Laura Langone, senior director of global risk management at Juniper Networks Inc. in Sunnyvale, California, is chair of the Risk & Insurance Management Society Inc.’s ERM Committee, which focuses on enterprise risk management. Before joining Juniper, she worked for global insurance and risk management consulting companies, including American International Group Inc., Marsh L.L.C. and Towers Watson & Co. She was also a defense attorney with law firm Gordon & Rees L.L.P. Ms. Langone talked with Business Insurance Senior Editor Judy Greenwald about the committee‘s work. Edited excerpts follow.

Q: How would you describe the purpose of the RIMS ERM Committee?

A: The purpose of the committee is really to assist risk managers with looking at enterprise risk management — the framework, processes, and case studies that could be shared by the RIMS community for those who would really like to know how they work.

The committee looks at issues of managing risk, how you do it and best practices, so it’s more meaningful for risk managers, and then we also work on selecting the ERM seminars for RIMS nationally, as well as at regional conferences.

Q: Why do you think it is important for the risk manager to know ERM?

A: To be most effective in an organization, and get a seat at the table with the C-suite, having an ERM background is definitely going to help. I think fundamentally, for me personally, it’s how I do risk management. It’s very important. But I think for others, it’s sort of what’s expected. I think it really does make sense that risk managers are familiar with these concepts. I think it helps their career, and it definitely creates other professional opportunities as well.

Q: How successful has the committee been?

A: I think we’re quite successful. We map out what our plan is going to be for the year, and then we execute the plan. So it’s very measurable, it’s very specific as to what we’re trying to accomplish, I would say.

We publish a newsletter at least annually, we provide a lot of materials for the RIMS site annually, which could include a webcast, we participate in seminars, and there’s a lot of other work going on as well in terms of representing RIMS, so we might be going to other forums and wearing our RIMS hats, if you will, and also learning from other organizations where folks might present. We learn from those as well. I think it’s effective, especially for a group of volunteers. We meet monthly, and everybody participates as best we can, and we vote on minutes, and we really keep to programs. And where we have problems, we try to assign and get those tasks completed.

We have 12 members, including (RIMS director of strategic and enterprise risk practice) Carol Fox. At RIMS or our ERM conference in October, we try to meet live if most of us are going to be there.

Q: What are your plans for the future?

A: We are working on a publication on ERM, including what does (ERM mean for) practitioners, trying to bring some clarity around that. It’s a continuous goal. We’re also looking at risk appetite, so we’re going to do a publication on that, as well as more on emerging risks. And then, of course, we’re making sure we have a successful RIMS and ERM conference in October.