Necessity is the mother of invention, and the latest example is also this year’s Compliance Program of the Year award winner: the Ukrainian Red Cross Society (URCS), which built a full-fledged compliance program from scratch in the middle of a war.
The URCS initiated its compliance program less than two years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. As the war waged in 2024, the program’s chief risk officer, Dr. Mariia Polomoshnova, and her small team built the compliance program from the ground up, policy by policy, process by process. They did it all while facing the unimaginable stress of war and the rapidly shifting regulatory, humanitarian and political environments that come with it.
