Sherron Watkins (born August 28, 1959 in Tomball, Texas) was Vice President of corporate development at Enron and is considered by many the whistleblower who helped to uncover the Enron scandal in 2001.

It has been remarked that her actions cannot be considered whistleblowing in a strict sense, because she just wrote a concerned internal letter to Enron CEO Kenneth Lay warning him of potential whistleblowers in the company and pointing out that there were misstatements in the financial reports. Her memo did not reach the public until five months after it was written.

She testified before the U.S. Congress and Senate at the beginning of 2002 and was selected as one of three "People of the Year 2002" by Time. (The two whistleblowers who joined her as "People of the Year" were Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom and Coleen Rowley of the FBI.)

She had joined Enron in 1993, having worked for Arthur Andersen the previous eight years. She departed from Enron in November 2002. Since then she has been giving speeches at management congresses and has co-written a book about her experiences at Enron and the problems of the US corporate culture.

Watkins holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Texas (where she was a member of Alpha Chi Omega sorority), a Masters of Professional Accounting and is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA).

Books

• Mimi Swartz with Sherron Watkins: Power Failure. The Inside Story of The Collapse of Enron, ISBN 0-385-50888-3 (March 2003)

Film

• Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. 2005. IMDB Includes personal interviews with Sherron Watkins.

External links

• Sherron Watkins eMail to Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay, August 2001

References

• Interview with Sherron Watkins

1959 births | Living people | University of Texas at Austin alumni | American energy industry executives | Enron | Time magazine Persons of the Year | Whistleblowers | Accountants