James C. Lam

James Lam is currently an independent director and Risk Committee Chair at Blackrock iShares and President of James Lam & Associates, a risk management consulting firm he founded in 2002. He works with corporate directors and executives across all industry sectors, including financial institutions, energy firms, technology companies, multi-national corporations, regulatory agencies, and non-profits. In a Euromoney survey, James was nominated by clients and peers as one of the world’s leading risk consultants. He previously served as Founder and President of ERisk, a technology start-up that provided cloud-based analytical solutions to banks, insurance companies, and energy firms. James also served as Partner of Oliver Wyman, where he was the global leader of enterprise risk solutions.

Recognized as the first-ever chief risk officer, James has implemented ERM programs at global organizations. As Fidelity Investments’ first Chief Risk Officer, he chaired the Global Risk Oversight Committee and provided corporate oversight for 40 institutional and retail businesses worldwide. Fidelity’s overall loss/revenue ratio declined 30% over his tenure, and its ERM program was featured as a bestpractice case study in The Economist, Risk Magazine, and Price Waterhouse Review. He was Chief Risk Officer and Acting President of GE Capital Markets Services, where he led all middle and back office functions, including business strategy, trading oversight, risk management, finance, IT, and operations.

James is the author of Enterprise Risk Management (Wiley, 2003; second edition, 2014), which has ranked #1 best-selling among 25,000 risk management titles on Amazon. The book has been translated into Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese, and Korean. His latest book, Implementing Enterprise Risk Management, was published by Wiley in 2017.  James served on the COSO ERM Advisory Board that was commissioned to update and improve the COSO ERM Framework. For three years (2005, 2006, and 2008), Treasury & Risk Management magazine named him one of the “100 Most Influential People in Finance.” In 1997, James received the inaugural Risk Manager of the Year Award from the Global Association of Risk Professionals.

James graduated summa cum laude with a B.B.A. from Baruch College in 1983 and received an M.B.A. with honors from UCLA in 1989. He was appointed Senior Research Fellow at Peking University and has taught MBA classes at Babson College and the Hult International Business School. James has guest lectured at Harvard Business School as the subject of a HBS case study. He has completed executive management and corporate director programs at the Harvard and Stanford business schools. James is an NACD Board Leadership Fellow and is on the NACD faculty for their board training programs. He is also on the Carnegie Mellon University faculty for their CRO Executive Certification Program. James lives in Wellesley, Massachusetts with his wife and they have three sons. He enjoys golf, tai chi, and poker.