Our Story
A few highlights:
20 years ago, OCEG was just an idea (on the back of a literal napkin!) to solve the $1 Trillion problem of organizational misconduct.
Today, we have over 120,000 members who lead the industry and their organizations with our ideas, resources, training, and certification.
-
2002. OCEG Founded
OCEG was founded by Scott Mitchell in the wake of the “dot com bust” and notable corporate failures such as Enron, Worldcom, and Healthsouth. His initial mission was to improve corporate compliance and ethics, and so he called it the Open Compliance and Ethics Group. Very rapidly, our members found conversations expanding beyond compliance and ethics — moving into performance management, risk management, governance, and assurance. So now, we simply go by the initialism OCEG.
-
2003. Inaugural Advisory Board
Our inaugural Advisory Board was composed of senior leaders from the corporate and academic communities. It was responsible for guiding and shaping OCEG’s initial mission, vision, and statement of principles. GRC was invented as a shorthand reference to the critical capabilities that must work together to achieve Principled Performance — the capabilities that integrate the governance, management and assurance of performance, risk, and compliance activities.
View inaugural board members
B. Charles Ames
Co-Chair, OCEG Advisory Board
Vice-Chair, Clayton, Dubilier & Rice; director of Riverwood and Progressive InsuranceRon Berenbeim
Director of Ethics Research, The Conference Board
Alfred Berkeley
Former Vice-Chair, NASDAQ
Rick Braddock
Chairman, Priceline; Former President Citibank; Board Member, Kodak; board Member, Cadbury-Schwepps
Beth Brooke
Vice-Chair, Ernst & Young
John J. Castellani
President, The Business Roundtable
Dan DiFilippo
US Managing Partner, Governance, Risk & Compliance, PricewaterhouseCoopers
Lee Dittmar
Principal, Deloitte
Charles Elson
Executive Director, Center for Corporate Governance, University of Delaware
Bob Felton
Managing Partner for Corporate Governance Practice, McKinsey & Co.
Jean FitzSimon
Principal, Bridge Associates; co-chair for the Practising Law Institute’s Corporate Compliance Institute; co-chair of the American Bar Association’s Corporate Compliance Committee
Stephen J. Friedman
President, Pace Law School; former Partner, Debevoise & Plimpton; President of the Practising Law Institute; former Commissioner of SEC
Peter Gleason
COO, National Association of Corporate Directors
Jack Hampton
Former Executive Director, The U.S. Risk and Insurance Management Society
Joseph Hardiman
Former CEO, NASD and NASDAQ; former President of Alex Brown
Dave Heller
VP Risk Management and Chief Compliance Officer, Qwest
Ray J. Groves
Co-Chair, OCEG Advisory Board
Former CEO, Ernst & Young; Director of EDS, MMC, and GilletteScott L. Mitchell
Chairman and CEO, OCEG
Chairman and CEO, DoubleDrum CapitalJack Kemp
Co-founder and chairman, Corporate Diagnostics; chairman, FreedomWorks; founder and chairman, Kemp Partners; former US Congressman, Cabinet Secretary and Vice Presidential Candidate (1935 – 2009)
Richard Koppes
Of Counsel, Jones Day; co-chair of Stanford Law School Executive Education; Director of the Investor Responsibility Research Center (IRRC); former general counsel and deputy officer of CalPERS
Peter Kreindler
General Counsel, Honeywell International, Inc.
Patricia Leonard
COO, American Management Association
Andrall E. Pearson
Founding Chairman, Tricon; director, Citigroup; YUM Brands, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the NYU Medical Center; professor emeritus, Harvard (1925 – 2006)
Joseph J. Plumeri
Executive Chairman and CEO, Willis Group Holdings LTD
Ned Regan
President, Baruch College; former Comptroller State of New York
Gerald Rosenfeld
CEO, Rothschild; Director of Case, Continental Grain
Doug Shulman
President, NASD Regulatory & Compliance Services
Richard Steinberg
Author, COSO Internal Control & COSO ERM; Partner, Steinberg Governance Advisors; former Managing Partner for Corporate Governance Practice, PricewaterhouseCoopers
Ken Thrasher
Chairman and CEO, Compli
Former CEO, Fred Meyer Stores, Division of KrogerGabe Shawn Varges
Senior Executive Legal Officer, Zurich Financial Services;
co-chair for the Practising Law Institute’s Corporate Compliance Institute; chair Corporate Counsel Association’s European Corporate Governance CommitteeChristopher E. Watson
Chairman and CEO, Gulf Insurance
Leo C. O’Neill
Former President, Standard & Poor’s (1940-2004)
Jack Jennings
Executive Vice President, Willis; Executive Advisory Council of St. John’s University School of Risk Management
-
2004. GRC Defined, Red Book Released
After months of analysis, collaboration, and vetting, the first GRC standard emerges. Originally called the Capability Model, the cover was a deep red. It quickly became known as the OCEG Red Book. It detailed practices for GRC “the integration of the governance, assurance and management of performance, risk, compliance and ethics” (from GRC Glossary).
-
2005. GRC Evolves, Red Book, and Audit
After defining GRC and developing high-level concepts, the OCEG community begins work on version 2 of the GRC Capability Model and the standard gains wide adoption with over 100,000 downloads in a single year. The desire to audit governance, risk management and compliance leads the OCEG community to develop the GRC Assessment Model (known as the “Burgundy Book”).
-
2006. GRC Generally Recognized, Principled Performance Defined
OCEG and GRC as a concept were fully recognized. Analysts at Forrester, Gartner, and IDC began using GRC as a way to organize software that addressed governance, assurance and management of performance, risk, compliance, and ethics. OCEG and its executives were recognized by Business Finance Magazine, Treasury and Risk Magazine and others.
“Principled Performance” is defined to describe the goal of GRC and OCEG founder, Scott Mitchell, writes the first academic journal article on the topic (published in the International Journal of Governance and Disclosure in 2007).
-
2007. Growth, Development and Education
The acclaimed GRC Illustrated Series begins and OCEG begins more broadly distributing though leadership about GRC and Principled Performance.
The OCEG GRC “Desk Set” comprised of the GRC Capability Model (Red Book), GRC Assessment Model (Burgundy Book) and GRC Solutions Model is created.
-
2010. GRC Certifications and Definitions
Certification begins via GRC Certify to help formalize the education and credentialing of GRC knowledge and skills.
GRC Glossary is finalized and version 3.0 of the GRC Capability Model is authorized by the OCEG Leadership Council.
-
2015. GRC Professionals Everywhere
The GRC movement reaches over 50,000 members. We reach thousands of professionals on 6 continents and 2,500 cities. Key updates to the GRC Capability Model and GRC Assessment Tools, along with translations into several languages drastically increases the reach of GRC and Principled Performance.
-
2022. 120,000 Members
Our membership develops several new standards, courses and certifications.
OCEG launches new visual brand to celebrate 20 years of history!
