Lessons from Leaders: Mark Jaffe in Conversation

Liisa Thomas: Welcome to Compliance Chronicles, where we learn from professionals shaping the world of compliance. I'm your host, Liisa Thomas, outside Privacy and Compliance counsel adjunct professor at Northwestern Law School, and a lifelong learner of organizational change. ⁓ personal journeys to hard-earned lessons, ⁓ are the Chronicles that inspire and guide. ⁓ dive in. ⁓ I am honored to be joined by Mark Jaffe. ⁓ from Rivian who is going to talk to us a little bit about his journey. My name is Mark Jaffe. I'm the Chief Ethics Compliance and Privacy Officer at Rivian, which is an electric vehicle manufacturer. ⁓ And my responsibilities include a huge range of things, but I include what I call compliance oversight, ethical culture, ⁓ third-party risk management oversight, ⁓ privacy, AI. cybersecurity incident response and investigation of employee wrongs. I'm hoping you can share for folks your personal journey into the compliance field. I'll say it was ⁓ being asked and saying yes is how I got there. I had a supervisor who came to me one day and said, hey, Mark, how would you like to work on a privacy project? So at the time, that was under the old EU privacy directive. I started a two-year project. make sure we understood all our processing activities, registering and then developing at the time an intergroup transfer agreement. And so that's how I started. That led to other things that began my journey into I'll say, compliance and privacy. And that was back in 2005. So about 20 years ago, the real thing that led to it was I had always been someone who when asked to do something new, typically said yes. You said that how you got started and what took you down this journey was saying yes. But I think that's a little bit daunting for a lot of people listening saying yes. whenever we have career advice, it's usually the opposite. Like no one to say no. What motivated you to say yes? I'm one of those people that I don't mind a little bit of chaos. In fact, I probably thrive a little bit more in chaos. There's so much that's out there that you have no idea about. And you'll never learn unless you're willing to experiment or see something. And obviously, after having done this project, was, you know, I really, really enjoyed it. Mark, switching gears, and this kind of leads us in your path to where you are to some of the challenges that you've faced along the way and how you've managed it professionally, personally, how you've overcome those challenges. 25 years ago when I started with AT &T, I was very eager and tried to do the best job and do it as quickly and as confidently as possible. Especially as you're entering the compliance and ethics world, you realize that the long game is more important than the short game. I often say to my team, like, sometimes you just got to let the issue percolate for a while. One of the greatest challenges is how much to do in what order and what leads to the best longer term progress. The journey. How to think through that iterative process to put it in perspective. I joined Rivian to build an ethics and compliance program, right? I was the first hired. You know, I initially would have said to you, I have a five year plan. It's probably more like a nine year plan. But like, I mean, it's not like a one year plan, right? It's not, you know, these are not things. And even then it's still just a journey to one part of the destination, right? It's not, you know, it's a constant journey, you know, from there. And so I think the greatest challenge always is how to get enough done. how to progress your programs, how to do it in a way that builds on top of each other so that not only is you and your team growing, but really the business has to grow and take on responsibility. And how do you do that in a way that mitigates risk and does it pragmatically and practically? You're supposed to be able to present a case when you get into trouble on why you did certain things and maybe didn't do other things. I usually like to distill it down to Like one simple thing, which is if you would have trouble explaining it to your parents, maybe you need to ask for more help. Everything's a risk-based program and they're designed with different levels of trying to prevent things from happening. Those usually have an ethical component. So to me, the biggest thing that I always ask and how would I explain it to the infamous New York Times reporter? How would I explain it to a legislator or a investigatory body. If you can develop the story, you will be able to explain it and there'll be a lot of people saying, ⁓ that made sense. Too bad it went, you know, it didn't work out that way, but that made sense. shifting gears a little bit or continuing our conversation into things that you've learned throughout your career in compliance, lessons that you would share, and ways that they've shaped your approach in managing the issues that have come before you. The biggest thing which I kind of mentioned before is that the world of compliance is it's a journey, a destination. It's okay to experiment, it's okay to do things. mean, one thing that I've always learned is things always take a lot longer than anyone believes. Implementation periods are longer. When you're trying something new or an approach, it's good to pilot. It's good to roll it out for a small group or one part of the business who's willing to try it or two parts and sees how it goes and iterate before you roll it out to more people. Because you learn a lot. along the way about the practicalities of what you're trying to do and how people react. You know, it really should be based upon those principles and much more based upon your own policies and how you want to govern yourself. Where in that value, you know, depending on the type of program, but like from a privacy standpoint, like what is important to the company and its customer base and how do you express that? internally and then that becomes a basis for your decision making is pretty important. I think the other thing I've learned is branding is important. When I came to Rivian and you know wanted to do a brand, our overall brand is about adventure, our brand is adventure with integrity. That's the most, because that helps you both externally and internally with your stakeholders. Thinking about your career and what you have and your path in front of you. you had behind you, is there advice that you could share with others in the compliance space, whether they're just starting out or they're feeling a little overwhelmed, burned out, frustrated as they navigate their own journeys? Be open to new challenges and opportunities. Your career is a journey as well. If you don't try something, you're not going to know whether you like it or not. To the extent that you can find a mentor of someone who you connect with, whether they're on the side or otherwise. And then I think the last thing is, if you're passionate about something, pursue it. I think it's important to develop a good relationship with your manager to even come up with career development goals and objectives. I believe everyone should do a little thought about changing jobs every couple of years because the grass is not always greener. and it helps you decide what is the most important things in your life. And if you choose to stay where you are, you tend to get reinvigorated. And if you choose to leave, it usually was a very thoughtful process. And you can also be more genuine about yourself when you're interviewing, when you're comfortable where you are. All right. Well, Mark, thank you so much for making the time and sharing so much and giving so many wonderful insights. We really appreciate it. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Compliance Chronicles, where we look for guidance and inspiration from the personal journeys of compliance professionals.