Erica Salmon Byrne: Building a Legacy of Ethical Value

Great Women in Compliance

In this episode of Great Women in Compliance, Hemma visits with Erica Salmon Byrne, Chief Strategy Officer and Executive Chair of Ethisphere. Having long admired Ethisphere for its commitment to advancing business integrity in a meaningful way, Hemma invites Erica to share how her organization backs that up with research, data from industry benchmarking and culture assessments, and the creation of a strong compliance community. Erica shares her ethics and compliance origin story and critical insights on building a legacy of ethical value and business integrity.

Highlights include the compliance value creation story and how not to be merely a cost center, how to stay outcome-driven rather than activity-based, what we can learn from decades of data on measuring culture, the crucial role of managers in ethics and compliance, the meaning of an employee-centered approach and treating employees as tangible assets, and the power of community in compliance.

Erica is the Chief Strategy Officer and Executive Chair for Ethisphere, the global leader in defining and advancing the standards of ethical business practices that fuel corporate character, marketplace trust, and business success. In this role, Ms. Salmon Byrne oversees product strategy and M&A initiatives for the company while advancing Ethisphere’s founding ethos—that businesses that focus on the long term, commit to doing business with integrity, and invest in their stakeholder communities will outperform their peers.

Erica is also the Chair of the Business Ethics Leadership Alliance (BELA), where she works with the BELA community to advance dialogue, collaboration, and best practices around ethics and governance.

Over her tenure at Ethisphere, Erica has held several roles, including overseeing Ethisphere’s products and solutions, including data-driven program assessments; The Sphere, which offers benchmarking against peers and best practices, along with expertise and related regulatory guidance; ethical culture assessments; and the World’s Most Ethical Companies. To learn more about Ethisphere’s work, visit www.ethisphere.com

A prolific public speaker, Erica is known throughout the ethics and compliance industry as a leader, educator, and advocate for ESG, values-based leadership, and business integrity. In 2022, she was recognized as a Modern Governance 100 Leader by governance firm Diligent. Erica has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Fast Company, Forbes, SXSW, and various ethics and compliance publications and podcasts.

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Resource:

2024 Ethical Culture Report: Closing the Speak Up Gap