Sherron Watkins (born August 28, 1959) is an American former Vice President of

Corporate Development Corporate development refers to the planning and execution of strategies to meet organizational objectives. The kinds of activities falling under corporate development may include management team recruitment, phasing in or out of markets or produc ...

at the

Enron Corporation Enron Corporation was an American energy, commodities, and services company based in Houston, Texas. It was founded by Kenneth Lay in 1985 as a merger between Lay's Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth, both relatively small regional companies. B ...

. Watkins was called to testify before committees of the

U.S. House of Representatives The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the Senate being the upper chamber. Together they ...

and

Senate A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...

at the beginning of 2002, primarily about her warnings to Enron's then-

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

Kenneth Lay Kenneth Lee Lay (April 15, 1942 – July 5, 2006) was an American businessman who was the founder, chief executive officer and chairman of Enron. He was heavily involved in the eponymous accounting scandal that unraveled in 2001 into the large ...

about

accounting Accounting, also known as accountancy, is the measurement, processing, and communication of financial and non financial information about economic entities such as businesses and corporations. Accounting, which has been called the "languag ...

irregularities in the

financial statement Financial statements (or financial reports) are formal records of the financial activities and position of a business, person, or other entity. Relevant financial information is presented in a structured manner and in a form which is easy to un ...

s. In August 2001, Watkins alerted Lay of accounting irregularities in financial reports. However, Watkins has been criticized for not reporting the

fraud In law, fraud is intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right. Fraud can violate civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrator to avoid the fraud or recover monetary compens ...

to government authorities and not speaking up publicly sooner about her concerns, as her memo did not reach the public until five months after it was written. Watkins was represented by Houston attorney Philip H. Hilder. Watkins was selected as one of three " Persons of the Year 2002" by ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

'' magazine, alongside two other

whistleblower A whistleblower (also written as whistle-blower or whistle blower) is a person, often an employee, who reveals information about activity within a private or public organization that is deemed illegal, immoral, illicit, unsafe or fraudulent. Whi ...

s, Cynthia Cooper of

WorldCom MCI, Inc. (subsequently Worldcom and MCI WorldCom) was a telecommunications company. For a time, it was the second largest long-distance telephone company in the United States, after AT&T. Worldcom grew largely by acquiring other telecommunic ...

and

Coleen Rowley Coleen Rowley (born December 20, 1954) is an American former FBI special agent and whistleblower, and was a Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) candidate for Congress in Minnesota's 2nd congressional district, one of eight congressional dist ...

of the

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and its principal Federal law enforcement in the United States, federal law enforcement age ...

Early life and education

Watkins was born in

Tomball, Texas Tomball ( ) is a city in Harris County in the U.S. state of Texas, a part of the Houston metropolitan area. The population was 12,341 at the 2020 U.S. census. In 1907, the community of Peck was renamed Tomball for local congressman Thomas Henry ...

. Watkins holds a

Bachelor of Business Administration Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) is a bachelor's degree in business administration awarded by colleges and universities after completion of undergraduate study in the fundamentals of business administration and usually including advanced ...

(with honors) from the

University of Texas The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

, where she was a member of

Alpha Chi Omega Alpha Chi Omega (, also known as Alpha Chi or A Chi O) is a national women's fraternity founded on October 15, 1885. As of 2018, there are 132 collegiate and 279 alumnae chapters represented across the United States, and the fraternity counts ...

sorority, and a Master in Professional Accounting, also from the

McCombs School of Business The McCombs School of Business (McCombs School or McCombs) is a business school at The University of Texas at Austin, a public research university in Austin, Texas. In addition to the main campus in Downtown Austin, McCombs offers classes outsid ...

. Watkins is a

Certified Public Accountant Certified Public Accountant (CPA) is the title of qualified accountants in numerous countries in the English-speaking world. It is generally equivalent to the title of chartered accountant in other English-speaking countries. In the United Sta ...

Career

Watkins began her career in 1982 at

Arthur Andersen Arthur Andersen was an American accounting firm based in Chicago that provided auditing, tax advising, consulting and other professional services to large corporations. By 2001, it had become one of the world's largest multinational corporat ...

as an auditor. She spent eight years at Andersen in both the

Houston Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...

and New York offices. She joined New York-based MG Trade Finance in 1990 to manage their portfolio of commodity-backed finance assets until October 1993. She joined Enron in 1993, and departed in November 2002. Since then, Watkins has been giving speeches at colleges and management congresses. In 2004, she released a book about her experiences at Enron and the problems of US corporate culture, ''Power Failure: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Enron''.

Books

Mimi Swartz Mimi or MIMI may refer to: People * Mimi (given name), a list of people and fictional characters * Constantin Mimi (1868–1935), Bessarabian politician and winemaker * Mimi (footballer, born 1996), Bissau Guinean footballer * Mohanad Ali (born 2 ...

with Sherron Watkins: '' Power Failure. The Inside Story of The Collapse of Enron'', (March 2003)

Film

* '' Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room''. 2005
IMDB
Includes personal interviews with Sherron Watkins. * '' The Crooked E: The Unshredded Truth About Enron''. 2003. Portrayed as a staff accountant who nervously alerts

Lay Lay may refer to: Places *Lay Range, a subrange of mountains in British Columbia, Canada *Lay, Loire, a French commune *Lay (river), France *Lay, Iran, a village *Lay, Kansas, United States, an unincorporated community People * Lay (surname) * ...

of the misstatements.

References

External links

Sherron Watkins - Official Website
archived version at the

Wayback Machine The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit based in San Francisco, California. Created in 1996 and launched to the public in 2001, it allows the user to go "back in time" and see ...

, from January 28, 2017)
Sherron Watkins email to Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay, August 2001
{{DEFAULTSORT:Watkins, Sherron 1959 births American accountants American energy industry executives American whistleblowers Enron people Living people McCombs School of Business alumni Women in finance People from Tomball, Texas