Whistleblower Network News (WNN) is honored to announce that Sherron Watkins has joined WNN as the Senior Fellow for Ethics and Policy. In this role, Watkins will write opinion pieces relating to ethics and/or whistleblower-related corporate ethics, whistleblower policies, and legislation. She will also serve as an advisor to WNN staff on major issues related to corporate ethics and integrity.
Ms. Watkins is known as the Enron whistleblower. She is the former Vice President of Enron who alerted then-CEO Ken Lay in August 2001 to accounting irregularities. She warned Lay that Enron ‘might implode in a wave of accounting scandals.’ Ms. Watkins testified before Congressional Committees from the House and Senate investigating Enron’s demise. In 2002, TIME magazine named her, along with two others, Coleen Rowley of the FBI and Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom, as Persons of the Year. TIME honored the women for being “people who did right just by doing their jobs rightly.”
Her journey through the Enron crisis has inspired many. It also crystallized her focus on improving the lot of whistleblowers and would-be whistleblowers. Her first column for WNN will appear Tuesday, April 27, 2021.