” All of a sudden they’re part of the team, they didn’t really need anybody to hold the gauze, but I’ve held on to that idea for a long time. Oftentimes people in ethics and compliance, people who are perhaps in programs that are just beginning, run into pushback from HR or communications or other people who assume they were doing just fine beforehand. And, what I say is, you have to bring them in.
I remember at one of my companies we had a communications group that really didn’t want anything to do with us. They just weren’t giving us a role in how things would be communicated [out to the rest of the organization]. So when we had our annual ethics officers meeting, we brought in the head of communications and gave them an award and all of a sudden they were part of the team. We thanked them for all their help and it went forward from there.
If there’s a way that you can get into [or] become part of existing initiatives that already have the funding, already have the management support, you can get a lot more done.
Please contact membership@ethics.org if you are interested in submitting your own member spotlight contribution.
