Georgia-Pacific Specific

The opportunity was to develop a methodology for enterprise risk management at the Atlanta-based manufacturer. Sobel is something of an ERM pioneer. He first learned about this holistic process for identifying, assessing and mitigating potential risk exposures in the 1990s at Andersen, and in 2003, wrote one of the first books on the subject from an auditor’s perspective—“Auditor’s Risk Management Guide: Integrating Auditing and ERM.” Sobel also implemented ERM at Mirant Corp. and Aquila, his two previous employers.

“I’ve always tried to approach ERM in a more practical than theoretical way, and writing the book helped me to demystify it and make it a bit more contextual and understandable,” he says. “I now think I can apply it to most types of organizations, not just banks and energy companies.”