Recognizing E&C Community Excellence: The 2025 BELA Impact Awards
On April 6, as the first day of the 2025 Global Ethics Summit drew to a close, the Business Ethics Leadership Alliance (BELA) held its annual BELA Impact Awards ceremony, in which it honored select BELA member companies and individual ethics and compliance leaders their extraordinary commitment to advancing community engagement, growth, and transformation.
The BELA Impact Awards reflect BELA’s own dedication to moving the integrity agenda forward for all companies. That purpose has only become more important at a time when organizations face economic and geopolitical turmoil; regulatory uncertainty, enhanced risks around AI, corruption, and human rights; and an increasingly polarized stakeholder population.
As employee trust in employers declines—and as a barrage of actions from the Trump administration create uncertainty around the enforcement of our existing regulatory frameworks—it has become difficult to create workplaces that unite their employees through shared values and common purpose.
This year’s BELA Impact Award honorees deeply understand that challenge. And more importantly, they have demonstrated it by practicing their unwavering commitment to meeting those challenges together.
The BELA Community Champion award recognizes outstanding contributions to the member community by way of content resources, event participation, publications, mentorship or peer-to-peer support. This year’s recipients are:
- Guardian Life Insurance Co.
- ServiceNow
- Unum Group
The BELA Global Vanguard award recognizes exemplary leadership in expanding the reach of BELA and advancing our mission to meet the needs of a global compliance and ethics community. This year, BELA is proud to recognize:
- IBM
- Infosys
The BELA Beacon award recognizes individual leaders who have fostered the growth of the BELA community through their personal efforts and generosity in sharing their time and expertise. This year’s recipients are:
- Antonio Fernández, Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer, FirstEnergy Corp.
- Kristi Kevern, Senior Managing Director, Global Ethics & Compliance, Dell Technologies
- Bo van Zeeland, Vice President, Global Compliance and Legal Affairs Europe & Americas, SABIC
The BELA Emeritus Award recognizes individuals who have provided enduring and inspirational advocacy for the compliance and ethics profession over the lifetime of their involvement with BELA and the broader ethics and compliance profession. This year, the award goes to:
- Rady Johnson, Chief Compliance, Quality & Risk Officer, Pfizer Inc.
- Kathi Whalen, Senior VP and Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer (ret.), HCA Healthcare “We congratulate all of the 2025 BELA Impact Awards honorees,” said Kevin McCormack, Executive Vice President of Ethisphere, and Executive Director of BELA. “We thank you for everything that you do to build a stronger ethics and compliance community and building value by advancing business integrity.”
