Lila Landis has navigated a series of challenges to reach the upper echelons in field of the compliance. Persistence has been the driving force behind her remarkable professional journey. It has enabled her to overcome roadblocks and find solutions to the toughest problems. Currently, serving as the Chief Compliance Officer, she oversees SEKO Logistics’s compliance activities globally.
In the dynamic corporate world, Lila is successful in every sense of the word. She, however, does not define success in terms of title, compensation, or the prestige of the organization she works for. She feels most successful when she is able to use her position and experience to help others. Over the years, she has helped several of her team members grow their careers and enter leadership roles. She often offers mentorship to individuals in the field of compliance. “I love being able to share career advice or lessons learned with others to help them succeed as well,” Lila says. Some of her personal career goals include presenting at an international conference, joining the Customs Operations Advisory Committee (COAC), and creating the curriculum for a college course on trade compliance.
Path Littered with Challenges
Lila’s path leading to success has been littered with challenges. She, however, never saw them as impediments to her progress. The challenges that she faced have enabled her to become more aware, knowledgeable, and passionate about contributing positively to other individuals’ growth and success.
During her undergraduate and graduate days, Lila worked full-time while going to school full-time. When she now recalls those days, she feels that they made her an expert at time management. “Now that I am a mom of three, I think those skills are even more important! I am grateful that I did work while working on my degrees as my work experience contributed to my learning, and vice versa,” she says.
At the time, Lila’s work focused on international contracts. Because of that, she was asked to be a guest speaker in her own class on International Negotiations during her International Business program at Alverno College – from where she graduated with a bachelor of arts in business administration. “I was able to provide real-life examples of international contract negotiation,” she says.
Today, Lila is one of the top compliance leaders in the nation. However, the path to attaining a leadership position in an organization was not an easy one for her. It was actually a major challenge to get her first leadership position. She experienced pushback due to her gender and age in one of her previous companies. “I was rejected for leadership roles multiple times before I was first promoted to manager,” she says. Instead of allowing such experiences to turn her into a bitter and negative person, Lila became passionate about helping women in leadership. It led her to work with the University of Houston’s Women in Leadership program and SEKO’s Women in Logistics Leadership (W.I.L.L.). A founding member of the WILL employee resource group, she is “very proud” of their work to help women in the organization.
Lila has consistently demonstrated her problem-solving skills. It is because she has always been “persistent” – it is also the word that describes her the best. “Both in my career and my private life, those who know me well know that when I am presented with a problem, I will find a way to solve it,” she says. For example, when she was with PolyOne, their Global Trade team was all women, and they called themselves “Pitbulls in Skirts” – an Eve music reference. “We were problem solvers and firefighters who stayed with it until there was a solution,” Lila says.
Working at SEKO Logistics
In 2021, Lila joined SEKO Logistics, and she was promoted to the position of Global Chief Compliance Officer in November of 2023. She currently leads three regional teams in the U.S., APAC, and EMEA.
Lila says that she is responsible for leading the global compliance program, including: TSA compliance; supply chain security, including CTPAT, AEO, and TAPA; FCPA anti-bribery and anti-corruption; sanctions, embargoes and denied parties; export compliance; import compliance for the largest filer of Type 86 de minimis entries; ITAR compliance as the Empowered Official; anti-boycott compliance; GDPR data privacy compliance; OSHA workplace safety compliance; Department of Transportation carrier compliance; anti-trust; quality ISO 9001:2015; and dangerous goods/hazardous materials.
As the Chief Compliance Officer, Lila does not have a typical day at SEKO. Her regular day can vary a lot, and this is one of the things that she loves about working at the company. “We have such a diverse client base that I get to see and solve many different kinds of compliance challenges,” Lila says.
She regularly has one-on-ones with each of her team members – they have a team meeting every Wednesday. She also has a one-on-one with her leader, and then a variety of other calls during the week depending on the current issues or projects she is working on. Lila also frequently speaks at conferences and writes articles; so, sometimes, a part of her day is devoted to writing or building presentations as well.
About SEKO and Its Compliance Department
SEKO is a global provider of logistics services, including customs brokerage, freight forwarding, warehousing, and 3PL. It has special expertise in e-commerce, white glove, defense, and healthcare. Lila points out that SEKO is the largest filer of Type 86 de minimis entries in the U.S.
The company is committed to developing efficiencies and optimizing clients’ supply chains. It takes time to understand their requirements and build their processes and services around their businesses, leaving them free to dedicate their time to what they are good at – growing their company’s profits. “We achieve this by simplifying processes, by providing the right service and cost options with multiple carriers, and by improving your [clients] ability to monitor and track sales and purchase order activity,” Lila says.
SEKO’s logistics solutions are lean and efficient, with the core aim of improving a client’s customer satisfaction and keeping their business running at peak performance.
And the company’s compliance department, led by Lila, works hard not just to keep SEKO compliant but also to help their clients. “We frequently help our clients with tough import and export compliance questions,” she says.
Lila is looking forward to creating a Compliance consulting team within their department so that they can expand the services they offer to clients. “That is still a few years away, but I know that we can deliver real value to our clients by taking on bigger compliance challenges for them,” she says.
Steps Taken to Maintain Compliance
The laws, rules, and regulations can change every month. It is, therefore, critical for Lila and her team to keep up with regulatory changes. So, they use a variety of sources to stay abreast of the updates. She and her team members make sure to read industry news as well as attend webinars and conferences.
“There’s so much going on that it can be easy to miss something, so this is one of the topics we touch on in our weekly team meetings – sharing any regulatory updates we’ve read about that may affect SEKO or our clients,” Lila says.
SEKO maintains an internal Compliance Manual as well. It details its policies and processes, and Lila’s team updates it regularly – when regulations change or when they develop new best practices. Then, they share this with all of their stations through their intranet so they always have the most up-to-date information.
Years ago, when delivering a compliance assessment or risk review, Lila read about the technique of focusing on “yes, and” instead of “no, but.” She finds this approach helpful when working with commercial teams.
“There are certainly times when I have to deliver a hard ‘no’ as a response, but I generally try to find a compliant way to ‘yes’,” she says. She has been able to earn the trust of commercial team members by demonstrating that she wants to facilitate business and help them win while still keeping them compliant.
Compliance a Business Enabler
In most companies, compliance departments are usually understaffed and underfunded. Lila points out that the combination of the pace of change in the regulatory landscape along with the downward pressures on headcount have made for understaffed compliance departments that are in constant fire-fighting mode.
She also says that compliance teams need to be staffed well enough to be able to spend time on learning and projects, but many are too short-handed to spend time on improvements to their compliance programs.
Lila wants more and more organizations to recognize compliance as a “business enabler” rather than just a cost center, and invest appropriately.
Best Leader to Each Team Member
Lila leads by example, and she treats every team member fairly and with respect. It is because of her bad experience with some leaders in the past. “I am really grateful that I have never forgotten what it is like to be an individual contributor,” she says. When she worked full-time while attending college, she often worked as a temp or in entry-level roles. She still remembers the times she was not treated well in those positions. So, she now makes sure that no one on her team ever is made to feel that way. “I value the time of my team members and treat them with respect, always,” Lila says. “Being a great leader requires learning from the mistakes of bad leaders.”
When she joins a new organization as a leader, taking on a new team, she likes to get to know the team by asking them about the best and worst leaders they have worked with in the past. “It gives me insight into how to be the best leader to each team member as an individual,” Lila says.
She does not expect her team members to be perfection-driven. They often hear from her that: “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.” Lila explains that in compliance, it is easy to become too focused on getting to 100%, which can distract from creating overall a great compliance program.
She also always tells her team, “Eat the fish, leave the bones! She says this a lot as a way of encouraging them to focus on what works for them and leave behind anything that does not.
Healthy Work-Life Balance
Lila believes in maintaining a healthy work-life balance. As a mother to three small children, balance is not “optional” for her. “They aren’t going to wait patiently while Mom takes a work call,” she says. Sometimes that means that calls with her team in Asia-Pacific happen after the kids are all asleep, and sometimes that means that she cannot join a call at all and needs to get the summary afterward. She makes herself available only for things that are truly urgent; otherwise, her focus is on getting as much done as possible during her normal workday.
Lila also talks with her team about how to balance work and life so that they know that they can do the same, and they also get to know that she supports them when it comes to maintaining a healthy work-life balance. “I feel very strongly that you can love your career, be committed to your organization, and still have a healthy work-life balance by treating work as part of your life and not your entire life,” she says.
She always encourages her team to prioritize their work and recognize what is truly urgent and what can wait. “I have been fortunate to see other leaders suffer the consequences of poor work-life balance in that it makes me very focused on not following the same path,” Lila says.
A Message to Aspiring Leaders
“To aspiring leaders, my main message is: always remember what it was like to be an individual contributor,” Lila says. “Humility will make you a better leader.”
