Risk Management and Sustainability -- 'Two Sides of the Same Coin'
by Christopher P. Skroupa
Originally published on Forbes
Dr. Leo S. Mackay, Jr. is senior vice president of Internal Audit, Ethics and Sustainability at Lockheed Martin. Before joining the corporation, Dr. Mackay served as Deputy Secretary of Veterans Affairs. The former Navy fighter pilot graduated from the United States Naval Academy and has a master’s degree and Ph.D. in public policy from Harvard University. Dr. Mackay is also a member of the U.S. Naval Institute, Council on Foreign Relations and Aspen Strategy Group.
Matthew Swibel is director of enterprise risk and sustainability. He leads an integrated team, reporting to Dr. Mackay, responsible for enterprise risk management and sustainability program strategy, implementation and stakeholder engagement. Prior to joining Lockheed Martin, Swibel spent almost a decade as a business journalist, most recently as Associate Editor of Forbes, where he was recognized by the Overseas Press Club for his business reporting from abroad. He is a graduate of the American University and has an MBA from the University of Maryland.
Skroupa: Given the complementary tools of enterprise risk management and sustainability to achieve strategic objectives, how are you organized to harness capabilities in these areas?
Mackay: We recently aligned the organizations so those two functions at Lockheed Martin – enterprise risk and sustainability – are under a common reporting senior, Matt Swibel. Both ERM and sustainability are principally focused on the identification and prioritization of risk. They also enjoy a pretty good community of tools with which you attack either subject intellectually. One way to think about sustainability is as a first among equals in terms of the mitigation strategy. Putting those two together where they can share tools, leverage people and also develop a working partnership made sense to us. One prominent area of leverage is that in both we see a primacy on internal reporting, external disclosure and transparency.
