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Profs and Pints DC presents: “Whistleblowing 101,” a guide to exposing an organization’s wrongdoing, with Stephen Kohn, adjunct professor at the Northeastern University School of Law, co-founder of the National Whistleblower Center, and author of the forthcoming book Rules for Whistleblowers: A Handbook for Doing What’s Right.
Nothing shakes up Washington D.C. quite like a whistleblower. We’ve seen it in the past with Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, and the “Ukraine whistleblower” scandals, all made public by corporate and government employees willing to risk their careers (or worse) to call attention to information meant to be kept secret. More recently, current or former employees of Big Tech firms like Facebook and Twitter have exposed wrongdoing by those who had worked alongside them—something we’re likely to see more of as such companies shed large shares of their employees while remaining under government pressure to end harmful practices.
If you have a job, you’re in a position to blow the whistle on wrongdoing. But navigating how to do so legally while protecting yourself from retaliation can be a tricky business. Come gain a basic understanding of whistleblower law from Steve Kohn, who ranks among the world’s most published authors and experts on the subject. As a lawyer specializing in whistleblower representation, he has had a hand in busting some of the largest banks, agencies, and corruption schemes around the world using the whistleblower laws available to those in the U.S. and beyond.
Since 1984, Steve Kohn has helped whistleblowers come forward with their claims and counteract workplace retaliation, earning financial rewards as high as $104 million along the way. Most recently he represented the banker who exposed the largest money laundering scandal in history, $230 billion laundered from Russia and former Soviet states into New York banks. He also has been a staunch public advocate on Capitol Hill, helping change whistleblower reward and protection laws in favor of the courageous people who come forward. He continues to specialize in whistleblower representation as a founding partner of Kohn, Kohn, & Colapinto LLP.
Steve’s guidance will be useful to everyone from a secretary who forwarded a suspicious invoice to a CEO in on a scheme. He’ll instruct you how to anonymously come forward and report information and help you understand your rights in doing so. If you have been laid off by an employer or face such a fate, he’ll tell you how nondisclosure or severance agreements can contain illegal provisions with the potential to kickstart your case. He’ll also discuss the pros and cons of blowing being a whistleblower and the long-term consequences of playing such a role.
Those who attend his talk will receive a special code good for 25 percent off a pre-order of his upcoming book. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)
Image: Photo by Richard Wheeler / Wikimedia Commons.
