Mary Inman: On Theranos, Meta and Representing High Profile Whistleblowers.

Boardroom Governance with Evan Epstein

Mar 18 2024 • 58 mins

(0:00) Intro.

(1:27) About the podcast sponsor: The American College of Governance Counsel.

(2:14) Start of interview.

(3:30) Mary's "origin story."

(5:32) Her start as a whistleblower lawyer at Philips & Cohen. The advent of US Whistleblower reward programs (CFTC, SEC, IRS, Transportation, Treasury, and DOJ soon).

(7:50) The Theranos case and her representation of Tyler Schulz.

(14:02) More about the SEC Whistleblower Program.

(24:52) The Facebook (Meta) case and her representation of Frances Haugen. On the rise of whistleblowers in Silicon Valley: The Tech Worker Handbook (created by Ifeoma Ozoma, a whistleblower at Pinterest). The Silence No More Act (CA SB 331). Reference to Mark MacGann, the Uber whistleblower.

(31:00) On the health hazards to whistleblowers. Reference to New England Journal of Medicine article on impact in whistle-blowers in cases of major health care fraud. Unfortunate death of Boeing Whistleblower. The Personal Toll of Whistle-Blowing (New Yorker Magazine).

(37:52) On FCPA cases, and role of whistleblowers in foreign corruption enforced by the SEC and DOJ. Reference to the Billion Dollar Whale book.

(47:19) Future trends on whistleblower cases and corporate governance practices (elevation of Chief Compliance Officers).

(50:50)  Advice to board members: embrace whistleblowers and encourage speaking up. Reference to this study: Evidence on the Use and Efficacy of Internal Whistleblowing Systems.

(52:37) Books that have greatly influenced her life: children books by William Steig (inspired her parenting).

(53:17) Her mentor: Lisa Foster.

(54:53)  Quotes that she thinks of often or lives her life by: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." (Martin Luther King, Jr)

(55:53) An unusual habit or absurd thing that she loves.

(56:18) The living person she most admires: whistleblowers generally, "I call them Truth Tellers and Up Standers".

Mary Inman is a partner at Whistleblower Partners LLP, a new boutique law firm specializing exclusively in representing whistleblowers under the various U.S. whistleblower reward programs.

You can follow Evan on social media at:

Twitter: @evanepstein

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/

Substack: https://evanepstein.substack.com/

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Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License