Debbie Hennelly

Debra Sabatini Hennelly advises executives and boards on enhancing organizational resilience by creating cultures of candor, inclusion, integrity, and innovation. She engages stakeholders directly to identify ethical, compliance, and environmental/social/governance (ESG) risks and opportunities, integrating those insights into operations and culture. Debbie helps leaders and teams address obstacles to ethical decision-making and psychological safety, increasing collaboration, wellbeing, and productivity.

Debbie is the founder and president of Resiliti (originally in 2004, as Compliance & Ethics Solutions), providing advisory services and experiential learning, focusing on ethical leadership, culture, and holistic risk management. She also advises and coaches ethics and compliance professionals, helping them lead effectively and develop strategies for personal resilience. 

For more than 25 years, Debbie has been creating innovative approaches to fostering ethical leadership—from boardrooms to break rooms—with organizations ranging from small entities to some of the largest multinationals. Her pragmatic approach is informed by her engineering and legal background and decades of corporate leadership, C-suite, and advisory roles in compliance and ethics, legal, environment and safety, and strategic management. Her passions for learning, teaching, and "connecting the dots" fuel her ability to inspire authenticity, engagement, and accountability.

Prior to her corporate experience, Debbie practiced environmental law with firms in Washington, DC, and New Jersey. Before practicing law, she was a civil/environmental engineer and supervised construction in the oil and gas industry.

Debbie is an adjunct professor in Fordham University Law School’s Program on Corporate Ethics & Compliance, a Master of Studies in Law (M.S.L.) program. She frequently speaks at conferences, has been interviewed on several podcasts, and writes on several platforms. Most recently, she co-authored two articles for Harvard Business Review: “Resilient Organizations Make Psychological Safety a Strategic Priority” and “Bridging Generational Divides in Your Workplace.” She is also the author of the book, "Presence in Chaos - 365 Mindful Moments." 

She earned her B.S.E. In Civil/Environmental Engineering from Duke University and her J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law.

 9b. ALL – Tone at the Top: Making Ethics Actionable (Advanced)