Veta Richardson

Veta T. Richardson has been president & CEO of ACC since 2011. During her tenure, she has been responsible for working with the ACC Board and Staff on strategies that have substantially grown ACC’s membership, expanded its global footprint, and launched key advocacy efforts like, Seat at the Table which focuses on the position and credibility of the general counsel in the C-Suite, as well as ACC’s investments in research and benchmarking, credentialing and legal operations. Prior to being named ACC CEO, Veta was a nationally recognized thought leader regarding diversity and inclusion in the legal sector, serving as an advisor to three U.S. Presidential Administrations (Clinton, Bush, Obama) and garnering multiple awards for best-in-class programs while she was executive director of the Minority Corporate Counsel Association. Before becoming a chief executive in the nonprofit sector, Veta was in-house counsel to a Fortune-50 energy company where she went to work right out of law school for one of ACC’s founding general counsel at the Sunoco law department in Philadelphia, where she grew up. She has experience leading multi-billion-dollar M&A transactions, corporate financings, securities disclosure, and investor communications, as well as corporate governance issues.

In addition to serving as chief executive at ACC, Veta sits on the Strategic Advisory Board of Ethisphere, Inc., a for-profit corporation that advances business integrity, compliance, and ethics as a strategic advantage and annually selects The World’s Most Ethical Companies. She has expertise in the area of corporate governance and is a Fellow of the National Association of Corporate Directors, holds the NACD Certified Directorship Credential, and was named to the prestigious Directorship 100 list four times. Veta is also a board member of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware and an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center where she co-teaches the course, In-House Counsel: Law and Practice. She received a B.S. in Business Management and a J.D. from the University of Maryland.