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In his first in-house role at what became Lumen Technologies, James Butler began at a company of 6,500 US-based employees that, by the time he left (and having been promoted three times along the way), had ballooned to 45,000 with operations in sixty different countries.
Butler was one of ten attorneys in-house and had the opportunity to get involved in as many different aspects of that growth and development as his schedule could allow. The attorney with a background in litigation and employment law was suddenly supporting commercial contracting, marketing, and sales.
Since then, Butler has grown his compliance and ethics bona fides to become a leader in the space for public companies. The current VP and deputy general counsel of compliance and business integrity at Ansys has brought his legal and compliance leadership to a company you’ve probably interacted with—whether you know it or not. Ansys software can be found in airplanes, autonomous vehicles, mobile devices, and computers. The company has been an eager contributor to the future of technology.
Since coming to Ansys in 2020, Butler oversees a geographically dispersed team of twenty attorneys and legal professionals. Butler says his job is to empower his team supporting operations across the US, Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, and Africa to harness their subject and geographic expertise to help ensure Ansys’s compliance across the globe.
Ethics Don’t Bend, But Strings Do
Even leaders get the blues. That’s where the guitars help. Along with the family, career, and successful teams Butler has created over the years, his guitar collection is also first-rate. The VP is still the proud owner of his first guitar, a 1976 Fender Stratocaster, and of the 1924 Martin 0-42 acoustic, the 1951 Fender Telecaster, and a small armory of other guitars at his disposal.
“My first real job was teaching beginning guitar students in Birmingham, Alabama, where I grew up,” Butler says. “I’ve been a lifelong learner, and it’s the same with the guitar.”
Compliance Champions
One of Butler’s biggest wins at Ansys during his brief tenure is the continuing influence and buildout of Ansys’s Ethics and Compliance Champions program. The Champions program selects between twenty-five and thirty employees across the globe who aren’t part of the core ethics and compliance team and charges them with learning about the ethics and compliance program to act as ambassadors for the greater organization of some six thousand people all over the world.
“These program participants come from different functional areas and backgrounds and help us spread our message out to the rest of the organization,” Butler explains. “It helps bring information back to us as well, to understand what’s happening in particular regions or geographies, and lock in if there are areas we need to spend some extra time focusing on.”
Individuals will serve two years meeting with the ethics and compliance team quarterly to learn, share, and grow. Butler says the program places a heavy emphasis on data analytics to get a holistic picture of what’s happening enterprise-wide, to identify trends, and to determine what’s working and what needs improvement.
A Very Special Team
Butler says the core team tasked with ensuring global compliance at Ansys is a most impressive one.
“This is a special team that can deliver pragmatic, solutions-oriented guidance and then is able to implement that guidance in support of the business,” Butler says. “This is a group that rolls up its sleeves, not just to give the organization a road map of where the business needs to go, but to actually help them get there.”
In developing his own team, Butler says he emphasizes the soft skills that may not be the first thought for legal professionals. The VP says that the best legal guidance in the world means little if that guidance can’t be communicated to internal clients in a concise, digestible manner. How guidance is delivered is just as critical as the guidance itself. That’s why Butler’s team thrives, and why their internal clients feel so supported.
The Team at Home
Before discussing his career or his team at work, the first people Butler mentions are the ones at home. The success the VP is most proud of lies in the family he and his wife have built.
“The person I most look up to is my wife,” Butler says. “She’s shown me the importance of having faith and perseverance. She’s an incredibly hard worker who gives so much of her time and energy to others. She is a strong Christian who has helped me prioritize my own faith and love for my family.”
Butler says his three children, who range from twenty to thirteen, have provided the lawyer with daily exercises in understanding, appreciating, and communicating with people who all have their own strong points of view. This doesn’t sound like a euphemism for “arguing with the kids” when Butler says it. They’ve taught him what he considers an invaluable lesson in leadership, which is the importance of recognizing differing perspectives and working to understand and appreciate others’ perspectives even when they are different from his own.
