Power and Accountability: The Costs and Benefits of Speaking Up

What does it take to speak up inside powerful institutions—and what happens after you do? Eric Ben-Artzi and Ellen Pao draw on firsthand experience to examine the real-world costs, tradeoffs, and consequences of speaking up when incentives and power are misaligned. Together, they’ll explore what makes power legitimate, what accountability looks like in practice, and how leaders and institutions can build stronger governance and resilience.

In person and via Zoom.

Eric Ben-Artzi is a former Deutsche Bank risk officer and one of three whistleblowers who reported improper accounting at the bank to U.S. regulators in 2010–2011. He raised concerns that Deutsche Bank was overvaluing a large derivatives portfolio to conceal potential trading losses. The SEC later fined the bank $55 million; although he was awarded a multimillion-dollar whistleblower payout, Ben-Artzi famously declined his share in protest of the lack of accountability for senior executives. Earlier in his career, he worked as a trader at Citigroup and a quantitative strategist at Goldman Sachs. He holds a B.Sc. in mathematics from Hebrew University and a Ph.D. in mathematics from the Courant Institute at NYU.

Ellen K. Pao  is a tech investor and advocate for equity in the workplace. She served as interim CEO of Reddit and previously worked as a partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. She is the cofounder of Project Include, a nonprofit that supports companies in building more diverse and inclusive workplaces. Pao writes and speaks on technology, leadership, and organizational culture, and her commentary has appeared in outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, WIRED, Time, and others. She holds an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University and earned law and business degrees from Harvard.

Moderator : Anat Admati, Professor of Finance and Economics, Stanford Graduate School of Business 

Student Lead: Nirali Devgan, MBA ’26