The Walden Pond

Host Vincent Walden goes solo as he shares his story of changing careers and discusses the direction he plans to take his new company in. Vincent is using his 20+ years as a legal, compliance and investigation technology innovation expert to lead Kona AI as its new CEO. Kona AI is the most innovative, AI-driven, cost effective and easy-to-use compliance and anti-fraud technology solution to mid and large companies on the market. In the last months of his role as Managing Director at Alvarez & Marsal, he came to the realization that the Kona AI platform, which they had been using to help companies find improper payments, needed to be scaled. Now, he and his colleague Matt Galvin are collaborating with MIT to build an algorithm-sharing consortium of leading companies. Resources To learn more, and contact Vincent Walden, please visit Kona AI

Andi McNeal is Vice President of Research with the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, a membership association serving more than 90,000 anti-fraud professionals globally. As a CFE, she specializes in fraud prevention, detection and investigation, education and training, research and analysis, corporate culture and leadership, and association management. Andi discusses the ACFE’s 2022 Report to the Nations and its insights on occupational fraud. Download the report here! The ACFE’s study focuses on occupational fraud, Andi shares. They were not attempting to get a snapshot of every type of fraud that occurs - only cases perpetrated by employees against the organizations they worked for, specifically between 2020 and 2021. In the 2100 cases they observed, over $3.6 billion was calculated in losses, which is just a small portion of the fraud committed globally. Fraud isn’t an accounting problem, it’s a human problem.  Resources Andi McNeal on LinkedIn  To learn more, and contact Vincent Walden, please visit Alvarez and Marsal

Marta Cadavid is co-founder and CEO at NoFraud, an organization dedicated to fighting fraud by using technology to anticipate criminal behavior. NoFraud specializes in forensic audit, cybersecurity, and investigations of economic crimes. As a Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (CAMS), Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE), AML Anti-Money Laundering Certified Associate (AMLCA), Marta possesses valuable experience that sets her a cut above the rest. She is also Consultant and International Coach of Auditool. Marta discusses how fraud triangle theory can be used to improve fraud detection. Fraud, corruption, waste, corporate abuse and other misbehaviors destroy an organization’s value. They are the silent enemy that kills companies, Marta shares. This enemy was the driving force behind the conception of NoFraud; their goal was to be one step ahead of these misbehaviors. They now help corporations build value through the prediction, prevention, and detection of undesirable conduct at the workplace. According to Marta’s research, 15-25% of people are never involved in unethical actions. Unfortunately, the larger percentage of people are prone to behaving according to the moment. NoFraud combines fraud triangle theory with artificial intelligence, data analytics and semantics to monitor patterns of keystrokes or communications from an individual.  Resources Marta Cadavid on LinkedIn Email: [email protected]  NoFraud.la | MartaCadavid.com To learn more, and contact Vincent Walden, please visit Alvarez and Marsal

Margot Cella is a research and public policy analyst, and Vice President of Research and Anti-Fraud Initiatives at the Center for Audit Quality (CAQ). The CAQ is dedicated to enhancing investor confidence and public trust in the global capital markets. Margot shares how the CAQ is intersecting the accounting and legal compliance professions to improve corporate culture and financial reporting. The CAQ was founded post-Sarbanes-Oxley era by the largest accounting firms, who thought it was necessary to have an organization to serve as the voice of the profession. As a non-partisan, public policy organization, the CAQ frequently works with the PCAOB and the SEC. A notable initiative they carry out is convening capital market stakeholders to advance the discussions of critical issues affecting either audit quality or public company reporting.[4:08] One thing that should be recognized is that professionals in finance are skilled with data, processes and controls. They are always innovating ways to build systems that detect or monitor enterprise and fraud risks, and raise a red flag when something goes beyond what should be a normal transaction or activity. Compliance professionals should be part of these conversations, as their work is impacted by these systems.   Resources Margot Cella on LinkedIn AntiFraudCollaboration.org To learn more, and contact Vincent Walden, please visit Alvarez and Marsal

Malcolm Wright is the founder of InnoFi Advisory. As a former Chief Compliance Officer at a large cryptocurrency exchange, Malcolm now advises companies on ensuring responsible innovation in digital finance. All companies, and their compliance officers, need to be familiar with cryptocurrencies and the trend towards decentralized finance. Malcolm describes how current compliance concepts such as “Compliance by Design” and “Know Your Customer (KYC)” are still applicable in the crypto space and gives practical advice to legal and compliance professionals on how to navigate in the crypto future.  The year 2021 brought with it an explosion of different non-fungible tokens (NFTs) used for funding projects of all shapes and sizes, which often happens in decentralized finance where the whole ecosystem is run by smart contracts - automated contracts driven by code. Having an NFT is basically a digital certificate of provenance. The emergence of these NFTs and their uses has heralded the creator economy, and will revolutionize the way culture, finance, and our societies work. For the last few years in crypto, there has been significant focus on centralized exchanges and custodians, but recently focus has shifted towards other areas of risk. At InnoFi, they consider how risks can present themselves not only from an anti-money-laundering perspective, but also a consumer protection perspective.  Resources Malcolm Wright on LinkedIn To learn more, and contact Vincent Walden, please visit Alvarez and Marsal

Chian Boen is Senior Manager with Johnson & Johnson’s Global Audit & Assurance Group. He is experienced in government and AML investigations, law enforcement, and forensic accounting. He joins Vince Walden to discuss Johnson & Johnson’s strategy for data-driven assurance. Two of the things Chian relies the most on to help him conduct anti-corruption audits and investigations are his team and heavy analytics. If you’re not using certain analytics tools, such as Tableau data visualization, you’re not leveraging as much as you can in terms of investigations. As for investigations, while it is always great to have face-to-face conversations, software like Zoom and Microsoft make things more flexible, as you can use resources on-screen to help you identify body language tells.  The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated innovation and technology, Vince says. People were forced to adapt and improve in such a short time that everything progressed at a much faster pace than it would have otherwise.

Bob Mascola is a global legal and compliance executive and educator. He is Senior Director of the Program on Corporate Ethics and Compliance at Fordham University School of Law, as well as Senior Counsel at Compliance Systems Legal Group. He joins Vince Walden to discuss compliance from an academic perspective.  Fordham University’s program on Corporate Ethics and Compliance is a 30 credit Master’s degree program full of students from different professional backgrounds. Most of the students are working professionals, so they bring real-life experience and insights to enrich classroom discussions. The curriculum is designed to meet the needs of each student, regardless of how diverse their specialties are. The program is helpful in equipping students to add value to the organizations that they're with. In addition to acquiring knowledge about different regulatory frameworks, it teaches skills like legal research, risk assessment, technology training, communications memo writing, and how to conduct investigations.  Being familiar enough with data to work with it is essential for future success in compliance. The DOJ and other enforcement authorities are raising their expectations of companies regarding the use of data analytics. If you want to show that you are leading industry expectations, you've got to be the best in data analytics. Resources Bob Mascola on LinkedIn | Twitter

Jay Leib is Executive Vice President of Innovation and Strategy at Reveal, an eDiscovery review company. Jay was previously the Chief Strategy Officer at kCura before he founded NexLP, a pioneering AI company in Chicago that was acquired by Reveal. He joins Vince Walden to talk about the work Reveal has been doing, and investigation and eDiscover programs. By the year 2010, data had become much larger than human beings could get through in an efficient manner. It was for this reason that Reveal was founded, as well as to perform as an alternative to Relativity. Reveal’s mission is to help end users, law firms, in-house corporations, investigators and international consultancies “get through whatever their obligation is, as far as data goes, as fast as possible, while finding the key insights and key stories as fast as possible.” After acquiring a company called Brain Space, Reveal created what they call an ‘AI model library.’ Their data science team has built AI models to target specific issues within data to get important documents into the hands of investigators as quickly as possible. AI models have also been built to look for issues surrounding unethical and fraudulent behaviors.  Resources Jay Leib on LinkedIn | Twitter NexLP.com

Alan Gibson is Director of Legal and Compliance Innovation at Microsoft, where he identifies and incubates market-making opportunities for legal and compliance solutions. With over 20 years of cumulative experience in law, business and compliance, he currently serves as a change agent to revolutionize the way companies measure program effectiveness and manage compliance risks. He joins Vince Walden to define the three horizons of compliance innovation, and what they entail. Alan’s mission is to find new ways that technology can help transform both the business and practice of law and compliance. He spends his time discussing the art of what’s possible with customers and at Microsoft to incentivize foundational technology investments and frame those sorts of conversations.  The first horizon of compliance innovation involves solving immediate, important issues, building foundational capabilities, and managing discreet risks within your department. The second involves thinking about the midterm objectives of your overall digital transformation strategies, creating multi-point solutions, and taking advantage of the ability to combine. Finally, the third horizon involves looking at the long-term innovative solutions that can cause disruption and using them as the North Star for the first two horizons.  Resources Alan Gibson on LinkedIn Microsoft

Bryan Judice is Senior Director of the Office of Ethics and Compliance at Panasonic Avionics Corporation. With over 22 years of experience specializing in conducting forensic investigations and large, complex litigation matters, he has provided financial and business advisory services to clients in a variety of industries, including aerospace, aviation, and financial services. He joins Vince Walden to talk about data-driven compliance, and why it’s more effective. Compliance processes best suited for analytics are available, self-contained, and have few different touchpoints in order to ensure the data isn’t dispersed across too many different systems. Singular compliance initiatives are painless to digest, pull apart and examine, which makes it easier to create analytics to identify where the risks are in your programs.  Bryan shares what business processes he has seen work effectively for monitorships in today’s landscape. He also discusses the five things everyone should know before they secure buy-in and budgets for data-driven compliance.  Resources Bryan Judice on LinkedIn