I’m the newest member to the Business Law Prof Blog and also
the newest member of the team to academia. 
In my past life, I spent several years as outside counsel doing
commercial litigation and labor and employment work and then twelve years as
in-house counsel, leaving corporate life as a deputy general counsel, chief
privacy officer, and compliance and ethics officer.  That experience guides my scholarly and
teaching interests, which include corporate governance, regulatory compliance,
corporate social responsibility, business and human rights, legal ethics, legal
issues related to social enterprises and social entrepreneurship; and how
legislation affects and motivates corporate behavior.

To that end I have written on (1)  the need for
an affirmative defense to corporate criminal liability for an effective
compliance program, using the FCPA as a pilot;  (2) the potential
unintended consequences of the Dodd-Frank conflict minerals provision,
which requires US issuers to disclose whether they source minerals from the
Democratic Republic of Congo and relies on the SEC for execution of this human
rights law; and (3) how the government can incentivize corporations to move beyond
voluntary initiatives and industry standards for human rights due diligence in
the wake of  the 2011 UN Guiding
Principles, demands from socially responsible investors, and pressures from worldwide
exchanges that require or recommend disclosure on environmental, social and
governance factors.  My next couple of posts
will address the latter two topics- the Dodd Frank provision, which is on
appeal to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals and is the model for potential
legislation in the EU, and the role of corporations vis a vis the state and
various stakeholders in human rights.  This
is the topic of an upcoming conference at West Virginia University supported by
the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights featuring academics, government
officials, business leaders and civil society organizations. You can register
here for the conference. http://law.wvu.edu/bhr2013

I look forward to sharing ideas with you all.