The 2008 Global Financial Crisis was a Black Swan event that brought new attention to the importance of risk, compliance and resilience. Our Black Swan Partners played significant roles helping their organizations respond to crisis during this period. Together, the Black Swan Partners bring many decades of relevant professional experience helping organizations and their investors increase their enterprise resilience by optimizing their risk decision-making capacity.
Bill has decades of senior level experience providing compliance, tax, risk and ethics advice to a variety of entities, including Fortune 50 companies, a leading research university, and insurers and government organizations. He understands the diverse range of questions that challenge organizations in highly regulated industries. Bill brings energy, vitality, creativity and an important ability to see the larger picture. Bill has created practical solutions to problems and has proven himself to be a strong leader with a time-tested ability to motivate people and meet aggressive goals.
He has held senior roles in risk management and compliance and has had significant interaction with executives and public and corporate boards. He helped create and implement a risk framework for a global professional services firm and was appointed as the first Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) for a US healthcare consultancy. Bill worked for two decades as a consultant assisting organizations with their regulatory and compliance risks. Bill’s work during this period included a technical focus on fiduciary, tax, HIPAA, FERPA, ERISA, ADA, FMLA, COBRA and other regulatory requirements governing healthcare and HR program design and administration. Bill developed a comprehensive risk management program for managed care organizations; and assisted numerous health care organizations in obtaining new product licensure, including preparation and filing of applications with state and federal regulators.
Bill is trained as a tax lawyer (JD and LL.M) and has continued his education in compliance, risk and ethics throughout his career. He is a Certified Compliance & Ethics Professional (CCEP) and he completed a Masters of Science in Risk Management (MSc) at the Leonard NYU Stern School of Business in New York City, which broadened his global skills as a strategic risk practitioner.
JAMES BLAIR, AFFILIATE PARTNER
Jim Blair is a senior risk and compliance executive who assists organizations in developing earnings-based, high-performing risk frameworks. During his career, he developed analytic, governance and prevention tools and best practices to help organizations improve cultures and proactively manage enterprise risks.
Jim's unique diplomatic skills have helped organizations and their leaders deploy long-term planning/strategy assessments and effect change management. He is an industry leader with deep cyber risk experience serving as a delegate of the United States industry group to the G-8 International Assembly on Cyber-Terrorism and served as president of the entertainment industry's Broadband and Internet Services Theft Task Force.
Jim graduated from the Oregon Institute of Technology with Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineer. He serves as an advisor to the Rocky Mountain Children’s Law Center Board of Directors, and serves on Boards of the United Way Bridging the Gap program and the Oregon Institute of Technology Foundation.
Hazel has more than three decades of experience preventing and investigating fraud, and helping organizations improve their culture by addressing corruption, compliance and other operational risks.
Hazel adds meaningful value by:
Developing and building strong compliance and governance processes.
Leading, developing and coaching high-performing cross-functional teams to identify and implement best practices for effective compliance and risk management programs.
As a former forensic accountant and independent monitor, Hazel’s compliance consulting work began in the early 2000s when she oversaw the reforms required by the Los Angeles Police Department. Her career then took her into the highly regulated financial services industry where she had a lead role in inspiring a culture of transparency and accountability in a 55,000-person public company that was the subject of a regulatory settlement agreement. She’s also performed services for a multi-national telecommunications company to help them reform their compliance practices as required by a regulatory settlement agreement. Hazel is an outside- -the-box thinker with strong problem-solving, project management and organizational skills. She has led projects for companies ranging from multi-national public companies to small not-for-profit organizations, including many procurement fraud and other investigations during her tenure as a forensic accountant which spanned over 20 years.
Hazel is a CPA from Canada with a Bachelor of Mathematics from the University of Waterloo. She also obtained accreditation as a Certified Compliance & Ethics Professional, a CA-Designated Specialist in Investigative & Forensic Accounting and a Certified Fraud Examiner. Hazel was selected by the Canadian Board Diversity Council as one of the top 50 “board-ready” candidates in 2014. Since then, she was accredited as a Fellow in Board Governance. She’s currently serving as the Chair of the Risk & Compliance Committee of Blue Cross Life Insurance, and as a member of the Board of Outward Bound Canada. Previously, she’s chaired the Risk Oversight Committee, Audit Committee and Investment Committee of two not-for-profit boards.