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 Sara Jones!

Sara is the Program Manager for Analytics and Investigations in the Integrity and Compliance Office at Virginia Commonwealth University, a large public university in the southeastern United States and an Organizational Member with ECI. We are deeply grateful for Sara’s work as a co-chair with the Toolkit for Middle Management working group, which concluded its work earlier this year with a webinar.

Sara’s current primary areas of responsibility include overseeing VCU’s case management and Helpline, coordinating investigations, and managing strategic ethics and compliance initiatives. Her background and two degrees in education give her a deep understanding of how people learn, what motivates them, and how to effectively communicate with anyone, which she uses daily to inform her work in ethics and compliance.

When asked about her experience with ECI’s member benefits and opportunities, Sara shared the below:

As someone who is relatively early in their ethics and compliance career, the experiences I’ve had through ECI have been so valuable for my professional development. I joined ECI as a member when my Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer, who is on the ECI board, invested in an organizational membership for our team. I work on a small E&C team and don’t have much experience outside of what I’ve gained in my current role.

My career background is in education, so while I bring a unique and important point of view to our work, I don’t have extensive knowledge of the E&C professional field. Joining a working group and attending the ECI Fellows meeting gave me opportunities to network with other E&C professionals across a diverse variety of organizations and roles. I’ve learned so much about what E&C looks like in other settings, and I’ve gained professional connections that have led to meaningful conversations and advice. I was surprised at the Fellows meeting by how approachable and kind the other attendees were. I was there as a guest of my supervisor; most of the people with whom I interacted were much further along in their careers and in much more senior roles than myself. However, every single person I talked to was happy to share ideas, answer my questions, and talk openly about problems or opportunities they were facing in their work.

Similarly, joining and ultimately helping co-chair the working group [on Middle Managers] gave me a chance to learn from people with different perspectives, backgrounds, and day-to-day experiences. Right now, I’m looking forward to attending the next webinar that ECI offers, to continue to expand my knowledge. I’ve also appreciated being able to search through the past white papers that ECI has published and have found many insights by reading through those. If I were to offer advice to someone who is considering joining a working group, I would say: yes, if you want to produce something of value, it is going to be a time commitment. However, what you get back in networking, expanding your knowledge, and exposure to people across our field is well worth the investment.

Please contact membership@ethics.org if you are interested in submitting your own member spotlight contribution.