The Nonprofit Leader's Guide by Boundless

Legal As A Strategic Partner, Not The Dept. of 'No'

• Boundless

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Legal shouldn’t be the brake pedal on your mission. We sit down with two seasoned leaders—Anne Garcia, SVP and General Counsel at The Ohio State University, and Trent Stechschulte, Chief Legal Officer at I Am Boundless—to show how legal and compliance can be the engine for trust, speed, and sustainable growth. From personal paths that span litigation, healthcare, and university governance to building departments from scratch, they reveal what great counsel actually does: translate dense rules into workable steps and align decisions with culture and strategy.

We unpack the real remit of legal teams—governance, contracts, risk management, crisis navigation—and how a “pathfinder” mindset replaces the old “office of no.” Anne and Trent highlight the power of early involvement, especially when stakes are high and reputations are on the line. 

Compliance gets the spotlight it deserves: investigations, auditing, corrective actions, and the culture that encourages reporting without fear. We explore why under-investment invites silence, retaliation, and costly enforcement, and how boards can use benchmarks and transparent metrics to fund what truly protects the mission. 

If you’re a nonprofit executive, board member, or program leader, you’ll walk away with practical steps to stay proactive: Enjoy the conversation—and if it sparks an idea, share it with your team. Subscribe, leave a review, and tell us: where do you need legal as a partner, not a gatekeeper?


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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome everyone to the Nonprofit Leaders Guide Podcast. I'm your host, Scott Light. So, today's topic, we want to demystify legal and compliance for nonprofit executives, for program leaders, for funders, and really for any executives out there. We want you, our listeners, to walk away seeing these functions not as the Department of No, but as strategic thinkers and enablers of mission, sustainability, and trust. And boy, do I have two great guests here to talk about it all. And Garcia is here, Senior Vice President and General Counsel of the Ohio State University, and Trent Stekschulte, Chief Legal Officer here at I Am Boundless. Welcome to you both.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you. Thank you for having us. For having us.

SPEAKER_00:

Let's start this way. Can I start with a personal note for uh for both of you? Would each of you share a little bit more about your career path, maybe a personal story or two, and what drew you into the legal field? Ann, would you start us off?

SPEAKER_02:

Sure. Um, I'm not totally sure what drew me into the legal field. I'll say it um I didn't have anyone in my family who was a lawyer by trade. I would say that a lot of people tell me I should be a lawyer, and maybe that's because I liked to chat with a lot of folks. I was probably one of those kids in class who got the check mark on the board for being a little too chatty. But I just um have always liked to engage with people. And um, when I was, you know, thinking about who I wanted to help in my career, I thought the law was a good degree that you could take in a lot of directions. And I've always been committed to trying to help people in their lives. And I felt like being a lawyer allowed you to do that. Um, my journey um I started in St. Louis. Um, I traveled to undergrad at Notre Dame, went to law school down in New Orleans at Tulane, um, started as many lawyers do in private practice, working for a big law firm and a kind of a smaller regional office, really enjoyed that, but quickly moved to a small law firm. Okay. Um, and I did that because you got more experience when you were in a small law firm, and I was the only female attorney there working with a group of guys who are several um decades older than me, and they were wonderful to me and really accomplished lawyers in that group. But when you're in a small firm, everybody has to do something. And so they really um allowed me to cut my teeth and get experience as a trial lawyer, as a litigator. And then um I went in-house after years being there, and my in-house journey started at St. Louis University in St. Louis, Catholic Jesuit institution, um, doing really healthcare-focused um law working, you know, across the spectrum of the university, but primarily for the College of Medicine. And they had a 500 uh FTE physician practice. They had sold their hospital to a for-profit entity. And so there was a bit of a mixed marriage with this non-for-profit university and the doctors that were employed by it, working with a for-profit entity that had now owned their hospital. Um, my time there was great, and I had the opportunity to grow as a professional and, you know, move from an associate general counsel to being a senior associate general counsel to a chief compliance officer, a brief stint as an interim general counsel when my boss was the interim president. Um, and 10 years ago, I became a buckeye. Um, I had already become a buckeye because I'm married to a graduate of the Ohio State University, but officially became a buckeye myself when I um joined Ohio State and first on the healthcare side of things. And then six years ago, I became the general counsel and um gained all responsibility for the university legal and compliance matters. Um, and I really love it there. I'm I'm really lucky and grateful. I have an exceptional team of professionals in the legal office and the compliance office, and that spans insurance professionals, lawyers, compliance officers, um, people that really run the full gambit. And I really enjoy the work because it's highly diverse in nature. And I know we'll talk a little bit about that later. Um, but that's that's how I'm here in Columbus, Ohio.

SPEAKER_00:

How big is your team?

SPEAKER_02:

It's it's a big team, as you would expect. We're one of the biggest universities in the country. So, in terms of people, not just lawyers, but all of the people from um the newest executive assistant to the most senior attorney. Um, we're about 90 strong across all legal, all compliance, across the entire university. So we cover everything from athletics to healthcare to main university matters. If you can think of an issue, so somebody on my team is working on it somewhere.

SPEAKER_00:

Got it. Drent, what uh attracted you to the legal field?

SPEAKER_01:

So I think initially I wanted to be a doctor, and then I decided, no, I'll just become a corporate health lawyer because I like reading.

SPEAKER_02:

I made that decision when I got my first C in organic chemistry. So I know all about that.

SPEAKER_01:

Perfect. Yes, I didn't like science or math, so I went with reading. I actually in law school did not go to a law firm. I actually went directly in-house, which all of my advisors told me would not happen. I convinced um Equitas Health at the time, a community health center, to hire me as their first compliance officer and legal counsel to build their compliance department from scratch, build their legal department from scratch. Being there around five or six years, I became their general counsel. Um it was a smaller organization, around uh 500 employees, but the experience you had in just the transactional work, I learned everything from pharmacy law to licensing issues. Just because you're a smaller provider, you deal with all the same issues. The volume is just smaller. So it was a great experience. And about four years ago, I joined Boundless in a similar role as chief legal officer.

SPEAKER_00:

And most of your time here in Ohio professionally?

SPEAKER_01:

All of my time here in Ohio professionally.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. Let's jump into it. So let's start with legal. We're gonna we're gonna talk about both departments here, what they do, some misconceptions, maybe we'll do a little bit of myth busting as well. Trent, when we when we think about a legal department, really anywhere, whether it's a a major university or within a nonprofit, you've got legal advice, risk management, contracts, governance, all kinds of things. Tell us what this department does.

SPEAKER_01:

And I think uh one of the most important functions of a legal leader is really to translate the rules and complexity of our system into something that they can operationalize. That is something there are so many questions and concerns that come to you. And while you may research the rules or know a professional you can reach out to help untangle it, communicating that back and operationalizing those rules back to the business is such a challenging thing. And that's something that's really important with the chief legal officer. Also, just the reputation internally of the chief legal officer. You become what you choose to rationalize away, you become what you choose to document or not document, you become what you choose to escalate or not escalate to the board. So there's a lot of executive um faculty in there where you have to make some pretty big decisions on a daily basis, and alluded to this earlier. Every day is something new. So how you handle it really comes back on the legal department, but you're also defending or otherwise representing the entire organization and the board. And so it's really imperative that you take those things very seriously. There's a lot. There's a lot to that. That's just legal advice, right? Yeah. You have litigation, contract management, and then the big one is transactional work. How you, as a legal leader, how you get the organization to where they want to get to the right way. So you can be a high-performing organization, make money, or serve more patients, whatever your mission may be, but you can do it the right way. And that's really the function of the chief legal officer.

SPEAKER_02:

I agree with everything that Trent said. All of the points he raised are extremely important, right? If you're not a high integrity uh person and you don't have an high integrity team, it's going to be hard to be involved in really significant matters that impact your university, your business, your organization. I would say the biggest role that we play is probably a strategic advisor, not just to a CEO, president, board of trustees, but to so many different important roles and individuals throughout an organization. You know, we're generally seeing people at some of their worst times. It's not unlike healthcare providers when they see patients, right? That's sometimes in their most vulnerable moments. Lots of folks that work with the legal team, um, they're dealing with a legal issue for the first time in their career. And so many times you have to build that trusted relationship and that strategic advice you give them, whether it be because it's a crisis moment or because they're planning to do something new, a new initiative, a new program. I think that's really key. Um I've you mentioned earlier the office of no. That's something that both Trent and I, um, as we've talked in the past, really don't want to be. We don't want to be an office of no. In fact, I've asked my team over the years to be pathfinders. There's almost nothing you can't figure your way through as a lawyer or as a compliance professional. Um, certainly you have to operate in the bounds of the law and the rules and be knowledgeable of that. That expertise is core, as Trent mentioned, part and parcel to the job. But you really have to work with your clients and whatever realm you're working with them to find the path, right? What are they trying to execute on? What kind of deal are they trying to do? What kind of problem are they trying to manage? And they're really looking for someone who they can trust who can provide sound guidance that's based on that legal expertise Trent mentioned, but also thinking about bigger picture issues for the organization.

SPEAKER_00:

How about the compliance department?

SPEAKER_02:

So I would say they're absolutely part and parcel to that. It's a little bit less about advice giving and more about um investigatory work. They certainly give advice as well, right? Anytime we're dealing with a matter of significant importance in the compliance team, but I always talk about that they're the ones investigating the matter, auditing the issue, looking at the pertinent, you know, regulatory um rubric that's coming into play. And then they're seeking advice and counsel from the legal department. So I really see them as kind of the left and right hand working together. They have different functions, different roles. Um, but in my experience and my career, the times we've had big major issues at whatever organization I've worked at, it's really the partnership between legal and compliance that generally goes in and solves the problem. They're also generally a group that's very proactive together, offering a lot of education to the organization on things that they want to be mindful of, things that they don't want to run into a brick wall headfirst on. So it's they have a very proactive but also reactive role and they do that part and parcel together.

SPEAKER_01:

I always think, too, that a very effective compliance department also has a role in operational effectiveness in that there are so many rules, but as the compliance team, as they partner with the business side of how can we comply with this rule, correct this issue that we found in this investigation, or partner with you on a corrective action that gets you where you need to be and gets the organization where they need to be.

SPEAKER_00:

Let's do a little myth busting here. Um I had a journalism career. I'm still uh I I call myself a comms guy, but I've been in some executive circles where I've heard executives say, hey, listen, we'll bring in the lawyers, but we know they're gonna slow things down. So um however, I've also been in newsrooms where we said our first call on this particular story has to be to our attorney, you know, before it goes out to the masses. So let's do some myth busting here in terms of what legal and compliance officers actually do. Trent, start us off there.

SPEAKER_01:

And just for clarity, just because there's always going to be there's going to be a problem, and just because you don't have the legal or compliance professional in the room, that problem doesn't go away. And actually it tends to build on itself. So if there are problems, the compliance and legal, to Ann's point, helps untangle that for the business unit, right? And so when you say our first call is to the attorney, that goes back to Ann with crisis management and strategy. How do we do this appropriately? Right. And who do we need to connect with to make sure that we bring this crisis down?

SPEAKER_00:

On the myth blusting side, Ann, what do we need to know here?

SPEAKER_02:

Gosh, um, I I would say one of the things is that oftentimes, Scott, people call legal when the problem has happened as opposed to bringing in legal early on. And I think if you're really working effectively as an organization, you're making legal and compliance partners at the beginning, right? We always say it's it's really um choppy when we're the 99th step of 100. We don't want to be the entity, the person, the department who's standing in between the business person that wants to do something and what that result is. We want to be brought in early. We can think through the roadblocks that we're gonna run through, um, the ways to navigate around those things. Um, crises are different, right? They happen many times unplanned. Um, but I think also some of the best partnerships I've had in my career are with folks like you and communications, right? We have kind of general alignment around we want the outcome to be positive, we want to mitigate the bad press for the organization, we want to anchor to our values, you know, whatever those may be in whatever organization we're talking about. But sometimes we have different perspectives and ways to get there. And oftentimes I think when we bring different heads together that are thinking through, okay, what are the legal hurdles we have to jump through? How is that story going to be told to the public? Um, what are they gonna understand? What are they not? Right. How do we simplify what could be a really complex deal point, legal issue, contracting space, and make people understand it? Right. Right. And so very much the job that we have is not just thinking about this is the right or wrong thing based on Ohio, you know, revised code or this contracting law. It's really working through making the storytelling simplified in a way. And so I think I think people think lawyer, they write contracts, they argue cases in court. It's more than that, right? And and really, if you're utilizing your legal and compliance colleagues the best way, you're taking the kind of strategic brain that they taught you how to have in law school and that you've developed over your career and really applied that to a wide-ranging set of issues, problems, potential initiatives. And how do we, you know, make things more streamlined? How do we have the best outcome for the most people? How do we tell that story? It's really a multifactorial kind of role. And I think when executives use their legal and compliance people that way, um, they're they see a whole new benefit to that kind of stretch strategic role that can come into play.

SPEAKER_00:

Boy, to hear lawyers say the word storytelling. It's really huge.

SPEAKER_02:

You can tell I've spent a lot of time with my communications colleagues.

SPEAKER_00:

But you know what it is huge? Because again, I've I have been in some rooms where you have the the comms folks saying, we've got to tell this this way, and the legal folks are saying, no, wait a minute, we have to inject this language. And sometimes there can be some animals there for sure.

SPEAKER_02:

For sure. And I think people who kind of see it that way probably haven't gone through a big crisis situation, right? When you've gone through small and large crises at various organizations where you've had to think about um a variety of things, you know, I've had to take my legal hat off at times and say, sure, if I was just following the blueprint of a lawyer, we wouldn't do this, we wouldn't put the story out, we wouldn't say that. But you're gonna lose the audience. And therefore the legal argument's not gonna mean anything, right? So so you really have to think about certainly staying in the bounds of things that are protected. You can't say privilege, protective orders, other things, but you also have to um think about the reputation of the organization for which you work. And ultimately, if that goes in the dumpster while you're trying to stand on your legal high ground of an issue, um, you really haven't solved the problem or had the successful outcome that you're looking for.

SPEAKER_00:

I ask about your personal journeys. Let me come back to kind of that side of the ledger. Trent, is there a transaction, a merger, or a legal thicket that that you were part of or led? And now that you've you've got the benefit of hindsight, you can look back on that and go, wow, did I I really learn some things from that experience and grew from that? Could you share something like that?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, just you know, going through mergers, acquisitions, and other affiliative relationships, I think you get a lot of business energy around getting it done. There's a process, due diligence, papering, where you talk to the other organization, you meet with our board members, you get very far down the road. And some of the biggest lessons I've made or had is that sometimes executives have to say no. There's a lot of political or otherwise energy behind it, but for whatever reason, there's something either legally or financially that just does not make sense, or the culture is a mismatch. And so what I've really learned is yes, some of the big transactions we've done, or some of the big, you know, contractors we've brought on to provide a huge benefit, that's been very gratifying. And um pro you know, taking our executive team through that has been great, but working with our leadership and our board and having to make the hard decision where that's not the best for the organization, despite the strategy, like this is what we wanted. Sure. Now we realize it's not here. I've learned a lot there.

SPEAKER_00:

And I want to tee up that same question to you, but I want to take you back just a little bit. You alluded to this uh a second ago, but 2015, when you were at St. Louis University, there was a now again, I'm putting this in lay terms for me, but uh the way I read this was uh a reinvestment when it came to university hospital there into a joint venture. That transaction, I'll call it, um, was dubbed by one publication as the most interesting legal transaction in the country in 2015. What was it?

SPEAKER_02:

So um so it was a couple transactions that went at the same time. So um when we when I was at St. Louis University, it was kind of my last act was to lead from the internal side the big team that worked on this. And let me start by saying I can speak to it because I was involved. It was a any kind of transaction like this is a team, right? It's not Anne Garcia, it's not one person, it's not one outside counsel. There are dozens of people that were integral to this transaction, many of them in the legal and compliance realm, some in the operational realm. Um, what we did was uh previous to my arrival at St. Louis U, they had sold the named university hospital to a for-profit healthcare entity based in Dallas. And that had that marriage um had been in place for um about 15 years at the time that I arrived at the university. Um, you know, anytime you get into a transaction, everything, as Trent just said, seems great. And unfortunately, sometimes it doesn't go as great as you hope it would. And so what we did that year was repurchase the university hospital. We had a right of first refusal, and then we put it into a new venture with another for profit Catholic healthcare entity. So I would say we um kind of divorced our for profit partner and um Got into a new partnership with a more like-minded organization in terms of the not-for-profit faith-based status. It's complicated though, right? And I would say one of the things to Trent's point is everybody, you know, wants to get a deal done. It's very hard work to do a deal. It is, um, there's always nuances that will never be picked up out in the public. I think one of the things and the reasons we were successful in this transaction is it was a bit novel in the way that we set it up. We were closing two deals simultaneously and really leaving a partner and joining a new partner, still preserving the autonomy of the physicians working for the university. And very much we had some core principles that we wanted to stick to in the deal. And I think that's easy when you do deals to get lost in that. And what I mean is, you know, when you're at the negotiating table, you're trading horses and doing things and something you never thought of looks good, and something you thought would be part and parcel might go by the wayside, or the language isn't as finite as you want. For us, we kept coming back to, you know, three to four core principles we had talked about with the university leadership, with the physician leadership at the time. And while there were other things that could have interfered, we felt that if we could get over, you know, the hill on those three or four things, it was the right transaction for the organization. It was a really special thing to be part of. I remember our board chairman at the time turned to me once we completed the transaction. He said, you know, this is going to be the most significant transaction this university maybe ever does, and certainly ever did to date. And so it feels great to be part of something like that. Um, and and again, you never see all the hours behind it, the work that goes in it, the moments that it might have slipped, you know, away. But it, but I think if you can stay true to what your entity wants to get out of a transaction and you feel like you're getting that out of it, then it's a deal you should think about doing. And I think if you to Trent's point, if you start to lose the core of what the deal is, you have to make the hard decision to walk away, right? You can't be so desperate to do a deal that you'd accept any deal. That that just doesn't work. And so it was a special transaction. It, you know, I have a little bit different background than a lot of people in healthcare. I started as a litigator. Traditionally, when you're a lawyer, you're a litigator or a transaction lawyer. Bringing those two streams together and merging them into a river is very unlikely in our field, right? You stay on kind of one side of the fence or the other. Um, I've been very fortunate that I was, you know, a litigator in my younger days, um, loved that work. And then because of the opportunities that were afforded to me, I had the opportunity to take on compliance and take on transactional work. And I've really learned something in my career from both. And I really think it's it's something that we don't do a lot in the law. We kind of pivot people to one side or the other. And Trent's nodding his head yes, because he knows exactly what I'm talking about. Um, but I think that kind of rounded portfolio has really helped me be a better lawyer as I sit in the general counsel seat and see litigation and transactions and deals and, you know, all kinds of different things that, you know, the pool is about as wide as it could possibly be.

SPEAKER_00:

So if I had been your comms guy in 2015 uh at St. Louis University, and if I had said after that, hey, Anna Garcia is the most interesting lawyer in America, would that have been a stretch?

SPEAKER_02:

I'm sure that is not true. So in any way, shape, or form.

SPEAKER_00:

Again, I uh I hope you uh know that that is that is out of respect. Uh, I appreciate as your comms guy. That will be the next podcast. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Uh Trent, what happens when nonprofit executives, really any executive out there, what happens when uh that person underinvests in legal and compliance?

SPEAKER_01:

Aaron Powell Yeah, so I think the trend really is, I mean, we've kind of talked through just a lot of the benefits of a compliance department and having that fiduciary function. Boards have, particularly in Ohio, have a fiduciary obligation to have a compliance department or to have a compliance function. So underinvesting in that, you will start to see cracks and you will start to see a culture of retaliation. You'll start to see a culture where folks do not want to report. And many times in the investigatory or incident reporting realm, where we get a lot of the knowledge across the organization is reporting, anonymous or not. It's employees that are educated, onboarded appropriately, or during peer review process see something and they would rather go to compliance, compliance investigates and they stop it. So just examples coming up of um even on a regular basis, and Anne can attest to this, compliance gets reports, immediately stops the behavior that the alleged behavior that's happening doing an investigation. And if the compliance function was not there or was underinvested, or there wasn't a culture of compliance, that behavior could continue. And healthcare fraud is extraordinarily expensive. Not just legal fees, we're talking about penalties, false claims act, and so on and so forth. So it's not just an auditing and monitoring function, it's not just investigations, it's also having that culture of creating, okay, we found this problem. How do we work as an organization to make sure that doesn't happen again? Do we monitor this? Do we put it as a part of our internal audit plan? And that's where the investment comes in. And typically compliance departments, and talked a little bit about this with crisis, is that boards and executive team deal with a crisis and they say, okay, maybe we need to invest a little bit more into this department, right? Or you have a very effective chief compliance officer that can communicate the successes and benefits of the compliance department. And when that leader says, I need more resources for this initiative, the board and executive team takes them seriously and says, you know what? Yes, I agree. To protect the organization, we need to invest here. And I don't know if that's been your experience.

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. I would I would say there's never an opportunity like a crisis, right? In terms of building out your legal compliance, any regulatory function. Um, it's I think you asked the question, it's a real danger if you've underinvested in your legal and compliance shop. And I think that's exactly what Trent's getting to. All the difficult things, not just bad enforcement outcomes, whether it be in the healthcare space or the research space or from a regulatory body in the athletic space, um, can come, you know, that's that's not great, but that's fairly straightforward. If you lose the culture of your organization such that people feel like they can't report a complaint without the the real fear of retaliation, you're gonna lose your audience, right? I mean, when you talk about the values of an organization, um, what do you anchor to at its core? If you don't have a strong legal and compliance department where people have faith that they can bring a concern forward and it's gonna be taken seriously, you know, it's hard to stand there as an executive and feel like you have uh an organization with integrity.

SPEAKER_00:

One of the things we like to do on this podcast is look forward. And boy, I've been itching to ask both of you this. When we look at emerging issues out there, gotta talk about AI. Um, I heard an interview, Ann, with, with President Carter with OSU's president, and OSU is really leaning in. I think uh President Carter said there's gonna be the hiring of like 80 to 100 faculty experts in AI, and then of course there'll be you know staff and admin and things like that, but he he really went there. How does AI affect legal incompliance?

SPEAKER_02:

So I think there's many ways, right? I would say that in the past we've thought about AI just on the beginning of um, you know, maybe more defensively, right? Like how are students potentially plagiarizing, you know, um papers they write or work that they do in the classroom. Um so we were thinking about, gosh, you know, can it be weaponized and used in a way so that kids, students, faculty aren't furthering their education or their academic curriculum? I think now we think about it differently. It's part and parcel to the culture, right? People are gonna be using AI. Um, I had the experience recently where I drafted something and I put it into the, you know, GPT editing function. I thought, oh my God, it made me sound better than me. That's that's a little self-defeating, right? Um, but the reality is it's going to be utilized. It's going to be part and parcel to the work that's done, whether it be in the business world, whether it be in the academic world. So instead of being defensive about it or thinking about how it can be weaponized, certainly we want to be conscious of that. Sure. We're thinking about how we can make it part and parcel to the work in a positive way. So, how do we grow people's, as we're, you know, giving education to the next generation of young Americans and students, how do we enable them to be successful with these tools? If they're just learning it for the first time in the workforce, we're not really doing our jobs, educating them. So whether it be the president or our provost, Ravi Balam Kanda, they've really focused on how do we make this part as part of the curriculum? How do we teach our students, faculty, and staff how to really get the best out of these resources? And then how do we enable them to think about using those resources in their workforce and their careers and propelling next discoveries? I think about in the legal field as there's real opportunity. And um, Trent and I, you know, both live this as general counsels. You know, how many contracts do you have for an entity? If I had to quickly search through and try to summarize all of those, that could be somebody's full-time job for a year. Now with AI, you can do it in a matter of minutes. So there, you know, there's certainly pressure testing on accuracy and other things as things develop, but there's a real opportunity to gain efficiency in the work and efficiency in the way we do our work that's very different. And I think the president and the provost really think about we would be doing a disservice to our whole OSU community if we didn't focus on this in the right way.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and just the efficiencies that you can have around a provider using AI to document your visit. Providers see back-to-back patients, right? And they're documenting after the fact, but there now are software systems and they have offerings where, hey, we can also help with your compliance team to make sure you're filling all your documentation requirements. And not only that, there's AI software that can help you meet the standard of care. And there's actually medically geared, right? Then you as a legal and compliance professional, you know, I I tensed up just thinking about that. Yeah. Right. You know, but uh a lot of these systems, like Ann talked about contract management. Our contract management system reads and summarizes our contracts for us in the system itself, and so I can get a high-level overview. To Anne's point, that would take a you know, a first or second year attorney an hour to do, and it does it in minutes.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. That's amazing. Um, let's start to wrap our conversation this way. Um, both of you have been, again, leaning forward and and and projecting in terms of being proactive. What would be your your best piece of advice to really anyone listening on how to stay proactive and not reactive when it comes to legal incompliance, Ann?

SPEAKER_02:

I would say one of the things I would tell people is to be consistent, right? Whether you're in a reactive mode crisis or a proactive mode initiative building, um, people need to feel like they can consistently count on you, right? That they're gonna get the same person showing up, giving sound and sage advice, whether we're at DEF CON one or it's just a normal day at work, right? And I think also one of the roles of legal and compliance when I talk about consistency is to be truthful, right? They're the people being able to call the difficult questions in the room, to have the hard discussions with people who might be their bosses, might be their board members. Um, but that candor and that honesty and consistency, I think is really a part and parcel to trust building. When people feel like you're the same person showing up, you're not going to change your opinion because the question's coming from somebody two levels up, um, or because there's a dollar amount attached to it, um, then they know they can really count on your advice, that you're in the foxhole with them when the super bad thing comes up. So I think that's that's one of the best pieces of advice that I give my attorneys, my the people I work with, and the people I report to. I want them to feel like they're always getting the same consistent sage advice when we have a conversation about something.

SPEAKER_01:

So that candor is really important. That consistency is important, and also the board to answer they expect that. The executive team expects that. So being proactive is also just some operationalized operational things you can do is say, Ann can't do this because she has the largest organization to manage. So there's no surveys around that say, Ann, how many attorneys or you know, what should your budget be? Right. You're the top, right? But as you're approaching an executive team or a board, there are surveys out there that say, as a social service healthcare organization, you're expected, this is this can be an expected legal spend or a compliance spend. And so there's a lot of different ways that you can either convince an executive team or board to say, we're not gonna we're not going to build a compliance and legal department by reacting to crises after crises after crises. This is where it's expected to be. And I've used that for a decade.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm gonna take a little bit of a pivot here to really wrap it up because I want to let our listeners know a couple of things. So we're recording this in mid-December. And if we had a camera on you, uh you you are wearing a red scarlet, my apologies. Uh Ohio State. Get it right, please, please. A an Ohio State pullover. So uh it is vastly interesting to Trent and me in that you did your undergrad at Notre Dame. Yes, you did law school at Tulane. The Green Wave, yes. Notre Dame not in the college football playoff. And some people are saying they came in pretty hot um in terms of their reaction, the coach and the AD there. Notre Dame not in. Tulane, the green wave, is in. And then the other layer on top of this is it is possible that Ohio State and Tulane could play each other. Where is your head right now when it comes to college football?

SPEAKER_02:

So that's it's uh it's it is very, I would say that if I had gone to Vegas, no one would have predicted this vet. I'll put it that way. Um, I was as disappointed as the rest of um the Irish nation when Notre Dame didn't make the playoff. I will say I was as befuddled as I'm sure of anyone sitting in South Bend.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

Um feel like they should have been there. Um, was very um unhappy, and I won't use the words I used as I was watching the playoff selections. We'll keep it G-rated.

SPEAKER_01:

We'll keep it G-rated here. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Um I was thrilled for Tulane because I think it's a very unexpected outcome and they've worked really hard throughout the year. I think there's more to come in terms of how we figure out college playoffs and who should be there.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And then ultimately my loyalty is always to the Buckeye Nation, right? And um, I was fortunate enough to be there last year when they took it all. And I I hope this kind of little hiccup with uh Indiana puts the chip right back on their shoulder and that uh they can have as fantastic an outcome as they did last year.

SPEAKER_00:

Hey, a loss is motivational too.

SPEAKER_02:

You know, sometimes you need a little bit of to motivate the team, but it's a really special team and they have immense amounts of talent. And so I'm really looking forward to what the post-Christmas season brings to the Buckeyes.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh, Trent, if you want to weigh in on college football on the college playoff system, please feel free.

SPEAKER_01:

I don't think I have the experience to weigh in on that. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, we'll all be watching. Um Trent, you've been here a couple of times and come back anytime.

SPEAKER_02:

I will. Thank you so much for having me. I'm grateful.

SPEAKER_00:

This has been just terrific. And by the way, if you're listening to this episode, if it sparked an idea, hey, share it with a colleague, share it with your board chair, or how about this, share it with your general counsel. You can learn more about Boundless and our mission to support individuals and families at Iamboundless dot org. This is the nonprofit leader's guide podcast brought to you by Boundless.