As part of the management department's Ethics Speaker Series, Isenberg recently hosted Roger McNamee, author of Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe. It was hosted in the newly-opened Business Innovation Hub and was open to students, faculty, and the general public at no cost. McNamee spoke for about an hour then answered several questions from the audience. The event ended with a reception that included light refreshments and gave attendees the ability to mingle and purchase a signed copy of the book. 

McNamee's presentation centered around his experience of mentoring Mark Zuckerberg during Facebook's earlier and most formative years. He was also directly involved with Sheryl Sandberg leaving Google to become COO of Facebook in 2008. As both a mentor and stockholder, he was once a devoted supporter of Facebook's efforts and believed the company was doing great things. With the rise of privacy concerns, however, McNamee has become a leading whistleblower against Facebook's practice of collecting and selling users' data without their knowledge or, oftentimes, consent. He is now actively involved with pushing for new and stricter regulation on what data can be collected by corporations and other third-party entities on platforms like Facebook.

My Management 260 Business Law class was lucky enough to have McNamee come speak to us right before the event started. Due to the smaller setting, I actually ended up enjoying that presentation more than the larger event. Opportunities to hear from highly successful industry professionals like Roger McNamee are one of the many reasons why I love being an Isenberg student, and I am looking forward to future events from the Ethics Speaker Series.