Gary Edwards
At the request of the U.S. State Dept., I traveled last June to Belgrade, Serbia for a week of meetings with U.S. Ambassador Mary Warlick; Serbian Government officials, including the National Competitiveness Council; Serbian business executives; Country Managers of MNCs doing business in Serbia; representatives of the UNDP and Global Compact; the ILO; Transparency Serbia and local NGOs; faculty and students at the University of Belgrade; and the media.
The purpose of the trip was to discuss best practices in business ethics and governance, as well as effective strategies for fighting corruption. I have recommended innovative private sector initiatives, including an Anticorruption Campaign, focused on the Executive Branch of the national government, prior to the 2012 elections.
Subsequently, I prepared a concept paper on new approaches to anticorruption, which is now circulating among interested parties at USAID, the Departments of State and Commerce, the World Bank and IMF.
I am cofounder and CEO of Ethos International, Inc. which provides strategic assistance to US and multinational organizations regarding ethics and anticorruption strategies.
Prior to founding Ethos, I served for fifteen years as President of the Ethics Resource Center (1981-95), where I created the first corporate ethics office in any company for General Dynamics (1985). At the request of President Reagan's Blue Ribbon Commission on Defense Management, I drafted the recommendations on industry self-governance, which led directly to the creation of the Defense Industry Initiative on Business Ethics and Conduct (DII). The DII commitments later served as a template for mitigation factors for the U.S. Sentencing Commission's Guidelines.
I hold a J.D. from Georgetown University and an M.A. from Yale University. I have also done graduate work at Johns Hopkins and Princeton University.
Specialties: Anti-corruption strategies, implementation and assessment; Organizational Culture assessment and transformation; Risk assessment; Workshops and Seminars for Corporate Boards and Senior Management; Public and Corporate Speeches.