Trust Across America-Trust Around the World™

Trust Across America-Trust Around the World (TAA-TAW), global leaders in organizational trust honors its 2018 Top Thought Leaders in Trust. The awards program, now in its 8th year, celebrates professionals who are transforming the way organizations do business.

While a growing number of global “top” lists and awards are published every year, no others address organizational trust, perhaps because the word “trust” itself presents a definitional challenge. For almost 10 years TAA-TAW has been working with a team of cross-functional professionals to study, define and quantify organizational trust, integrity and trustworthiness.

According to Barbara Kimmel, CEO and Cofounder, “The publication of this year’s honors comes shortly before the official commencement of our 10^th year anniversary celebration. In collaboration with global members of our Trust Alliance, we will be creating several new programs and tools to help organizations build trust.”

This year we recognize 91 global professionals from a broad functional base including integrity and trust, leadership, culture, compliance and ethics, reputation and risk management, governance, CSR, communications, employee engagement, sales and customer service. Approximately 27% of our 2018 honorees are women.

We are presenting our honorees in five categories:

2018 Lifetime Achievement Award Winners (8)

Lifetime Achievement Award Winners 2015-2017 (29)

Multi-year honorees (22)

CEOs of Public Companies (7)

Newcomers (25)

This year we are honoring eight professionals with a Lifetime Achievement Award. These deserving individuals have maintained Top Thought Leader status for five years. We congratulate all of our honorees whose work is shining a spotlight on the importance of trust and providing a roadmap for others to follow. They inspire organizations to look more closely at their higher societal purpose…to create greater value for, and trust from all of their stakeholders, and acknowledge that trust is a “hard currency” with “real” returns.

The 2018 Lifetime Honorees can be accessed at this link, while complete details including our methodology, judges, award winners, articles and additional trust resources can be found in the free digital Winter 2018 issue of TRUST! Magazine.

Trust Across America-Trust Around the World™ is a program of Next Decade, Inc., an award-winning communications firm that has been unraveling and simplifying complex subjects for over 20 years. TAA-TAW helps organizations build trust through an abundance of resources and ever expanding tools. It also provides its proprietary FACTS(R) Framework to help public companies improve their trustworthy practices, and showcases individuals and organizations exhibiting high levels of trust and integrity.

For more information contact Barbara Brooks Kimmel at barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

Copyright (c) 2018, Next Decade, Inc.

On June 19, 2017 Trust Across America published its annual Top Ten Most Trustworthy Public Companies, describing its selection methodology and other relevant details.

Just one day earlier, CNBC’s Michael Santoli announced that the S&P had already met its average return for the full year.

Seven months have passed since June 19, the S&P has continued its advance and America’s Most Trustworthy Companies are outperforming this benchmark by 32.25%. (The S&P 500 has returned 14.54% vs. FACTS(R) 19.23%.)

The cynical reader might conclude that Trust Across America’s FACTS(R) Framework “got lucky” with its picks and no correlation exists between high trust and profitability. But a closer analysis of our publicly released “Top 10” over six years will reveal that our systematic selection of the most trustworthy public companies might just be more than good luck.

The simple fact is trust works year-over-year. (And just maybe the percentage of women on boards enhances these stellar returns.)

Do you have any questions? Please direct them to barbara@trustacrossamerica.com.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. She also runs the world’s largest global Trust Alliance and is the editor of the award- winning TRUST INC. book series. In 2017 she was named a Fellow of the Governance & Accountability Institute, and in 2012 she was recognized as one of “25 Women who are Changing the World” by Good Business International. She holds a BA in International Affairs from Lafayette College and an MBA from Baruch at the City University of NY.

For more information visit our website at www.trustacrossamerica.com

You may also join our Constant Contact mailing list for updates on our progress.

Copyright (c) 2018, Next Decade, Inc.

Without generosity elevating organizational trust is not attainable, and the resulting low trust level is very expensive. Think about that. If leaders do not give their time or expertise to their stakeholders, they should not expect more than minimal progress in any facet of their enterprise. Unfortunately, low generosity is the “norm” not the exception in the *age of diminishing trust, and financial philanthropy is not a sufficient substitute.

As the CEO of Trust Across America, and in celebration of our 10th anniversary, I am pledging to freely give two hours per week of my time to share the organizational trust expertise I have developed over this ten-year period.

Email me at barbara@trustacrossamerica.com , message me on LinkedIn or post your question right here. What organizational trust challenge are you trying to solve? Let me know. I will respond directly or, if I do not feel qualified to answer, I will pass your inquiry to the best qualified member of our Trust Alliance. There is no cost to you whatsoever. It is simply Trust Across America’s way of positively impacting the trust challenges our global society currently faces.

*Need further proof?

• Employee engagement continues to fall to 32% on 8/6/17
• Organizations with low employee engagement scores saw 18% lower productivity, 16% lower profitability, 37% lower job growth, and 65% lower share price over time. (Source: Queens School of Business and by the Gallup)
• Innovation stalls
• 86% of corporate executives, employees and educators say that ineffective communications is a big reason for failures in the workplace. (Source: Salesforce)

Maybe you can find a way to participate in The Year of Living Generously. It starts today. How much time will you spare to share your expertise and elevate trust?

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. She also runs the world’s largest global Trust Alliance and is the editor of the award- winning TRUST INC. book series. In 2017 she was named a Fellow of the Governance & Accountability Institute, and in 2012 she was recognized as one of “25 Women who are Changing the World” by Good Business International. She holds a BA in International Affairs from Lafayette College and an MBA from Baruch at the City University of NY.

For more information visit our website at www.trustacrossamerica.com

You may also join our Constant Contact mailing list for updates on our progress.

Copyright (c) 2018, Next Decade, Inc.

Ten years of ongoing research on organizational trustworthiness has Trust Across America concluding that well-governed companies are less prone to crisis and more profitable over the long term.

One need not look beyond Uber to the fallout of a corporate governance failure. Yet, as a business leader, my definition of “well governed” may not necessarily align with yours.

If your current or past experience includes Independent Lead Directorship, Board Chair or CEO (either active or retired), would you kindly take a few minutes to respond in writing, with short answers, to the following questions?

• What does/did the term “good corporate governance” mean to you?
• What are/were some of the key governance practices you find/found most useful to good corporate governance?
• What are some suggestions you have for improved corporate governance in the future?

We hope to receive 50 responses to be published in a special upcoming governance issue of TRUST! Magazine as well as in a series of articles.

If you do not want to be identified, that works too, but please respond with the following information.

Name:

Title:

Company:

Can we publish your response with your name and title?

Please reply directly to me: Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com. We are hoping to collect your response no later than February 1, 2018, in time for our publication. Thank you in advance for your participation.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel
CEO and Cofounder