It’s Time for an Ethical Revolution in How We Do Business

America’s most powerful voice in business ethics shows that the “do no evil” mantra is no longer enough, and companies that do not think seriously about a critical element of corporate culture―intentional integrity―are destined to fail.

Join us on May 13th as we have a fireside chat with AirBnB's former Chief Ethics Officer Robert Chesnut. Chesnut helps companies develop comprehensive strategies to drive integrity in their culture. He will be sharing with us the key concepts in his new book - ​Intentional Integrity: How Smart Companies Can Lead an Ethical Revolution and how we can incorporate these concepts into our own businesses.

Read what some have said about his book

“The ethical expectations for companies is wonderfully changing from ‘do no evil’ to ‘do good.’ Companies and their leaders need to put ethics and integrity at the center of their mission and culture. Rob is an insider who’s combined doing good with doing business well in two iconic Silicon Valley companies. His book contains smart, practical advice for anyone looking to do good and do well.” 

—Reid Hoffman, co-founder of Linkedin and author of Blitzscaling

“No one has wrestled with more difficult business integrity challenges over the last 20 years than Rob. His insights will instruct you how to drive integrity into your culture. Now, more than ever, we need someone to lead a constructive, direct conversation about integrity in business—Rob delivers.” 

—Meg Whitman, CEO of Quibi, former CEO of HP and eBay Inc.

“Rob and I were peers at Airbnb and together we helped build a culture and public-facing brand with integrity as a core value. Not only was the work strategically brilliant but under Rob’s leadership, it was embedded into the very heart of the company. Rob brings creativity, empathy, credibility and a great sense of humor to this important topic—a lawyer that makes ethics human and fun!”

—Jonathan Mildenhall, chief executive officer of TwentyFirstCenturyBrand

“Stop talking about bringing your values to work and learn how to actually DO it!”

—Kim Scott, author of Radical Candor

More about Robert Chesnut

Rob Chesnut works with companies to help them develop strategies to drive integrity into their culture. He was, until May 27, 2020, the Chief Ethics Officer of Airbnb Inc., a role he took on after nearly 4 years as Airbnb’s General Counsel. Airbnb, Inc. is a $30 billion private global travel and payments company that operates an online marketplace and hospitality service for people to rent short-term lodging including homes, apartments and rooms, and to participate in local experiences. The company has over 4 million lodging listings in 65,000 cities and 191 countries and has facilitated over 500 million guest check ins.

Rob is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the University of Virginia. He worked for 14 years with the U.S. Justice Department, including 10 years as an Assistant United States Attorney in Northern Virginia. As a federal prosecutor, Rob ran the Major Crimes unit and prosecuted a wide variety of cases, including bank robberies, kidnappings, murder, and drug trafficking organizations. He handled the prosecution of CIA, FBI and other employees of the intelligence community for espionage, including CIA employee Aldrich Ames. He is the recipient of the Justice Department’s John Marshall Award for litigation, and the CIA’s Outstanding Service Medallion.

In 1999, Rob left the U.S. Attorney’s Office and moved to California to become eBay’s third attorney, handling a wide variety of litigation, IP and regulatory/compliance matters for the company globally. Rob was promoted to run the company’s North American legal division in 2001, and in 2004 he was promoted to eBay’s executive leadership team as Sr. Vice President of a newly created Trust and Safety department. As the founder and head of eBay Trust and Safety, Rob was responsible for overseeing all site rules and policies for the eBay global community of over 150 million users, and building the first ecommerce person to person platform trust and safety team. Rob and his team built eBay’s fraud detection and prevention infrastructure, and his team of over 2000 employees reduced reported fraud and counterfeiting activity on eBay’s 20+ sites by 60% over 4 years. Rob was eBay’s spokesperson for site policies and fraud, and he was interviewed in over 200 television, newspaper, radio, and magazine stories for his pioneering role in combating Internet fraud. He left eBay in the fall of 2008 to become the General Counsel of LiveOps, Inc. in Santa Clara, CA, and moved to Chegg in 2010 as the general counsel and the company’s first lawyer. Rob set up Chegg’s legal department, and as a member of the executive team helped transform the company from a physical textbook rental site to a multi-service digital learning platform. He led the effort to take Chegg public on the NYSE in the fall of 2013, where it enjoys a market cap of over $4 billion.

Rob joined Airbnb in the spring of 2016, where he grew the legal team from 30 to over 150 legal professionals in 20 offices around the world. His team led initiatives to promote home sharing and address regulatory issues with local governments and landlords around the world. He was honored as one of the Financial Times Global 25 General Counsel in 2018. Rob developed a popular interactive employee program, Integrity Belongs Here, to help drive ethics throughout the culture at the company.

On July 28, he published ​Intentional Integrity: How Smart Companies Can Lead an Ethical Revolution with St Martin’s Press.

Rob has served on a number of advisory boards for internet marketplace startup businesses, including Uber, Upwork, Turo, and Poshmark. He lives in San Francisco, CA, and spends his spare time playing basketball with his son and watching his daughter’s theatre performances.