Debra Sabatini Hennelly helps create cultures of inclusion, candor, care, and integrity, which are essential to team effectiveness, innovation, and organizational resilience.
She facilitates experiential learning and workshops to help teams and leaders identify and address obstacles to psychological safety and ethical decision-making, increasing collaboration, engagement, well-being, and productivity. Her pragmatic approach is informed by her engineering and legal background and decades of corporate leadership, C-suite, and advisory roles in compliance and ethics, legal, environment and safety, and strategic management.
Debbie is an adjunct professor in Fordham University Law School's Program on Corporate Ethics and Compliance, a Master of Legal Studies (MLS) program. She also coaches ethics and compliance professionals, helping them lead effectively and develop strategies for personal resilience. Debbie is passionate about helping navigate the challenges of influencing culture change, leading strategically, and addressing the potential for burnout. She holds a Certificate in Wellness Counseling from Cornell University.
She has served as adjunct faculty for BP, facilitating small-group workshops in ethical leadership, as well as leading interactive learning and workshops for dozens of other organizations with their employees, managers, senior executives, and board directors. She is also a certified "Elephant Rider" Practitioner, using riders&elephants' Emotional Culture Deck and facilitation techniques to help inspire emotional awareness, candor, and connection.
Debbie has co-authored two articles for Harvard Business Review: “Resilient Organizations Make Psychological Safety a Strategic Priority” (August 2022) and "Bridging Generational Divides in Your Workplace" (2023)--both of which have been included in HBR compilation books.
She has been interviewed on several podcasts, writes on several platforms, and frequently speaks at conferences (SCCE, NABCRMP, ECI, NSCP, PLI, NACD, others). She is also the author of the book, Presence in Chaos - 365 Mindful Moments. (PresenceInChaos.com).
More on Debbie's background and expertise:
For more than 25 years, Debbie has been creating innovative approaches to managing compliance and fostering ethical leadership—from boardrooms to break rooms—with organizations ranging from small entities to some of the largest multinationals. Her methodology engages stakeholders directly to manage ethical, compliance, and ESG risks and opportunities, integrating those insights into operations and culture.
Debbie founded Resiliti in 2004 (originally, as Compliance & Ethics Solutions), to provide consulting services and experiential learning, with a focus on values-based codes of conduct and holistic risk management. With her talented colleagues and comprehensive suite of services, they help bring to life organizational values and a culture that supports the ideas, perspectives, courage, and dignity of each individual in a team and across an organization.
Debbie has also served as general counsel and chief compliance officer for two chemical companies, Sonneborn and PeroxyChem, reporting to their CEOs and meeting quarterly with their Boards of Directors. Earlier in her career, Debbie spent more than ten years in legal and compliance leadership roles in AT&T, Lucent Technologies, Avaya, BP, and Avon Products. Her experience holding senior in-house roles in public and private companies, as well as working in two ethics and compliance service providers, has enabled her to acquire an uncommon perspective from both sides of the client/vendor relationship.
Prior to her corporate experience, Debbie practiced law with two major law firms in Washington, DC, and New Jersey. Before practicing law, Debbie was a civil and environmental engineer, supervising construction for Exxon.
Debbie earned her B.S.E. in Civil/Environmental Engineering from Duke University and her J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law.