While Carol Tate ’96 has loved living in Northern California since 2016, she is proud of her Midwestern upbringing. “I grew up in Cincinnati in a family with a strong work ethic that focused on doing the right thing. I was taught that you use those values for whatever you do and how you show up in the world,” she explains.
It therefore comes as no surprise that when Tate began her career as a commercial litigator working in law firms, she made the choice to devote her career to helping others do the right thing, too. She joined the Chicago office of the US Securities and Exchange Commission in 2003, serving as an attorney in the enforcement division. Three years later, “Motorola was looking for someone to conduct internal investigations,” she recalls. Tate was intrigued by the idea of “helping a business to operate legally, ethically, and responsibly around the world.”
From Motorola, she moved on to hold senior investigations and compliance roles at Flextronics, McCarthy Building Companies, Inc., and most recently at Intel Corporation, where she is vice president and chief compliance officer. Her global twenty-person team leads the way in promoting a culture of integrity and ensuring that the company, which has 130,000 employees worldwide, both abides by international rules and regulations and strives to do the right thing everywhere it operates.
“Intel is a company where operating legally is table stakes,” Tate says. “Given our code of conduct and leadership mission, we are a company that is grounded in ethics.” With her litigation background and regulatory and compliance expertise, Tate feels she combines core values instilled during her upbringing with the practice of law to make a difference on a global scale.
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