Nancy Higgins is the Vice President and Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer for the Bechtel group of companies. She is responsible for Bechtel's ethics and compliance program and its global network of ethics and compliance officers. Prior to joining Bechtel in January 2007, Higgins was Executive Vice President of Ethics and Business Conduct for MCI, where she was brought in by its new CEO and Board of Directors to build an ethics and compliance program after the WorldCom scandal.
Before MCI, Higgins was Vice President of Ethics and Business Conduct for Lockheed Martin. Prior to that, she headed the Office of Ethics and Business Conduct for The Boeing Company, where she created Boeing's first company-wide ethics and compliance oversight program. Earlier, she practiced law in the Boeing Corporate Law department; at the Lane Powell firm in Seattle, Washington; and at Skadden Arps in New York City.
Higgins is a member and past chair of the Conference Board Global Council on Business Conduct. She has served as Chair of the Working Group of the Defense Industry Initiative on Business Conduct and Ethics (the DII) and been a member of the Ethics and Compliance Officer Association (the ECOA) board of directors. Higgins is a Corporate Fellow of the Ethics Resource Center Fellows Program.
Higgins earned her bachelor's degree in Russian History from Western Washington State University and holds a law degree from the University of Washington in Seattle. She has completed the Advanced Management Programme at INSEAD, an international business school in Fontainebleau, France.