A Conversation With Resilience Expert, Debra Sabatini Hennelly

Debra Sabatini Hennelly was the student government president and my UVA Law School class president for the class of '88. She teaches organizations ethical leadership, including how to create psychological safety in the workplace, so that employees will feel empowered to speak up, as an early warning about problems that can be prevented and addressed early. Employee wellbeing is crucial to organizational health. The pandemic's "Great Attrition," or "Great Resignation," underscored the importance of creating an ethical culture in an organization, so that employees feel like they belong, that their voices are heard, and that they are doing work that matters. Debbie also penned a book, Presence in Chaos – 365 Mindful Moments, that contains inspiring daily quotes set against her beautiful original photography, and describes how the book grew out of her experiencing burnout and reaching a personal low point in her life.

Debbie helps executives and boards create cultures of integrity and inclusion, which are essential to the resilience of organizations and their people. She uses stakeholder-focused frameworks for managing compliance, ethical and ESG (Environment, Social, Governance) risks and opportunities and helps integrate them into operations and culture. She also coaches legal and compliance professionals, helping them lead effectively and develop strategies for personal resilience. For more than 25 years, Debbie has been creating innovative approaches to managing compliance and fostering ethical leadership—from boardrooms to break rooms—with organizations ranging from small entities to some of the largest multinationals. Her expertise is rooted in her multi-disciplinary background in engineering and law, cultivated through her decades of corporate leadership roles and consulting experience. Her passions for learning, teaching and "connecting the dots” fuel her ability to inspire authenticity, engagement and accountability. Debbie founded Resiliti in 2004 (originally, as Compliance & Ethics Solutions), to provide ethical leadership, culture and compliance consulting and training. Resiliti offers a comprehensive suite of services, including holistic risk management, ESG strategies, culture mapping and experiential learning. They help bring to life organizational values and build cultures of integrity that support the perspectives and dignity of each individual in a team and across an organization.

Debbie is an adjunct professor in Fordham University School of Law’s Program on Corporate Ethics and Compliance. Debbie spent almost 15 years in legal and compliance leadership roles—AT&T; Lucent Technologies; Avaya; BP; Avon Products; as well as general counsel and chief compliance officer for two privately-held chemical companies, reporting to their CEOs and meeting quarterly with their boards of directors. Her experience holding senior in-house roles in public and private companies, as well as working in two ethics and compliance service providers, has enabled her to acquire an uncommon perspective from both sides of the client/vendor relationship. Prior to her corporate experience, Debbie practiced law with two major law firms in Washington, DC, and New Jersey. Before practicing law, she was a civil and environmental engineer, supervising construction for Exxon. Debbie is a member of the Society of Human Resource Management and the Society of Corporate Compliance & Ethics. She speaks frequently at conferences and writes on several platforms. Debbie earned her B.S.E. in Civil/Environmental Engineering from Duke University and her J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law.

Learn more about her work at Resiliti.com and PresenceInChaos.com, and follow her on LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.