S3E13 | COVID-19 on Board: Tapestry Networks’ Marsha Ershaghi Hames Engages Directors on Pandemic Response

“Directors are harnessing the power of dialogue to navigate the economic, business and human implications of this crisis.”

- Marsha Ershaghi Hames

Longtime ethics and compliance expert and former LRN executive Dr. Marsha Ershaghi Hames speaks with LRN’s Ben DiPietro about what boards and audit committee chairs are grappling with in the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak. She shares her insights after holding a series of virtual roundtable discussions with directors, and also talks about how ethics and compliance teams will need to adapt to be effective in a post-COVID world.

Dr. Marsha Ershaghi Hames is a partner at Tapestry Networks, where she advises non executive directors, C-suite executives, and in-house counsel on issues related to corporate governance, culture transformation, board leadership, and stakeholder engagement. At Tapestry she co-leads the corporate governance practice focused on the U.S. regional audit committee networks in Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta. She is a contributing leader to the compensation and talent committees.

Prior to joining Tapestry, Ershaghi Hames was a managing director of strategy and development at LRN. She specialized in the alignment of leaders and organizations for effective corporate governance and organizational culture transformation, and was a former co-host of this podcast.

She is an industry thought leader, interviewed and cited by the media including CNBC, CNN, Ethisphere, HR Magazine, Compliance Week, FCPA Report, Entrepreneur.com, Chief Learning Officer, ATD Talent & Development, Corporate Counsel Magazine, the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics, and more. She serves as an expert fellow on USC’s Neely Center for Ethical Leadership and Decision Making, and on the advisory boards of LMH Strategies Inc., and Compliance.ai.

Ershaghi Hames holds an Ed.D. and MA from Pepperdine University. Her research was on the role of ethical leadership as an enabler of organizational culture change. Her BA is from the University of Southern California. She is a certified compliance and ethics professional.

What You’ll Learn on This Episode:

• [1:04] How are Marsha and her family doing amid the COVID-19 crisis?

• [1:26] Marsha spent almost two decades at LRN and played a leading role in the company’s success during that time. She left earlier this year for her new role at Tapestry Networks. What prompted that decision to leave and what is she doing now in her new job?

• [4:29] How has the pandemic changed the way Marsha is approaching her new job, and what is different from what she was planning to do?

• [6:07] Marsha has recently held a series of virtual meetings with audit committee chairs from many of the nation’s top corporations. What did she learn in those sessions as to what boards are doing and thinking about in the midst of the pandemic?

• [10:29] How can a board engage and make better use of the ethics and compliance programs and assets that are there when it comes to the COVID-19 response, and for how to move forward?

• [12:36] When the time comes for people to come back to the office, how is that office going to be changed, and what changes does Marsha expect to see in how people work? Will the viability and now widespread adoption of people working from home make offices obsolete?

• [15:13] How will the ethics and compliance programs need to change to be effective in a post-COVID world?