Jan Stappers EU Whistleblowing Specialist

NAVEX

An expert in organisational whistleblowing management, Jan is engaged in the development of the new ISO 37002 Standard, is a frequent speaker on subjects related to whistleblowing, and has authored various articles on new legislation concerning whistleblower protection, anti-corruption, and organisational whistleblowing best practices. Jan is CIPP/E is an International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP/E). He holds a Postgraduate Diploma (PGDip) from King’s College London in the United Kingdom (EU Competition Law) and a master’s degree (LL.M) from Leiden University in the Netherlands (European Law).

Jan was recently accepted as a member into The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe’s (UNECE) “Working Party on Regulatory Cooperation and Standardization Policies.” This working party is broken into six parts and Jan is a member of the Group of Experts on Risk Management in Regulatory Systems.

Golnar Assari Director

A&H Legal Ltd

Originally from France, Golnar spent a decade working as an in-house counsel for a multinational company in Asia, the Middle East, and across Europe, before founding A&H Legal Ltd, a legal consultancy firm specializing in compliance services and commercial transactions.

Golnar helps large companies design and improve ethics and compliance programs and regularly advises on anti-bribery and corruption risk management. She is an auditor for a leading certification company and regularly provides advice to companies undergoing ISO 37001 certification. Her team also specialises in performing internal investigations and expert due diligence.

Golnar has worked on numerous internal investigations across different sectors and jurisdictions and regularly advises Senior Management on strategy and defence coordination in complex investigations.  As an in-house counsel, Golnar managed a Serious Fraud Office investigation and related proceedings in Southwark Crown Court and supported with World Bank external monitoring.

Her compliance career is complemented by equally strong commercial and transactional expertise, with a focus on negotiating complex projects in the energy, transport and construction sectors.

Christopher Beveridge Director & National Head of Privacy & Data Protection Client Services

BDO UK LLP

Christopher is a Director within Risk Advisory Services and is UK National Head of Privacy & Data Protection for BDO. Christopher has responsibility for developing the firm’s privacy advisory methodologies, quality assuring any work completed and reviewing the resultant outputs.

He delivers audit, advisory and business consultancy services to clients within the United Kingdom and around the world. Specialising in advising and assisting clients on data protection and privacy issues which includes the UK Data Protection Act and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Christopher also sits on the BDO Global Privacy Group Committee and has a strong knowledge of other privacy regulatory requirements around the world.

Christopher’s work involves educating organisations on the subject of privacy, writing and advising on privacy policies and procedures and providing guidance and advice around the management of an organisations privacy control environment. Christopher now also acts as a DPO for a number of organisations through the outsourced DPO service offering that BDO provides.

Christopher is a member of the International Association of Privacy Professionals (‘IAPP’) and holds the Certified Information Privacy Professional - Europe (CIPP/E) qualification and is also an accredited data protection trainer for the European Commission.

Christopher has been leading the BDO privacy team for five years and has been fully involved in first and second stage assessments for a significant number of clients across a number of sectors (both public and private) and, size wise have ranged from smaller organisations all the way up to fully listed organisations. He has experience in helping organisations prepare and maintain the expected standards required surrounding data protection regulation and uses his expertise in the privacy field to assist and advise accordingly.

Christopher is also a qualified Chartered Accountant qualifying with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales (ICAEW) in 2008.

Kyle Brasseur Editor in Chief

Compliance Week

Terry Dawson Managing Director, Product Management

StarCompliance

Terry Dawson is a seasoned product and technology leader with a deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities of compliance. He is currently the Chief Product Officer at StarCompliance, where he is responsible for developing and delivering innovative solutions that make employee compliance simple and easy.

Terry has over 25 years of experience in senior leadership positions at leading technology companies, including Bisnode, LSEG Refinitiv, RELX Group, and GBG PLC. In these roles, he has overseen the development and implementation of strong technical and organizational compliance measures.

He is passionate about using technology to reduce the burden of compliance on employees and compliance teams. He is a frequent speaker at industry events and has published numerous articles on the topic of compliance technology.

Sam Eastwood Partner

Mayer Brown International

Sam Eastwood is a Partner at Mayer Brown International LLP. Sam advises corporates and financial institutions on fraud, anti- corruption, economic sanctions, anti- money laundering and human rights in the context of investigations, complex transactions and compliance programme development and testing. Sam’s experience includes acting as independent monitor for the World Bank Group, the African Development Bank Group  and the Serious Fraud Office. He has also acted on a number of quasi monitor mandates advising World Bank sanctioned entities on their compliance programme remediation and successful applications for release from debarment. 

Sam was a member of the UK project team that developed the international Standards Institute (ISO) standard for anti-corruption management programmes which followed earlier work as part of the committee which developed the BSI anti-corruption management standard. He participated in the 2016 UK anti-corruption summit, has taken part in OECD Peer reviews and maintains close contacts with the UK Joint Anti-Corruption Unit.  He was part of the Knowledge Partner Team supporting the Integrity and Compliance Taskforce for the 2020 G20/B20 initiative hosted by Saudi Arabia. 

Sam is a trustee of Spotlight on Corruption. 

Paul Eccleson Chair of Audit and Risk Committee, National Museums Liverpool

Chair of Audit Committee, Old Vic Theatre School in Bristol

Paul is Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee for one of the UK’s largest museum and art gallery groups, National Museums Liverpool and the Old Vic Theatre School in Bristol.

Paul is also a Fellow of the International Compliance Association. In conjunction with the ICA and Manchester Business School, Paul designs and teaches Behavioural Science masterclasses to senior executives around the globe in Anti-money laundering & Financial Crime prevention. He designed the ICA’s specialist certificate in anti-money laundering for the Art Market.

Paul began his career in manufacturing industry, delivering AI solutions first with Lucas Industries, and latterly within Hewlett-Packard’s Research Laboratories in Palo Alto and Bristol. Whilst at HP Labs, Paul delivered one of the UK’s first electronic commerce sites and won The Sunday Times Award for Innovation in collaboration with the BBC.. Most recently, Paul led the governance and compliance re-generation of Munich Re’s legal expenses insurer, DAS , winning a prestigious behavioural economics “Nudge” award for his work on customer understanding of complex financial products.

He lives in Bristol with his wife Gail, and labradoodle Islay. He is a life-long Tranmere Rovers supporter which has taught him stoicism and resilience.

Alexander Frimanson ESG & Compliance Officer

CellMark AB

Joining CellMark AB* in June 2023, Alexander is in his role as ESG & Compliance Officer focusing on sustainability reporting, establishing the function’s global training and communication training program and developing the risk- & due diligence methodology.

Prior to joining CellMark AB, Alexander worked 8 years in the Compliance & Ethics Office at Volvo Cars with the global implementation of the Compliance & Ethics program and framework. Primarily focusing on human rights-related risks from an ESG-perspective, Alexander brings extensive experience from onsite human rights due diligence across the globe and working strategically to bring the lessons learned into a global program.

Before joining Volvo Cars, Alexander worked as a lecturer on non-discrimination and anti-bullying for the Swedish non-profit organization Stiftelsen Friends.

*Founded in 1984 in Gothenburg, Sweden, CellMark has its roots in the international trade and distribution of raw material related to the global pulp and paper industry. Over the years, the company has established a strong global position and developed world-class marketing and supply chain service capabilities expanding into new product areas. CellMark has offices in 70-plus countries, and an operating revenue of more than 4.2 billion USD.

Kelly Gama Legal & Compliance Officer EUROPE

Alstom

Kelly Gama has a law degree, a post-graduate diploma in Corporate Law in Brazil and is a Certified Compliance & Ethics Professional International (CCEP-I).

Kelly started her career in Brazil at renowned law firms in the corporate and regulatory areas and have over 16 years’ experience in the legal and compliance area.

As Legal Counsel for Brazil, Caribbean & South America at BP Group in the energy sector, Kelly participated in regional and global projects providing in house legal support, including Ethics, anti-bribery and Competition Law consultation and trainings. As part of BP Group, Kelly also had an assignment to South Africa in 2013 where she participated in projects in South Africa and Mozambique.

In 2016 Kelly joined Alstom, French sustainable mobility/ transport company, as Legal & Compliance Officer responsible for the Latin America Region and since January 2020 she is responsible for the EUROPE Region, based in Paris – France, supporting with the implementation and continuous improvement of Alstom’s Integrity Program.

Kelly is active participant of compliance initiatives and events: the 2018 Transparency International School on Integrity in Vilnius, Lithuania; the 2019 Compliance Week Annual Conference in Washington, D.C. (Speaker); the 2019 SCCE São Paulo Regional Compliance & Ethics Conference (Speaker); the 2019 IACA Regional Summer Academy - Central and South America; the 2019 Compliance Across Americas in Sao Paulo, Brazil (Speaker); 2020 and 2022 Compliance Week Europe (Speaker); 2020 and 2021 editions of the European Virtual Forum – Ethics, Compliance & Integrity, Viadrina Compliance Center – Germany (Speaker); ACAMS French Chapter Compliance event on March 2022 (Speaker).

Justin Garten Independent Consultant and Lecturer Specializing in Large Language Models (LLMs) and AI Agents

Justin is an independent consultant and lecturer specializing in Large Language Models (LLMs) and AI agents. He has collaborated with organizations to integrate LLMs into internal and external tools and develop policies on AI governance and security and data privacy. Previously, Justin was at Google, concentrating on user and audience modeling and natural language processing. He holds a PhD and MS in computer science with a focus on natural language processing from the University of Southern California and a BA in political science from Pomona College.

Sophie Goosens Partner

Reed Smith

Sophie is a partner in the Entertainment and Media Industry Group, and focuses on copyright, technology law and artificial intelligence. She is also a member of On-Chain: Reed Smith’s Crypto & Digital Assets Group.

Sophie is dual-qualified and fluent in both common law systems and civil law systems with strong academic credentials in IP law. She focuses on all issues shaping the future of the online world from a technological, commercial, legal but also from a policy making standpoint.

Sophie works with some of the largest and most innovative tech companies on AI, delivering cutting-edge advice about copyright, data ownership, the creation and use of training sets, the ethics of AI and the yet-to-be-adopted EU AI Act. In 2023 Sophie took a leading role in creating the Reed Smith Entertainment and Media Guide to AI.

Sophie has significant experience in music (especially in multi-territorial licensing), videogames, social media, audio content and in advising companies operating in cutting-edge areas, including the next breed of entertainment and media services relying on artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain (including NFTs) or the latest content recognition technology. A former in-house lawyer, Sophie is highly commercial, practical, solution-focused and always attentive to industry dynamics. She is known as the go-to lawyer for innovation and first-of-its-kind content-based product launches.

Stephanie Holmes Director of Strategy – Ethics

OneTrust

Stephanie has dedicated her career to guiding organizations in achieving strategic business goals by fostering ethics, corporate culture, and regulatory compliance. She has spent a decade in the Ethics & Compliance field across a variety of roles, including investigations and consultation on best practices for maturing Ethics & Compliance programs.

In her role, Stephanie supports the OneTrust Ethics & Compliance Cloud where she advises companies on how to foster a culture of ethical behavior and business practices. Stephanie earned her Master of Arts in Forensic Psychology at the University of Denver and holds the CCEP & LPEC certifications.

Beyond work, she's an outdoor enthusiast, often found hiking, biking, and snowboarding in Colorado.

Mary Inman Partner

Constantine Cannon

Mary Inman, a partner in Constantine Cannon’s London and San Francisco offices, heads the firm’s International Whistleblower practice. She specializes in representing whistleblowers worldwide under the US whistleblower reward programs, including the SEC, CFTC, IRS, DOT and FinCEN/OFAC programs. Mary’s successful efforts to export the US whistleblower programs to the UK were featured in the New York Times and her successful representation of three healthcare whistleblowers and the personal toll whistleblowing exacted on these clients was featured in the New Yorker.  Mary represents renowned SEC whistleblower Tyler Shultz who exposed the infamous Silicon Valley blood testing start-up Theranos, and Facebook Files whistleblower Frances Haugen and regularly speaks on lessons to be learned from these scandals.  Mary is a regular commentator on whistleblower matters for the Financial Times, BBC, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Reuters and Fortune. 

Parijat Jauhari Chief Product and Technology Officerv

LRN

Parijat Jauhari is the chief product and technology officer at LRN. As CPTO, he is responsible for building a growth-focused product and technology team at LRN while building LRN’s technology platform to delight both existing and new customers. 

Parijat joined LRN from Qu, a commerce platform where he led the complete redesign of the existing SaaS product line that led to Qu becoming a leader in its market segment. He also helped launch a category-first mobile voice and search-based analytics product using best practices in data science. Before that, he led the transformation of the legacy product at Fishbowl into a data-driven omnichannel marketing platform and successful exit through a sale. Earlier in his career, he held various roles at PricewaterhouseCoopers and Corporate Executive Board where he focused on fraud detection, risk and compliance as a software developer, technology manager, and product leader. Jauhari holds an undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), a master’s in information systems from Carnegie Mellon University and a master’s in business administration from New York University.

Noshin Khan, CCEP-I, CIPP/E, CIPM Senior Compliance Counsel

OneTrust

Noshin Khan is a seasoned and technology-driven Senior Compliance Counsel who firmly believes in “doing the right thing” at work and in personal life.

At OneTrust, Noshin plays a pivotal role working and implementing the internal Ethics & Compliance program. Additionally, as part of her role within the Ethics Center of Excellence, she serves as a trusted advisor to practitioners, offering invaluable insights into European laws and best practices. With a focus on EMEA Laws, Noshin's expertise encompasses the European Whistleblower Protection Directive, the EU Artificial Intelligence Act, the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, Sapin II, and the Duty of Vigilance Law in France.

Prior to her tenure at OneTrust, Noshin served as a Global Compliance Manager at Forensic Risk Alliance, a distinguished consulting firm renowned for its expertise in Forensic Accounting, Data Governance, Bribery, Corruption & Fraud Investigation.

Noshin holds certifications as Certified Compliance and Ethics Professional – International (CCEP-I), Leadership Professional in Ethics & Compliance (LPEC) and is also Certified in Ethics of AI from the London School of Economics. Additionally, she is a Certified Information Privacy Professional for Europe (CIPP/E), Certified Information Privacy Manager (CIPM), and a Fellow of Information Privacy (FIP) certified by the IAPP.

Michael Knight-Robson Director, Economic Crime Advisory/ Financial Services Advisory

BDO UK LLP

Deepa Lad Capital Markets Compliance 

London Stock Exchange Group

Deepa Lad, a highly experienced senior compliance professional who manages securities trading at LSEG.  Deepa has over 15 years’ experience in the legal & compliance field developing a broad range of compliance and strategic management skills . Deepa has had success in establishing a compliance function, navigating change and commendable track record of leading authorisation processes, managing regulatory relationships, along with identifying and delivering robust compliance solutions. Over the years, Deepa has worked in market surveillance, risk management, compliance governance/oversight and compliance assurance. Deepa’s professional compliance career and areas of expertise include freight derivatives trading, indices and benchmarks, and securities trading. 

Maria Lancri Partner

Squair

Prior to joining law firm Squair, Maria worked in a number of renowned French law firms, as an inhouse lawyer and as Deputy General Counsel & Compliance Manager at Hachette Livre. Maria has extensive experience in internal and counterparty audits as well as the implementation of client-specific compliance programs.

Maria is a member of the Scientific Committee and a lecturer at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne Compliance Certificate. She is also co-chair of the CSR, Ethics & Compliance Commission of the French business lawyers association ACE. She holds an LL.M. from Southern Methodist University (Dallas, TX) and a Master's degree from the University of Nice.

Jean-Baptiste Lartigue Head of Sanctions & Embargoes, International Retail Banking Network

Société Générale

After degrees in business (Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales - HEC Paris) and corporate and tax law, Jean-Baptiste began his career as a private practice lawyer in several renowned international and French law firms where over seven years he specialized in M&A, private equity, capital markets, and banking transactions as well as complex litigation cases.

Jean-Baptiste then joined Société Générale Bank where after working for 5 years as a legal auditor, he joined the Compliance department. Over the last 10 years Jean-Baptiste has headed teams in charge of AML, KYC and S&E for various banking businesses (wealth management and retail) and for various locations (Africa, Russia, Western and Eastern Europe). His multifaceted legal and financial experiences give Jean-Baptiste a deep and broad expertise in Financial Crime.

Dan McCrum Investigative Reporter and Award-Winning Author

Dan McCrum is a multi-award winning journalist and author. He is a member of the Financial Times investigations team, and has spent 16 years writing about business from New York and London. His reporting has been recognised with more than a dozen prizes, including journalist of the year at the 2020 British Press Awards. His first book is Money Men: a hot start up, a billion dollar fraud, a fight for the truth, brought to the screen by Netflix in the feature documentary Skandal! Bringing Down Wirecard. It tells the thrilling inside story of a $30bn fintech whose astonishing rise and crashing fall disgraced a nation. 

Anna Myers Executive Director

WIN

Barbara Przedpelska Europe Compliance Manager

CRH

Her current role for the leading provider of building materials solutions includes oversight of the company’s compliance programme in Europe and Asia, including competition law compliance, anti-fraud and anti-theft programmes, anti-bribery procedures, personal data privacy and protection, international trade compliance, promoting SpeakUp culture and managing Hotline investigations.

Przedpelska has been actively involved in designing and enhancing Compliance programme and network across +20 countries. Has lead cross-border and cross-cultural projects and teams. Has built and managed rapport with stakeholders at various organization levels, starting from the local Compliance lead role, through regional CEE role towards the current European role and part of Global Compliance Leadership Team addressing the needs of +70k employees.

Qualified Compliance professional (CCEP-I by SCCE) and Economist.

Speaker at the global SCCE and Compliance Week events.

Ben Rayner Anti Financial Crime Expert  Regional Head for the UK, Ireland, Middle East and Africa 

Silent Eight 

Keith Read Former Chief Compliance and Ethics Officer 

British Telecom (BT) 

Keith Read was formerly General Manager, Supply Chain Integrity for British Telecom’s (BT) £6 Billion supply chain, before becoming the company’s Group Director of Compliance and Ethics with responsibility for compliance, ethics and regulatory risk management, covering 150,000 employees and contractors operating in some 176 countries

He is a past winner of the Compliance Register's Best Compliance Officer award, when he also won the Best Compliance Company award; he was subsequently the subject of a full-page Daily Telegraph national press article - 'Compliance and Science'. Since leaving BT, he has worked with a range of household-name companies and leading solution providers in the compliance and ethics field, including Global Advice Network (now GAN Integrity), LRN and Convercent/OneTrust

He has an innovative and practical approach to compliance and ethics, and his recently published book - 'The Unconventional Compliance Officer' - provides a raft of new and highly original ways of addressing what are the universal challenges for compliance and ethics officers, who will not have previously encountered many, if any, of these unconventional tools and techniques. 'VeRoniCA', Compliance Covenant and the Corporate Shield are just some examples

James Rickett Course Director, Global Lead Anti-Money Laundering & Sanctions Compliance

International Compliance Association

Anastasia Savvateeva Deputy Head of Financial Crime Compliance, Continental Europe

Fidelity International

Samantha Simms CEO

The Information Collective

About Samantha Samantha is a data privacy and digital compliance attorney and strategist. She is the CEO of The Information Collective, a digital compliance consultancy supporting tech executives across the UK and North America (US, Canada, Caribbean). A commercial, strategic visionary, and a leader in her field, she is the DPO's DPO. Data Privacy is Samantha’s profession, passion, and purpose. Motivated to see ethical and pragmatic data privacy in our nascent digital society, Samantha founded The Information Collective in 2017 after a 15-year career as a global data privacy leader in multinational corporate institutions. Since then, The Information Collective’s Data Privacy Program Builder, Data Privacy Impact Assessments, and e-DPO services have successfully delivered robust yet flexible data privacy programs aligned to clients’ corporate strategies. Today, her team’s remit extends to working with tech start-ups and scale-ups bringing digital products and services with social impact to the global marketplace. Samantha holds an LLB Hons in European Languages and Law (French, German, and Spanish) and is a member of the New York Bar. She holds professional certifications in data privacy, risk management, and compliance and ethics. Passionate about self-development, Samantha coaches Data Privacy Professionals, through her “DPO Dr” program, to DPO Like a Boss! Samantha is committed to developing and maintaining the highest standards of digital ethics. She is a digital anti-racism activist and contributes to digital regulation policy development. She delivers keynotes internationally on the intersection between ethics, privacy, and technology. Samantha is a thought leader on data privacy for the travel technology and hotel industries.

She can be reached at: info@theinformationcollective.com

George Sortanos Financial Crime Compliance Expert

George has an overall 15+ years of primary international experience (UK and Greece),  in the Financial Services, Banking and Consulting sectors, from Top Tier Financial Institutions, Startups and Big 4 firms, in the areas of Treasury and Financial Crime Compliance. He was previously approved by the FCA as a Nominated MLRO for an EMI, was a Nominated Treasury Officer from the Board of a Financial Services Membership Union and has worked extensively in 1LOD and 2LOD. 

He is a Fellow member of the International Compliance Association (ICA) and a holder of the MSc in Law and Financial Crime Compliance from the University of Law, where he studied Corporate Law with a focus on Joint Ventures. He developed research on the UK's legislation's developments and gaps, in the areas of Anti Money Laundering and Anti-Bribery and Corruption, including the role of legal practitioners in money laundering and corruption scandals and the impact that these had on society and vulnerable customers. 

During his career, he has led several FC projects including but not limited to;  investigations, horizon scanning, regulatory communications,  the development of AML and ABC tools, Health checks on frameworks, policies, procedures and controls design (for Anti Bribery and Corruption, Anti Money Laundering), Customer and Financial Crime Risk Assessments and Enhanced Due Diligence. He also has secondary exposure to technological projects for embedding compliance requirements in algorithms and Privacy.

George lives in London and travels frequently to Athens or the Greek islands. In his spare time likes to travel and explore new places, reads philosophy or history books and often watches football with friends.

Anthony Tasgal Trainer, Author, Speaker, Comms strategist

Tas is a man of many lanyards: trainer, author, speaker, brand/comms strategist and lecturer.

He is a Course Director for the Chartered Institute of Marketing, the Market Research Society, the Institute of Internal Communication and the Civil Service college.

He is a global speaker and regularly reviews the papers and contributes on marketing and communications subjects on TalkTV.

Specialist topics include storytelling, behavioural economics, insightment and briefing, and as a lapsed Classicist he also indulges in etymology and Homer (not the yellow one).

He also runs The Guardian masterclass on “Harnessing the power of storytelling” and is a Brand Ambassador for Home Grown Club in London.

He is the author of the award-winning The Storytelling Book, [which has sold over 35,000 copies globally] The Inspiratorium , “InCitations” , The Storytelling Workbook and in 2023, The Insight Book.

Tas can be found loitering at @taswellhill and https://www.linkedin.com/in/tastasgal/

Matthijs Veenema Global Business Conduct Director, EMEA

Eastman Chemical B.V.

Matthijs Veenema is Global Business Conduct Director EMEA and member of the EMEA Leadership Team. In addition, Veenema is a certified coach.

Veenema is a Dutch national and operates from Eastman’s regional headquarters in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He holds a masters degree in Law (LLM) from Erasmus University Rotterdam and finalized an extension to his masters from the University of Western Sydney, Australia. Veenema is Certified in INSEAD’s Gender Diversity Program and is a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE).

Veenema joined Eastman in 2015 as Global Business Conduct Manager EMEA.

Other positions of responsibility followed. Veenema has been a member of the EMEA Safety Council, is a Facilitator of Leadership trainings and a coach. He used to be member of the Data Privacy Council, EMEA Catalysts (gender equality) and the Environment Social & Governance Council.

Prior to joining Eastman, Veenema worked at Oracle for a decade as manager and or project leader for corporate house holding, 40 mergers & acquisitions, commercial legal counseling and compliance & ethics (5 years).

He currently serves as chair of the supervisory Board of Directors for 11 Christian primary schools and was the former chairman of an A.L.S. (Louis Gehrig) patient association and former chairman of a local sports club.

Veenema and his wife Esther reside in The Netherlands and have 3 children. His personal interests include his kids’ sports, cycling and hiking. A fun fact about Veenema is that he climbed the Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.

More information can be found on his Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthijs-veenema-5075282/

Geert Vermeulen CEO

The Integrity Coordinator

The mission of Geert Vermeulen is to help organizations conduct business in an ethical and compliant way. Geert is specialized in establishing and improving ethics and compliance programs in general and anti-corruption and whistleblowing programs in specific. In 2016 he founded ECMC: Ethics & Compliance Management & Consulting. ECMC mainly provides ethics & compliance training, but also consulting services and external ethics & compliance management. Geert has provided compliance training in over 30 countries on virtually all continents and also regularly speaks and writes on ethics and compliance. In 2020 Geert launched a second company called ‘The Integrity Coordinator’. This company is an independent, external coordinator of whistleblowing or speak up procedures. Geert has been coordinating whistleblowing procedures for 16 years now and handled a couple hundred cases. In 2020 the Dutch Whistleblowing Authority published a manual on internal investigations, for which he wrote the first draft. He helps organizations to unleash the power of a good speak-up culture.

Geert obtained most of his experience in-house. As Global Head of Compliance for Damco, the freight forwarding arm of the Maersk Group, he was responsible for the compliance activities in 90 countries, focusing mainly on anti-bribery and trade restrictions. As Chief Compliance Officer Aon EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) he coordinated compliance efforts in some 60 countries. Following inquiries from regulators Aon started its anti-corruption program in 2007. Geert has coordinated this program in the EMEA region from the start. According to the US and UK authorities Aon developed a best practice model other firms may wish to adopt. Geert has been a frequent speaker at international compliance events ever since.

Geert has been the President of the Netherlands Compliance Officers Association, where he founded and chaired the expert group on Financial Economic Crime. He is also an active member of the expert groups on Culture and Conduct and ESG (Environment, Social, Governance). Besides that, he is a member of the Professional Advisory Committee of the Law Compliance Minor at The Hague University and regularly provides guest lectures at several universities. When he won the National Compliance Award in 2020, he was labelled as ‘the compliance guru’. In 2023 he was honored as one of the top thought leaders in trust by Trust Across America/Trust Across the World.