James Lam (born 1961) is in the field of risk management, as a corporate director, management consultant, author and speaker. As the founder and President of James Lam & Associates, a prominent risk management consulting firm established in early 2002, he has made significant contributions to the field. Currently, Lam serves as chair of the risk oversight committee and a member of the audit committee on the board of E*TRADE Financial Corporation, playing an important role in shaping governance practices. He also acts as an independent director and chair of the audit committee of RiskLens, Inc.
Lam provides strategic advice to C-level executives and boards on a range of enterprise risk engagements, including strategic, market, credit, operational, and cybersecurity threats.[1] He has performed and achieved extensive and significant work with boards on governance structure, risk appetite policies, and board reporting. Forrester Research has recognized James Lam & Associates as one of a few consulting firms with “extensive capabilities” in risk management across all major industries, highlighting Lam's pivotal role in advancing best practices in risk management.[2]
Early life and education
Born in Guangdong, China, in 1961, James Lam moved to the United States with his family in 1971, settling in Brooklyn. He excelled academically, graduating summa cum laude with a BBA from Baruch College in 1983. Lam furthered his education by receiving an MBA with honors from UCLA in 1989.
Career
Risk management
After graduating from Baruch College in 1983, Lam held positions as research analyst at Paine Webber, consultant at Kaplan Smith, vice president at Glendale Federal Bank, and senior consultant at First Manhattan Consulting Group. Between 1993 and 1995, Lam served as chief risk officer at GE Capital Markets Services, where he helped create a new capital markets business.[3]
Lam also served as chief risk officer for Fidelity Investments from 1995 to 1998. His work at Fidelity has been profiled in best-practice case studies published in Risk magazine, The Economist, Price Waterhouse Review and Risk and Insurance.
Following his work at GE and Fidelity, Lam joined Oliver Wyman as a partner in 1999. During his tenure at the firm, he founded ERisk, a NYC-based cloud and consulting company specializing in ERM and capital management. He initially served as founder and president and later as vice chairman of the board. ERisk was spun off as an independent company in 2001 and acquired by SunGard in 2005.
Other professional and academic activities
Lam is on the Carnegie Mellon University faculty for their CRO Executive Certification Program. He has lectured at Harvard Business School as the subject of a HBS case study, and has taught graduate courses in risk management and advanced derivatives at Babson College and Hult International Business School.
Since 1987, Lam has delivered over 200 keynotes and speeches throughout the world.
Lam has over 100 articles and book chapters to his credit, encompassing a wide range of financial and risk management topics. He has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, American Banker, Financial Times, and CFO Magazine.[5] Lam's first book, Enterprise Risk Management: From Incentives to Controls, published in 2003 (second edition, 2014) by Wiley, has been ranked #1 best selling among 25,000 risk management titles on Amazon. It has been translated into Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese and Korean. His latest book, Implementing Enterprise Risk Management: From Methods to Applications, was published by Wiley in 2017.
Industry recognition and awards
Lam is widely noted for coining the term, and subsequently being the first, “Chief Risk Officer”.[3] He has been an early advocate of enterprise risk management as a consultant and practitioner.
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