03:00 PM - 04:30 PM (Pacific)
04:00 PM - 05:30 PM (Mountain)
05:00 PM - 06:30 PM (Central)
06:00 PM - 07:30 PM (Eastern)

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Overview

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has sent shockwaves through the international system, and companies are facing many fast moving challenges and questions, from OFAC sanctions to providing humanitarian aid and security on the ground. In this panel discussion and live Q&A session, we bring together experts from the intelligence community, academia, and private sector to help you understand and analyze what's going on and what it means for directors and executives of private companies in the United States.

Thank you to our National and Gold Chapter Sponsors!

Panelists

Guillermo Christensen Washington DC Office Managing Partner Ice Miller LLP

Guillermo Christensen is the Office Managing Partner for Ice Miller’s Washington DC office. Guillermo combines his experience as a former CIA officer, a diplomat with the U.S. Department of State and an attorney to shape and inform the advice he provides to clients on cybersecurity and national security law.
His cybersecurity experience includes managing ransomware responses to investigating economic espionage cases, including those where a nation-state or insider threat may be involved.

In the international trade area, Guillermo regularly represents clients in complying with economic sanctions and embargoes administered by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and anticorruption laws such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). Guillermo also counsels clients in
managing national security reviews through the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), particularly those involving high-technology and critical infrastructure sectors.

Prior to becoming a lawyer, Guillermo served as an intelligence officer with the CIA for 15 years in a variety of domestic and international assignments. His experiences included inter-agency roles with the Departments of Defense and State, the FBI and several national intelligence fusion centers. In 2001,
Guillermo was selected by CIA Director George Tenet to serve as the National Intelligence Fellow to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Guillermo subsequently returned to public service in 2010-2011 as the Science and Technology Advisor to the U.S. Mission to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in France. There, Guillermo was responsible for managing and conceptualizing U.S. policy in the areas of cybersecurity, data privacy, technology, telecommunications, and science at the OECD.

Guillermo remains active in a number of national security related areas, including as a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations and as a participant in the U.S. Department of State Speaker’s Bureau. He is a frequent speaker and moderator on national security and cybersecurity topics in the U.S. and
internationally, speaking before the US House of Representatives during the COVID Pandemic on the impact of cybercrime. Guillermo is the founding Co-President of the DC Metro Chapter of the Private Directors Association. He currently serves on the International Advisory Board for William & Mary and is
also the general counsel of the U.S. Association of Cyber Forces (AUSCF), a not-for-profit dedicated to improving US cyber readiness.

Michele Wucker Founder & CEO Gray Rhino & Company

Michele Wucker is a strategic advisor and best-selling author who coined the term “gray rhino” as a call to take a fresh look at obvious, probable, impactful risks that give us a choice to act or not. Her insights help to explain why some people step up to head off danger yet others let themselves and those around them get trampled.

Michele introduced the gray rhino at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2013. It inspired her third book, the influential global best-seller, THE GRAY RHINO: How to Recognize and Act on Obvious Dangers We Ignore, in 2016. Drawing on her work as a policy analyst, financial journalist, and think tank executive, she founded the Chicago-based advisory firm Gray Rhino & Company to help business and policy decision makers to apply gray rhino theory to improve their responses.

To her great surprise, Michele’s readers encouraged her to apply the concept to more personal issues. Her 2019 TED Talk about personal uses of gray rhino theory has attracted more than 2.5 million views. Her newest book, YOU ARE WHAT YOU RISK: The New Art and Science of Navigating an Uncertain World, builds on insights into personal and cultural influences and explores the feedback loop among individual, organizational, and societal factors in influencing gray rhino responses.

The gray metaphor has sent tremors through global stock markets when Chinese officials used it to warn of financial risks. It made headlines around the world as a framework for the ignored warnings for the COVID-19 pandemic and has appeared in media in more than 65 countries and 35 languages and counting. Central banks and securities regulators around the world use gray rhino theory, as do business strategists, boards of directors, business continuity and emergency management professionals, insurers, and policy makers focused on everything from national security to climate change.

The gray rhino inspired a lyric in the hit single, “Blue & Grey,” by the global mega-K-Pop phenomenon BTS. It also has inspired characters in a video game and an experimental jazz single in Japan, and a dance choreography in Australia. The gray rhino also has appeared in the pages of books by respected historians and diplomats, a Brazilian self-help book, and a science fiction novel by Kim Stanley Robinson.

Michele speaks regularly to high-level audiences on risk management, the global economy, and decision-making, and is quoted often in leading media. She has been recognized as a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum and a Guggenheim Fellow, among other honors.

Visit her website at www.thegrayrhino.com; follow her on twitter @wucker.

Doug Klain Assistant Director Eurasia Center, The Atlantic Council

Doug Klain is an assistant director at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, where he assists in the Council’s work on Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. He joined the Atlantic Council in 2019. Klain writes regularly for the Council’s blogs and has been published by various outlets including the Hill, the National Interest, and the Kyiv Independent, and has been interviewed by outlets including Al Jazeera, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and the Sydney Morning-Herald. His work focuses on Russian foreign policy and Ukraine’s democratic development

Moderator

Brendan Foo Partner Forward Risk and Intelligence

Brendan M. Foo is a Partner and co-founder of Forward Risk. He leads the firm’s corporate contest practice, working on the offense for activists as well as on the defense for companies and their legal counsel, to develop actionable intelligence in aid of their strategies. He has designed, managed, and executed dozens of investigative projects, and has helped clients to prevail in multiple high-stakes proxy battles.  Prior to co-founding Forward Risk Brendan worked at a DC-based due diligence firm, where he established and led the Asia desk and headed its internal research operations in aid of initial public offerings and private equity due diligence. He previously worked as a journalist, and has a sophisticated understanding of international and regional political and security issues and their interactions with the private sector. He has also been involved with a number of international organizations, including the US-ASEAN Business Council and the World Policy Institute, and his writing has been published in the World Policy Journal and Directors & Boards.

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