Creating a more ethical world

one organization at a time

WHAT I DO

My Mission

I build, protect, restore, and leave a place better than I found it.

I help organizations preserve their brand, profits, growth opportunities, and good standing in the community by preventing, detecting and promptly remediating the impact of compliance, ethics, and governance control failures.

I am an advocate, an innovative problem solver, a trusted attorney/advisor, and experienced compliance and ethics professional. My specialty is helping organizations advocate for and defend themselves in the face of aggressive regulatory enforcement, remediate damage and develop high-quality compliance and risk-management processes.

I am a forward-thinking, creative, visionary executive/strategic thinker who goes beyond defense to plan execution to ensure sustainability.

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What I Offer

Services

I help organizations preserve profits, opportunities, and reputation by:

Enhancing Compliance Procedures and Governance

I draft, review and enhance bylaws, Codes, policies, procedures, and processes with the input of appropriate functional leads to ensure compliance with applicable laws, standards, and governance requirements and implement required corrective action.

Training of Executives and Boards

I deliver in-person and web-based, live training to employees, senior leaders, and boards on emerging regulatory compliance and ethics issues.

Independent Reviews

I coordinate and manage reviews of the operation of policies and procedures against applicable legal requirements and standards, identify any "gaps," and provide practical recommendations based upon industry "best practices" or pending regulatory requirements.

Research & Advice

I assist in handling regulatory inquiries, examinations, and enforcement matters and use my expertise to bring the right people together to ensure a holistic view of the issues.

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My Expertise

Power of Compliance

"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently."

- Warren Buffett

Organizations and the people who run them are subject to an increasing array of regulatory requirements and growing risk to reputation and brand from real, perceived, or invented harm communicated virally over social media.

As a lawyer, I investigated legal violations, enhanced procedures to mitigate business risks, and distributed over $100 million in penalties to investors and customers. By applying my "encyclopedic knowledge" of the securities laws and persuading business leaders to remediate detriment proactively, I helped corporations avoid costly enforcement proceedings and lawsuits.

As a compliance officer, I drafted, tested and enhanced procedures to prevent and report legal violations, developed risk assessment tools, processes, and a database to track progress on remediating “gaps” and control failures. I managed a team that performed and prepared findings from more than 300 reviews of business unit operations. I created a dashboard for reporting project status and significant and emerging risks to business leaders, auditors, and boards.

As an ethics officer, I help business leaders and boards evolve their governance, decision-making processes, and cultures to promote long-term, sustainable growth, attract and inspire employees, and earn customer trust and loyalty. When organizations can prevent, detect, and remediate the impact of control failures, they become welcome community members. They can inspire their stakeholders to create a more ethical world.

My work

Recognition

"Kate works extremely hard to be responsive and provides valuable legal advice to her clients, including division compliance personnel, attorneys, and senior division management in various areas. Clients seek out Kate to help make decisions with significant compliance matters and legal issues."

- Former General Counsel, Manager

"Kate's work on a recent regulatory settlement and administration project is measured in many zeroes regarding savings for the company. There is no substitute for skill and intellect."

- Chief Financial Officer of a broker-dealer

"I always knew I would get a straight, well-thought-out answer from [Kate] that I could rely on and move forward with. [She] really helped me gain a better understanding of our overall company, risks and concerns ….and that helped get up to speed so much faster on what my team should be focusing on. THANK YOU KATE"

- Chief Administrative Officer, former Head of Internal Audit

"Kate is very effective in driving risk management objectives through the business, in a collaborative manner. While driven to accomplish objectives, Kate welcomes diverse points of view, and works to find solutions that are in the best interests of the business, customers, and stakeholders."

- Business Unit Head

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