At this year's LeadersConnect Live, we spoke with Lisa Broomer, recipient of the ORX Fellowship Award 2026 and former Chair of ORX, about her journey with the organisation, the value of industry collaboration, and the lessons she has learned throughout her career. Watch the video to hear her reflections on leadership, change, and the future of operational risk.
Lisa on the power of collaboration at ORX:
"There were all of these challenges that everyone was facing that we could solve much more easily as a group than we could as individual firms."
Reflections on leadership, change and industry collaboration
In this conversation, Lisa reflects on more than a decade of involvement with ORX, including six years as Chair, and how her perspective on the organisation evolved over time. What began as an opportunity to benchmark against peers became a deeper appreciation of the role collaboration plays in helping firms address shared challenges and strengthen risk management practices across the industry.
Lisa also discusses leading ORX through a period of significant change, from the COVID-19 pandemic to geopolitical uncertainty and emerging risk challenges. She shares her thoughts on the successful launch of Agora, the importance of adaptability and continuous learning, and offers practical advice for the next generation of operational risk professionals.
Full interview transcript
How does it feel to receive the ORX Fellowship award, recognising your 40-year career and six years as ORX Chair?
It's my honour to receive the award. It's been a labour of love. I really have enjoyed my time chairing ORX and participating in ORX, and I think it's very representative of my career. I've had this operational risk role longer than I've had any other role in my career. It's really where my passion is, and so it's been wonderful to be recognised
When and how did you get involved with ORX?
Interestingly, I got involved with ORX about ten years ago when I joined the Board. However, I had worked with Joe Sabatini and some of the originators of ORX before then, albeit more tangentially, so I consider it part of the legacy and history of the organisation that I was able to become involved again.
I became involved in 2016 and then served as Chair for six years. At first, my interest was really in being able to show how our firm compared to everyone else. It was a somewhat insular view, and very quickly I realised that there were all of these challenges that everyone was facing that we could solve much more easily as a group than we could as individual firms. That's really what gave me the staying power to stay with the organisation.
What changes are you most proud of supporting while you were ORX Board Chair?
Being Chair of ORX was certainly a period of significant change. I took on the role right before the Covid lockdown, and all of a sudden the way we interacted with members was totally different. People had to pivot.
I think ORX's ability to respond to the issue of the day, whether it was Covid, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, conflict in the Middle East, or AML issues that firms were facing, has been remarkable. ORX has this ability to be flexible and pivot in a very agile way, while at the same time maintaining its focus on strategy.
The launch of Agora is certainly a major accomplishment. Not of mine, but of the organisation. I think people don't realise, because it went so smoothly, the amount of work the team put in to make that launch a success. I've never seen anything that large go that smoothly, and it's certainly something that I'm proud to have been around to experience.
As you begin a new venture as a professor teaching future risk professionals, what advice would you give to them or your younger self?
I would say a few things. First, you can learn from any job or task that you have. I date myself when I talk about some of the first things I was doing, which included making photocopies in the internal audit department, because of course we don't make photocopies anymore.
While a lot of my peers were complaining about it, I actually quite enjoyed it because I read what I was copying and got to learn about things that I would never have been exposed to that early in my career. I always encourage people that, no matter how the task feels, there's always something you can learn by paying attention not just to what you're doing, but asking: why am I doing this? Why is this necessary? What is the next person going to do with it?
So that's one thing. The second thing is that we all work very, very hard. I always say that if you work very hard, you have to rest very hard. That means being very intentional about taking vacation, and also figuring out a way to get rest during the day and rejuvenate yourself.
I no longer remember the title because I read it a long time ago, but I once read a book that tried to apply techniques used in sports to business. Until I read that, I had no idea why tennis players always bounced the ball before they served. It seemed to me like they were wasting a little bit of time. Why aren't we just moving on?
In fact, that's their opportunity to slow things down mentally and physically and really focus. It's very purposeful. It's not just a habit. I think creating a purposeful way to relax and reset during the day is something that's very, very important.
ORX is marking its 25th anniversary in 2027. How have you seen operational risk change over the past 25 years?
That's a very interesting question. I don't think it's so much about how operational risk has changed; it's more about how the business environment has changed.
We've gone from a world where you would settle securities three days later, five days later, or even longer in certain markets, to an environment where transactions are instantaneous and, in some cases, unrecoverable. It is what it is, and you can't undo it.
Being able to manage operational risk in that environment means that we need to move much faster. We need to be much more purposeful about embedding the ability to do business well into the business process itself, as opposed to having operational risk be an add-on, an afterthought, or something that someone else does.
It really needs to become part of the business process. I think that's the big challenge operational risk professionals are facing today: how do you actually accomplish that?
