By Diane Valat and Victoria Luján Ecarri, President and Vice President of the Ethics & Compliance Club
The Ethics & Compliance Club was founded in February 2020 by a group of master students of the LLM in Global Corporate Compliance and is aimed at fostering discussions on transparency, integrity, risk management, and other ethics and compliance-related topics while creating a value-driven culture and ethical behavior within the community.
Who can join the club?
The Club is open to all undergraduate and master’s degree students at IE University, but we also have an extensive professional network outside of the IE Community who support us in our initiatives and attend our events. We are trying to be as inclusive as possible and believe we can really contribute in helping students and professionals learning more about Ethics and Compliance by creating a safe space to discuss such topics.
Do you need experience?
To join our club, no previous experience is needed, only motivation and open-mindedness on learning about something new and impactful both at the professional and personal level.
What does the club do?
The Club was created quite recently so we are still developing our activities and brainstorming about the best initiatives to offer to our members. Right now, we are mainly focusing on the Weekly Newsletter to inform our members on news of the week, books/podcasts/movies recommendations and scandals summaries. We also organize webinars by inviting experts from different sectors, industries and departments to talk about a variety of topics involving ethics and compliance such as for example ethics in big data and AI, whistleblowing protection or electoral transparency.
We are also really proud to announce the start of a new event: Ethics & Integrity Challenge.
Do you collaborate with other clubs?
We believe collaboration is key to bring exciting events and activities to the IE Community and consider it as an added value on our webinars. Since the creation of the Club, we have been partnering up with several different clubs at IE University to inform our members on up-to-date topics and create a discussion platform by linking two fields together. Recently, we partnered up with the Big Data and AI Club for an event on ethics in the field of Big Data and AI, the Global Transformation Club on Electoral Transparency in the Age of Covid, and are planning to continue collaborating as we see these events are generally an amazing way to know other clubs and reach a wider audience to discuss different insightful topics.
What is your club most proud of?
Since the Club is so recent, we are extremely proud of the way it has grown in the past months especially in our social media platforms where we have more than 700 followers on LinkedIn and 130 on Instagram. It really shows that our efforts are paying off and that our community is extending with common interest in knowing more about ethics and compliance. Within the internal level, we are also delighted to have such an amazing team of officers and proud of being an all-women leadership board at the moment.
We are always learning from our community and are delighted to see the positive returns and feedback we have had after different initiatives.
We are really excited about the next event the Ethics & Compliance is hosting in collaboration with IE University, IE Law School and IE Campus Life for the very first time: The Ethics and Integrity Challenge. The aim of this challenge is to encourage students and young professionals to question how ethical decision-making is applied in an appropriate way to produce a dynamic, value-driven and highly productive workplace culture with integrity.
What has the clubs biggest achievement or event been so far?
Since the Ethics & Compliance is such a recent club, created just before the pandemic started in Spain, the fact that the Club survived and managed to expand to expand its platform and attract new members to the community during these challenging times is something that fills us with pride; it allowed us to offer alternative educational experiences and learn from this to better adapt.
We all hope that as current officers we will be able to carry the founders’ legacy and expand it more to ensure a value driven culture and ethical behavior within the Community.
What is the club looking forward to this year? Any plans?
With Covid-19, we are trying to develop more virtual activities to reach the entire community of IE students and other professionals interested in our initiatives to ensure we are providing up-to-date and insightful projects. At the moment, we hope that the launch of the Ethics & Integrity Challenge will be successful to determine the creation of a new tradition, not only for our Club but for IE itself!
We are currently working on promoting other initiatives both at the internal IE level and external by introducing new projects. These initiatives are still on the planning stage but we are looking forward to see whether we could further collaborate with the University in terms of educational activities offered, such as building and developing mandatory classes/workshops to all IE students about corporate governance and ethical behavior or even collaborate with the IE LawAhead Blog by writing articles with students and professionals.
How can people contact you, join, or participate?
The Ethics & Compliance Club is trying to be as digitally connected as possible especially with the current pandemic that is not allowing us to organize face-to-face events or initiatives. Everyone can join our social media platforms on LinkedIn and Instagram , and we would also recommend joining our Club on CampusGroups to be updated on different webinars, interviews or articles published, as well as the Weekly Newsletter.
If you have any questions or inquiries, you can also contact us through email (ethicscompliance.club@ie.edu) and we try to respond as fast as possible.
Why does IE need a club like this one and How do you think the club embodies the IE Values (Entrepreneurship, Tech & Innovation, Humanities, Diversity)?
IE needs a club that encourages ethical practices given that as an academic institution, they are preparing the future leaders and change-makers of the world and these are principles that have to be taught and enshrined in one’s core values from the very beginning. Corporate governance, for example should be among the key pillars every entrepreneur, employee, employer and individuals as a whole should take into account and have constantly in mind.
