In the May 2018 Issue of Financier Worldwide, Melissa Sawyer participated in the discussion “Forum: Engaging with stakeholders on long-term governance, ethics and cultural issues.” The panelists discussed the importance of governance, ethics and cultural issues to businesses operating in today’s market, as well as how to optimize stakeholder interactions to drive governance issues forward and build an ethical culture. Additionally, the interview provides potential advice to organizations looking to implement policies and procedures to enhance governance, ethics and culture. In discussing how an awareness of governance, ethics and cultural issues can mitigate the broad range of corporate risks that organizations face, Melissa said, “risk mitigation is not an end unto itself. A board needs to balance the time it spends overseeing risks against the time it spends overseeing strategy.” In discussing the importance of supporting an open culture within a corporate environment, Melissa added, “A culture that fosters transparent reporting of problematic practices is always desirable, so that management and the board can quickly take action to fix issues. However, companies need to establish thoughtful processes and procedures to handle whistleblower reports so that they can weed out spurious claims and surface real problems effectively.”