SCCE 2021 Speakers Announced

At long last, the Society of Corporate Compliance & Ethics has announced the agenda and speakers for its upcoming national conference in September. Anyone who wants to see who will be on stage and who didn’t make the cut, now you can.

You can find the complete agenda and speaker lineup on the conference website, and the event itself will be held in Las Vegas this year, Sept. 19-22 (with a virtual component for anyone who can’t attend in person). 

SCCE’s announcement of speakers came later than usual this year (presumably because of issues related to the pandemic) so the annual guessing game of who would be invited to speak has been unusually intense these last few weeks. Numerous great speakers who had submitted solid ideas still didn’t get a speaking slot. I know this for a fact, because one of those people was me. 

So what? The SCCE conference is still a stellar event for networking and professional development, and I recommend it no matter what. 

This year’s agenda has more than 150 speakers listed, on everything from CCO liability, to “boardroom gravitas,” to compliance concerns about biometric data, and lots of other stuff in between. Some sessions will be in-person only, while others will also be live-streamed to virtual attendees; so read the agenda closely to see what’s what. 

One component that seems not yet listed are the keynote speakers who typically open each day of the conference, so stay tuned for that. 

And perhaps most importantly, the cocktail reception at the end of the first day is still on the calendar. I’ll be the one wandering around the exhibitor hall with a sandwich board saying, “Will blog for drink tickets.” 

One question on my mind: How many compliance people will actually attend in person this year? For comparison purposes, the 2019 conference drew nearly 1,900 attendees and was one of the largest SCCE events ever. Obviously lingering effects from the pandemic (including budget cuts and restrictions on corporate travel) make this year’s attendance anyone’s guess — but my sporadic, informal polling of compliance officers leads me to believe that a large number of you want to attend in person, if you can find a way to make the logistics happen. 

Here’s hoping you can find that way. After so much pain and disruption over the last 18 months, this close-knit community deserves to gather in person once again.