Vice President, Global Ethics & Compliance | Cushman & Wakefield
Ellen is a lawyer, ethics & compliance professional, audit executive, and chief privacy officer. She has expertise in identifying, evaluating, and mitigating risks as an advisor to the Board of Directors and senior management. She has over 20 years of management experience in various industries including health care, food service, and not-for-profit associations in creating, designing, implementing, and operating world-class ethics and compliance programs including board governance and reporting, designing instructor-led and online ethics education, creating policy management frameworks, implementing conflict of interest processes, managing enterprise and compliance risk processes as well as handling investigations and regulatory agency inquiries.
She is the Vice President – Global Ethics & Compliance Program for Cushman & Wakefield, a commercial real estate company with 52,000 employees in 60 countries. Her responsibilities include developing the global ethics & compliance strategy, developing education to foster a culture of integrity, managing third party due diligence, as well as conflicts of interest. Before Cushman & Wakefield, she was a Principal Consultant & Adviser with Spark Compliance Consulting where she shared her expertise and experience with Boards and Compliance professionals from around the world. Ellen served as the Board expert for a healthcare organization subject to a Corporate Integrity Agreement and has led ethics and compliance programs for other organizations subject to enforcement actions. She advised on compliance risk, compliance program assessments, best practices, obtaining ISO 37001 certification for anti-bribery management systems, policy management frameworks, and applying for and being named a World’s Most Ethical Company.
Ellen served as the Vice President, Compliance Program Operations and Chief Privacy Officer for LifePoint Health, a national healthcare network with 60,000 employees in over 80 hospitals, post-acute services, and outpatient centers operating in 28 states. There she was responsible for all aspects of the Privacy Program, establishing an annual conflict of interest process, managing the policy review committee, and designing Code of Conduct education. As the Senior Vice President – Audit, Ethics & Compliance Officer for AARP, a 38-million-member not-for-profit association that advocates for the 50+ to choose how they live as they age, she set the strategic direction for both the Internal Audit and the Ethics & Compliance functions with a team of seven and a budget of over $1 million. Ellen created the first Code of Conduct and Code of Ethics for the AARP Boards and established an ethics and compliance program from seven-page conflict of interest policy. AARP was honored as a World’s Most Ethical Company in 2019, 2020, and 2021.
Ellen led the day-to-day compliance program operations for the second largest food distributor in the United States, U.S. Foodservice, Inc., where she managed a staff of six and reported to senior management and the Board. She served as the Vice President – Compliance Operations for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois, Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma and was the designated Compliance Officer for all government contracts including Medicare C and D, Medicaid, Federal Employees Program, CHAMPUS, and other federal, state and local government customers.
She taught at the Fordham University School of Law, Program for Corporate Ethics and Compliance and is an adjunct professor at Loyola University Chicago, School of Law, Center for Compliance Studies.
Ellen serves on the Advisory Boards for the Notre Dame Deloitte Center for Ethical Leadership, Compliance Week, and the Quorum Initiative. She is the co-founder of The Seven Elements Book Club, a book club devoted to ethics and compliance authors and winner of the 2022 award for “Best New Idea” by Great Women in Compliance podcast. She is a co-host of the Great Women in Compliance podcast roundtable series.