Western Digital has earned World’s Most Ethical Companies® honors eight times — a streak that doesn’t happen by treating ethics and compliance (E&C) as a finished project.

In this episode of the Ethicast, host Bill Coffin sits down with Joe Santosuosso, Vice President and Chief Compliance Officer at Western Digital, to unpack how his team keeps a large, complex organization performing at that level year after year. They cover how Western Digital uses external recognition as a benchmarking tool rather than a trophy, how a risk-based approach lets a lean team cover more ground, and how the company’s newest set of values builds ethics into the definition of excellence instead of treating it as a separate track.

What happens when you stop treating investigations like a black box — and start treating them like a tool for cultural transformation?

Scott Sullivan, former Chief Integrity & Compliance Officer at Newmont Corporation, the world's largest gold mining company, did exactly that. The result: a 385% increase in reporting over four years, a radical rethinking of speak-up culture, and a model for how ethics and compliance leaders can build trust with the entire organization — not just manage risk for the few.

In this episode, Scott breaks down how the 2021 Rio Tinto report on workplace behavior prompted Newmont to lift the hood on its own investigations process, how shifting from "speak up" to "ask, listen, act" moved accountability to leadership, and how the Organizational Justice and Integrity Dashboard (OJID) gave employees and executives alike a clear, honest picture of what was actually happening inside the organization.

He also makes a case that culture doesn't have to be expensive. It just takes guts — and the right allies.

If you're a compliance leader looking to drive real culture change, this one is worth your full attention.

Your AI is moving faster than your governance. That's not a future problem — it's a right-now problem.

In this episode, Bill Coffin sits down with Laura Jacobus, EVP of Strategic Advisory Services at Mitratech, to unpack why the AI governance frameworks most companies built 18 months ago are already struggling to keep up — and what AI Governance 2.0 actually looks like in practice.

From Board mandates pushing AI into the hands of first-time users, to agentic AI systems that can delete a database in seconds without a human in the loop, Laura brings sharp, practical perspective on where E&C programs need to evolve — and fast.

For a global organization with more than 500,000 team members, ethics and compliance cannot rely on policies alone. It takes leadership, structure, local connection, practical testing, and a culture of continuous improvement.

In this episode of Ethicast, host Bill Coffin speaks with Peter Blumberg, Vice President and Chief Compliance Officer at FedEx, about how FedEx continues to strengthen its corporate integrity and compliance program during a period of major business transformation.

Peter discusses the company’s One FedEx transformation, the value of maintaining regional compliance connection within a centralized structure, the importance of cyber incident exercises, and how FedEx is expanding its integrity ambassador program while exploring responsible uses of AI and automation.

Key takeaways:

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Someone set fire to a Kimberly-Clark distribution warehouse in California, caused $600 million in damage, and livestreamed the whole thing. The part that got less attention: he didn't work for Kimberly-Clark. He worked for a third-party logistics company they'd hired. Kimberly-Clark had a supplier code of conduct. They had compliance standards. They'd commissioned third-party audits. And it still happened.

That's the reality of third-party risk management — you can build a solid program and still get blindsided by something you couldn't have predicted. But that doesn't mean programs aren't worth building. It means they have to be built well, and most aren't.

In this episode, host Bill Coffin sits down with Emily Miner, Director on the Data & Services team at Ethisphere, to talk about where ethics and compliance programs fall short on third-party risk — and what strong ones actually look like. Emily draws on her work evaluating E&C programs across industries and her deep involvement in Ethisphere's World's Most Ethical Companies assessment process.

They cover:

Emily also discusses her article, "What Makes for a Good Third-Party Code of Conduct?" published in Ethisphere Magazine. Link below.

Read Emily's article: https://ethisphere.com/magazine/what-makes-an-effective-third-party-code-of-conduct/

Learn how Ethisphere can help you measure and strengthen your ethics and compliance program: https://ethisphere.com/solutions

Subscribe for new episodes every week on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Follow Ethisphere on LinkedIn for more on ethics, compliance, and what it means to do business with integrity.

A Google information security engineer with access to the company's internal search trend data allegedly used that data to place 23 Polymarket bets — and won 22 of them, netting nearly $1 million. His handle was AlphaRaccoon. The CFTC and DOJ aren't laughing.

In this episode of Ethicast Reacts, host Bill Coffin and Ethisphere Chief Strategy Officer Erica Salmon-Byrne break down the charges — commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering — and what the case reveals about a risk most ethics and compliance teams haven't fully mapped yet.

This is the fourth prediction market episode of Ethicast Reacts so far, and if the headlines are any indicator, it won't be the last.

Supply chain risk management is becoming more complex as companies move from linear supply chains to sprawling supply webs that include third, fourth, and fifth parties. At the same time, ethics and compliance teams are under pressure to perform deeper due diligence with limited resources.

In this episode of Ethicast, host Bill Coffin speaks with Craig Moss, Executive Vice President of Measurement at Ethisphere, about how AI data trading can help organizations close critical information gaps, improve supplier risk visibility, and create more value from the data they already have.

Craig explains why companies need to move beyond simply protecting or hoarding data, and instead think strategically about what data they can trade, what data they need, and how restricted-use legal frameworks can make those exchanges practical. He also shares a five-step pilot approach for data trading, including how to define the goal, assess data gaps, determine relative data value, prepare for negotiation, and govern the trade.

The conversation also explores the human side of AI-enabled risk management, including why problem definition, internal influence, partner negotiation, and governance still depend heavily on human judgment.

Key takeaways:

What happens when a company becomes the target of a congressional investigation, and how can ethics, compliance, legal, and government affairs teams prepare before scrutiny arrives?

In this episode of The Ethicast, host Bill Coffin speaks with Kimberly Hamm and Carlos Felipe Uriarte, partners at Morrison Foerster and co-chairs of the firm’s Congressional Investigations practice. Drawing on deep experience across Congress, the Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and high-stakes corporate investigations, Kim and Carlos explain what organizations should understand about congressional scrutiny, how investigations unfold, and why preparation across internal teams matters.

The conversation explores what a congressional investigation really entails, whether companies should expect executive testimony, the emerging issues most likely to attract attention, and how congressional inquiries can intersect with other government investigations or enforcement actions. Kim and Carlos also discuss how ethics and compliance, legal, and government affairs teams can work together before a crisis hits, and whether there is such a thing as “winning” before Congress.

Topics include:

For more insights from Kim Hamm and Carlos Felipe Uriarte, visit their profile pages at mofo.com and Morrison Foerster’s Congressional Investigations page, including their Congressional Investigations Quarterly client alert.

For additional free resources on ethics, compliance, and corporate integrity, visit the Ethisphere Resource Center at ethisphere.com/resources.

Prediction markets promise a sharper read on the future. But recent stories raise a darker question: what happens when traders are not predicting events, but exploiting confidential information or manipulating the inputs that settle the bet? In this episode, Erica and Bill examine alleged classified-information betting tied to a Venezuela military operation, suspected weather-sensor tampering in Paris, and a college football gambling scandal to unpack the ethics and compliance risks now surrounding prediction markets, from insider information and fraud to oversight, trust, and institutional integrity.

For those who are not aware, prediction markets work like a hybrid between investment markets and prop betting. "Investors" buy shares in the yes-or-no or A-or-B outcome of a projected uncertainty: Will Finland or Greece win the 2026 Eurovision contest? Will the Fed change interest rates in June? Will traffic in the Strait of Hormuz return to normal by May 15? Will Tottenham Hotspur be relegated at the end of the 2025-2026 English Premier League? And so on.

Prediction markets have been around for a while, but they have exploded in betting volume in recent years. And on a more troubling note, they increasingly appear to provide an avenue for the improper use of inside information as well as a vector for fraud, cheating, and other undesireable outcomes.

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Ethics and compliance champions programs can extend the reach of a centralized E&C team, but how do you prove they are working? In this BELA Asks episode of Ethicast, Ethisphere’s Erica Salmon Byrne explains how organizations can evaluate both the overall ROI of an ambassador or champions program and the performance of individual ambassadors.

Erica discusses practical data points to track, including employee questions, policy confusion, participation in ambassador conversations, use of program materials, and employee awareness of local champions. She also explains why a strong champions program creates a valuable feedback loop between employees and the ethics and compliance team, helping organizations respond faster, improve communications, and strengthen risk mitigation.

Learn more about BELA: www.ethisphere.com/bela