Speakers BCEC 2023
Richard Bistrong
Richard started his career as a successful VP of Sales for a multinational corporation, but in 2007 he was targeted by the US and UK law enforcement authorities for breaches of international anti-bribery and trade laws. As part of a deal with the authorities, he went undercover for the FBI and the City of London Police, and after serving his sentence, he continued his career in consulting and found his mission in sharing his personal story.
Currently, through his consultancy, Front-Line Anti-Bribery LLC, he focuses primarily on ethics and compliance in the real world and the challenges of fighting bribery and corruption. As a consultant, he has presented to hundreds of diverse international multinationals such as Volkswagen, Microsoft, Novartis, Kraft Heinz, Airbus and trained law enforcement agencies through workshops. He helps people, teams and organisations understand that no one is ever alone when it comes to ethical decision-making and that we never have to sacrifice integrity to succeed.
Ruth Steinholtz
Ruth is an author, speaker, panelist and expert in values-based anti-corruption programs and assessing culture and using ethics ambassadors to change culture in organisations.. She is currently employed at AretéWorks, where she works with CEOs, General Counsels and heads of Integrity, Ethics and Compliance functions and other leaders to create and secure a values-driven approach to Integrity Management. In recent years, she has mainly focused on ethics, which is based on values and cultural measurement, and in the past she also worked in the fields of crisis management and the development of legal functions in companies.
Irena B. Karakashev
Irena started her career as a lawyer and continued as a compliance officer at the NLB bank in Skopje. She headed the Compliance and information security department for three years, and since 2021 she has been working as a legal consultant at Projects financed by the World Bank.