The Business Integrity Leadership Initiative of the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas is continuing its popular "Let's Talk" series in Spring 2021 with a program about fraud.

"Let's Talk About Fraud" will feature a book of the semester, four speakers and a workshop. The program will be open to students, faculty, staff and the community.

Registration for "Let's Talk About Fraud" is available at the Business Integrity Leadership Initiative website.

The spring semester program comes after the highly successful fall 2020 series "Let's Talk About Integrity and Race" conducted by the Business Integrity Leadership Initiative and the Walton College Office of Diversity and Inclusion. Participants in the spring program are not required to have participated in the fall offering. A new "Let's Talk" program will be offered by the Business Integrity Leadership Initiative on a different topic each semester.

The spring program's book of the semester is Why They Do It.  Inside the Mind of the White Collar Criminal by Harvard Business School Professor Eugene Soltes.

Four speakers will also participate, via Zoom. Speakers for the program are:

• Jan. 27: Walt Pavlo, a former MCI/WorldCom executive, convicted for his role in one of the largest accounting frauds in history. Pavlo now consults, writes and speaks on topics ranging from white collar crime to criminal justice.
• Feb. 17: Richard Bistrong, a former vice president of international sales for a publicly-traded, multi-national company, convicted for his role in conspiring to pay bribes to individuals at the United Nations and foreign government officials in exchange for business.
• March 3: Chuck Duross, former deputy chief of the Department of Justice's Criminal Fraud Section, and now a globally recognized white collar criminal defense attorney with Morrison Foerster. Duross has taken a leading role in developing and implementing the government's Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement strategy.
• March 17: Eugene Soltes, author of the book of the semester, and a professor at Harvard Business School. His work focuses on corporate integrity and utilizing data analytics to predict, detect and mitigate issues related to organizational misconduct.

All of the speakers' talks are at 6 p.m. on Wednesday evenings.  A live Q&A will be included as part of each session.

The Let's Talk about Fraud program will conclude with an educational workshop on April 7 from 6-8 p.m. The workshop will provide participants with a deeper understanding of fraud, discuss learnings from the speakers and the book of the semester. The workshop will also provide participants with an additional chance to interact with Richard Bistrong, one of the featured speakers.

By completing the semester program, students can earn a Let's Talk about Fraud badge.

Members of the faculty, staff and the community can earn a Linked-In e-certificate by completing the program.

Students earn a Let's Talk about Fraud badge by:

• Reading the book and uploading a reflection in the Suitable app on what they learned
• Attending two of the four speaker presentations and uploading a reflection in Suitable
• Attending  the workshop on fraud and uploading a reflection in Suitable

Completing the Let's Talk about Fraud badge also counts as credit toward a student's larger Business Integrity Career Readiness badge. The badges are a great way for students to distinguish themselves from others, as the badges can be displayed on LinkedIn profiles and resumes. 

Faculty, staff and community attendees can earn a LinkedIn e-Certificate by:

• Reading the book and submitting a summary on what they learned to wcobili@walton.uark.edu
• Attending the four speaker presentations and submitting a summary on what they learned to wcobili@walton.uark.edu
• Attending the educational workshop and submitting a summary on what they learned to wcobili@walton.uark.edu

More information is available at the Business Integrity Learning Initiative website.