Dan Cooperman began serving on the Advisory Board of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics in 2019, becoming a fervent advocate for the Ethics Center and its mission. He took over his current role as Board Chair this year. A former senior vice president and general counsel of tech titans Oracle and Apple, Cooperman has become familiar with ethical issues and the many ways to address them. As he notes, ethical challenges are constantly arising and evolving, making it “important that Center programs continually examine current social, business, community, and legal norms to determine whether ethical training needs to take into account these new developments.” Cooperman was drawn to the Ethics Center by his understanding of the need for case studies in the teaching of ethics, something that became clear to him after his experiences teaching at the Stanford Schools of Law and Business and participating in some of the Ethics Center’s programming.
“In my class, I discovered that using real business cases was an ideal way to study how ethical issues can present themselves in business and then consider the effectiveness of various possible solutions to these issues. In the course of my contact with the Markkula Center, I recognized that the Center's emphasis on applied ethics was utilizing the very same technique to draw attention to how ethical issues arise in a variety of everyday contexts, whether in business, government, services, or personal interactions.”
Cooperman has always held the Ethics Center in high regard, something that he uses to push the Center forward in many aspects.
In addition to Cooperman’s vast experience with ethics through his work, he has also taken on an even stronger appreciation for the Ethics Center’s work since his appointment to the Board. For Cooperman, the Ethics Center “provides a clear demonstration of the ubiquity of ethical issues in our everyday lives.” With as much experience as Cooperman has had, it is easy for him to see the necessity of the Ethics Center in the current climate. As Cooperman says, “Having a strong set of ethical principles to guide a company’s business conduct is the very foundation of a company’s reputation and good standing in its industry and in its community. I would only want to work in an organization whose culture and guiding principles I could easily embrace.” This certainly holds true for his position on the Ethics Center Advisory Board.