[Podcast] Culture & Compliance Chronicles: Wonder, Creativity and the Power of Play – Inspiring Change in Compliance with Rebecca Mayfield | Ropes & Gray LLP

Nitish Upadhyaya: Welcome back to the Culture & Compliance Chronicles, the podcast that gives you new perspectives on legal, compliance and regulatory challenges faced by organizations and individuals worldwide. The clue is in the title—culture is at the heart of everything. It’s the endlessly shifting patterns that govern our environment and behaviors. The magic is in amplifying certain patterns and dampening others. Let’s see if we can pique your curiosity, get you to challenge some of your perceptions and give you space to think differently about some of your own challenges. I’m Nitish Upadhyaya, and I’m joined by Amanda Raad and Richard Bistrong. Hello, Amanda and Richard.

Nitish Upadhyaya: Last time, we were recording with Sarah Zheng on the psychology of cybersecurity. We had a fascinating conversation that took us from the evolution of social engineering and the newest scams that are in play; how the human factor can often be the weak link in organizations, but it can also be its greatest strength; we can apply the same creativity that hackers use in generating scams in actually countering them; how educating people is not just the solution, but equipping them through practice and even getting themselves in the mindset of hackers; and importantly, how psychological safety can really make a difference in helping banish the shame, and then ultimately, getting people to speak up so that incident response plans can be put in place and we can get things headed off before they get into really a big crisis mode. Now, who do we have joining us today, Richard?

Richard Bistrong: Nitish, speaking personally and professionally, it is such a pleasure to welcome and introduce Rebecca Mayfield today. Rebecca is the group compliance director and senior legal counsel for Merlin Entertainments. And Rebecca’s career spans a wide variety of industries. Prior to Merlin, she was the global head of compliance and legal counsel at Norstella, which is a medtech company, and before that, Rebecca was the group senior director of corporate compliance and ethics at Meggitt, which is a defense company, which is where I first met Rebecca. So, I know this is going to be such an interesting and fun conversation—how could it not be when we’re talking to a compliance leader that covers the London Eye, The London Dungeon, LEGO, and Minecraft? Welcome, Rebecca.

Rebecca Mayfield: Thanks so much, Richard. Firstly, thank you so much for having me. It’s great to be here. Can’t wait to talk to you about anything from roller coasters to airplanes in the sky—you name it, we’ll cover it.

Nitish Upadhyaya: Amazing. Rebecca, before we dive into the roller coaster of a career that you’ve had, let’s do a rapid fire round to help the audience get to know you. Give us three things they should know.

Rebecca Mayfield: I keep a spare part of an airplane in my office. Don’t worry—it’s not very big. When I was a teenager, I played golf for England. I detest, should I say, the saying, ‘We’ve always done it this way.’

Nitish Upadhyaya: That is a great pet hate. Now, what’s one thing you are curious about?

Rebecca Mayfield: One thing I find really interesting is mob behavior and a follower-type culture. I think that is also not just interesting in the jobs that we do but just generally in the world and how it affects everything that we are involved in.

Nitish Upadhyaya: And what’s the last thing that surprised you?

Rebecca Mayfield: Last week, I heard that tonsils can grow back. Now, I could have fallen off my chair. I need to just tell everybody about this because I need to find a person who knew this could happen. Who knew? Tonsils, they grow back. Well, they can—they don’t always, but they can.

Amanda Raad: Okay, I’m seriously concerned about this, because what if you have your tonsils out? Then you have to have them out twice?

Rebecca Mayfield: Well, it depends if they grow back. I won’t go into detail about why I know this, but I have seen firsthand evidence of them growing back.

Amanda Raad: Wow.

Rebecca Mayfield: And who knew we were going to discuss tonsils as well as ethics and compliance today? I mean, come on.

Amanda Raad: Off to a really great start.

Richard Bistrong: Well, I’m going to have a tough time continuing that thread, so how about you share a little bit more about your career journey.

Rebecca Mayfield: I’ll be honest with you. I never thought I would be sitting here talking to you today. I never thought I would be a solicitor. I never thought I would be doing the job I do. And I definitely never thought that I would work for a company that prioritizes play above anything else. It’s crazy, really, when I look back, but ultimately, I always loved the law. I come from a background where I couldn’t afford to study the law and become a solicitor, so I decided the best way forward was to just get a job in the law. So, I worked in various commercial teams and legal teams doing any job they’d employ me to do and worked my way up, really. That was the long and the short of it.

Rebecca Mayfield: It all came ahead, really, when I was at Meggitt and I saw a problem. I went to see my boss, and I said, ‘There’s a problem here.’ And he said, ‘Well, what are you going to do about it then?’ And I said, ‘You want me to fix it?’ He looked at me—I think he thought, ‘Are you serious?’—and he said, ‘Yes, of course I want you to fix it.’ So, it was a process around due diligence to mitigate bribery and corruption risk. I must have done quite a good job because my boss at the time afterward said, ‘So, what do you want to do with your life?’ I had a five-year-old at this time. I thought, really, this was my path—I said, ‘Well, I did want to become a solicitor, but I think that’s gone.’ And he turned around to me and he said, ‘We’ll make that happen.’ And he did. He held on to his word. I was working full time. I started my legal practice course. I did it on a Saturday in addition to having a five-year-old and a full-time job. I did it for six hours on a Saturday for two years. It was about 22 exams I sat all in all. I couldn’t have done it without obviously the people I worked with at Meggitt, but also, my husband, who gave me the space and the freedom to go and follow my dreams. The rest, they say, is history, really, but it has made me realize that it’s those people and those connections you make in life that really make a difference.

Richard Bistrong: What a beautiful story.

Nitish Upadhyaya: I think when you look at those building blocks for your career, I suspect people have ended up doing one path. You said early on in your story you thought that was your track. What has that given you in terms of perspectives and experiences, the fact that you are not just one set of LEGO bricks, but many different ones all put together?

Rebecca Mayfield: I like that, and I do love the analogy of ‘play’ in all of this. I think deep down, the first thing it’s given me is the realization that it’s okay to be different and it’s okay to follow a different track. Your path, you just can’t compare it to other people’s—and nor should you, really. I do think you have to be single-minded, and there’s a lot of luck along the way, but the luck comes from the trying hard and the perseverance—it doesn’t just happen. But I think there’s some key pieces that are consistent across career development which are the fundamentals and the basics around work ethic and trying hard. They always say, ‘Talent gets you so far,’ but then it’s the hard work that keeps you going. And also, seeing things in your day-to-day life and going, ‘Do you know what? I really like that over there, and I really like that. But I don’t want to be like that person. I don’t like that.’ And that’s okay, too. The fundamental basics, as I said, I think are really important. The principles that you follow and let that be your guiding light, I think that, to me, is really important. Where that path takes you is half the excitement, isn’t it, really?

Amanda Raad: I love that, Rebecca. And I, like you, honestly, I had no idea that the career that I’m doing now was a career—I didn’t actually even know that that was possible. And certainly, there are many people that their support, their words, their guidance, their trust, and giving opportunities—that mentorship along the way is so critical. And I know you are super passionate about mentoring, too. I also try to be one of those people to pay it back as much as I can. Obviously, it’s changed a lot, as we have so many people; roles are getting more and more global; there’s more remote teams; there are teams that aren’t actually physically together. How do you navigate all of that, and what’s some of the best advice you have for how to be the best mentor one can be?

Rebecca Mayfield: I think it’s not something you can give a straightforward answer to because it should continually develop with you as well over time about the type of mentor you want to be. And also, the people you’re offering that to, how do they want to receive it? It’s so much about a relationship here rather than a transaction, if you want to relate it to that. I think what’s really important, to me, is empathy and seeing behind that person straightaway of the route that they’ve taken. A good saying somebody said to me once was that “everybody’s difficult is different.” That just, to me, holds so firm in my mind of remembering that: that just because what you’re going through is difficult, doesn’t mean it outweighs or outpunches somebody else’s challenges and the things they’re dealing with, whether that is mentoring and career development or just dealing with that really difficult person that keeps sending you emails and things like that. I recognize that there are loads of people in my life that have gone the extra mile for me, and so, I just want to do the same and pass it forward. I just think that we really shouldn’t put the barriers in the way of hybrid working is difficult—some great relationships are built face to face, but some great relationships are built over a Teams call or over a Zoom call. Just because we’re not physically in each other’s presence, doesn’t mean that the conversation is less valuable to us, so that is really important. We can all find the barriers, but we are less inclined to find all the good parts of it as well. It’s human condition, isn’t it? Let’s not forget the curiosity piece of childhood that sometimes gets beaten out of us through experience maybe.

Richard Bistrong: That’s so well said, and it’s nice to hear that being virtually present doesn’t prohibit us—it’s not a block to mentoring. We just might have to be a little more intentional about it.

Rebecca Mayfield: Absolutely, Richard. Yes, I couldn’t agree more. I think that word you just said, of ‘intentional,’ that’s really important.

Richard Bistrong: Rebecca, we had such a wonderful experience filming this e-learning series for Merlin, appropriately named Lawless to Lawful. It was anything but check-the-box training for sure—and I promise, this is not an infomercial about our work, even though I might like it to be. As we know, there are no shortage of training providers out there and deep and wide training libraries. So, Rebecca, why did you decide to curate and create something internally literally from scratch?

Rebecca Mayfield: I think this is what I’ve always wanted to do. I’ve always known I’m a little bit wacky—I would probably say that’s an admission on my part. I don’t like to do things in the standard way, and I saw my opportunity, Richard, and I grabbed it with both hands, I’d have to say here. And I think it did help. I work in a very creative industry now. I walk through my office some days, and I can see LEGO, and waxworks, and pictures of the greatest fun experiences that you could imagine. I work in a playground, it is fantastic, and it really helped me push over the line into the wild and the wacky, and how things can be done differently. And I think there’s a time and a place for all different types of training. Those externally available resources that you get an email to say, ‘You’ve got some training to do.’ I think every part of training has its purpose and its opportunity to provide something useful, but I thought, ‘Let’s just go for it.’ I wanted to connect to the human element. I think in ethics and compliance, we can sometimes become quite linear in terms of, ‘This is right, this is wrong, and never the two should touch. Don’t do anything wrong. You’re going to get in so much trouble.’ But it doesn’t bring it to life. How can I sit there in a business and ask somebody to do something if I can’t connect it to real life? And so, Lawless to Lawful was born out of understanding your story and the human element and the human impact it has on yourself, your family, on the businesses you work with, your partners and colleagues, and not just the instance, but also, the ramifications of all of it. Bringing your story to life was hugely impactful for so many people I would say.

Rebecca Mayfield: Another point I need to make is explaining Lawless to Lawful, and I think this helps explain the path that I’m on at Merlin. The challenge was to make ethics and compliance not boring. We all sat around a table, and we thought, ‘Well, how can we do this?’ And we thought, ‘We’re going to have a legal festival, and we are going to have a main stage with headline acts, and we’re going to bring as much fun as we can in a festival environment.’ And so, by doing it, each member of the legal team was able to bring an act in. I decided to bring Richard in and let’s go crazy with it. ‘Lawless’ was a play on words from a UK festival ‘Wireless’ that headlines every year in the summer and is a really popular festival. And so, we took Richard’s story, and we took it from Lawless to Lawful. It was just fantastic to see that bringing fun into something doesn’t diminish the story that you tell, the important threads throughout a story, but it does make it more noteworthy, more impactful, and more engaging for people who think, ‘I’ve got some ethics training to do. I’m going to hate that.’ Well, actually, don’t judge a book by its cover. And I really feel that this isn’t all of it—this is only the beginning. You’re only hamstrung by your own thoughts, and you don’t have to be.

Nitish Upadhyaya: And I think that’s such a call to arms there because you’re absolutely right. I often tell the story about an art professor who goes home to his daughter, and the daughter says, ‘What do you do for work?’ And he says, ‘Well, I teach people to draw.’ And she says, ‘What? You mean they forget?’ There’s this idea that—as you said, Rebecca—you have it beaten out of you that we cannot have fun, that we have to be all serious and rigid, and follow things in a very, very linear fashion. So, I love the point about taking experiences, creating wonder. And I am a frequent visitor to many Merlin attractions, especially with my daughter. We spend time at London Aquarium, and our favorite ride at Chessington is Seastorm—and it’s the wonder that I see in her eyes, the awe and the experience where she’s like, ‘Oh, I’m in this world.’ And being able to craft that for legal and compliance is kind of mind blowing. What are the principles or things that you keep in mind when you’re trying to design the experience? What can people do to create wonder and awe when it comes to compliance training?

Rebecca Mayfield: Nitish, I think you said it really well there, of looking through the eyes of a child: that children are so curious. When I first started at Merlin, I took my son to Warwick Castle. He was quite young, and he’s got a frown on his face. We’re walking around the Great Hall where there’s big coats of armor and there’s so much going on in there, and he looks at me and he says, ‘Mommy, I don’t think this job is going to work out for you.’ And I said, ‘Well, why?’ And he said, ‘I can’t see a plug for your laptop.’ It just made me laugh so much, and I said, ‘It’s okay, mate. I’m going to be given a desk in another room.’ And he goes, ‘Oh, phew.’ I think he thought that I was going to sit in the Great Hall, perched on a chair, with a laptop on my lap. And why wouldn’t I be? So, yes, let’s keep looking through the eyes of a child. The curiosity should never dwindle, really.

Rebecca Mayfield: Another point—and I hope some of our listeners are not going to judge me here, but—my child, he watches YouTube. There’s some crazy content on there, but there’s some really good stuff, and it’s so human, it’s so raw, it’s so impactful, and it keeps your attention. I love that side of things. Why do it the way everyone else has done it? Going back to the point of, ‘We’ve always done things like this around here,’ let’s move out of that. Go to the wild and the wacky. It’s about the story you tell. Let’s not get hung up on other pieces of it. Going back to the Lawless to Lawful documentary I did, in the first preproduction meeting, we were talking, and I spoke to our learning and development team. They said, ‘What do you want to do?’ And I said, ‘I want to do this documentary about a man I know who’s been to prison and he’s turned his life around.’ ‘Okay. But how do you want to do it?’ And I said, ‘Well, can we do it as a cross between The Kardashians and The Tinder Swindler?’ The learning and development manager, he looked at me and he went, ‘Yes, why not?’ I nearly held myself back at that point and nearly didn’t say that ‘I want it to be a bit in these styles.’ I’m so glad I didn’t because he went, ‘Yes, why not?’ And I think that’s the question: Why not?

Amanda Raad: I have no doubt from personal experience, and honestly, just by listening to you as we talk, that this approach works, but also, everybody is always clamoring for, ‘Give me the proof. Show me the measurement. Show me that actually this is just as good, because otherwise, it’s not safe. I can’t do something differently because I need you to prove to me it’s the better way, the safer way.’ And so, there is a bit of an obsession with measurement. Have you done any measurement? Do you have any advice on how to think about that in the context of trying these new, different ways of approaching engagement?

Rebecca Mayfield: I completely agree with you, Amanda, that you shouldn’t do anything if you can’t measure the success around it. There’s a value in the qualitative and a value in the quantitative. We have measured it, and let me just say, this isn’t the solution to mitigating all of our risk here. This is a part of the whole program—this isn’t the whole program, but it is a thread that runs through it all to bring everything together. In terms of recording measurement, what we’ve done is we’ve recorded click-throughs on our SharePoint to it. We can also monitor how long somebody watches because this isn’t mandatory training—we’ve really flipped it up. It is also complemented by all-employee mandatory training, which is then shorter in its nature. And it links to the Lawless to Lawful documentary series. So, we get the part where it connects to our LMS and we can say that a viewer has done all of that, but it also connects through in the whole thread, the life cycle of the whole project. Now, we did monitor click-throughs and how many views to the end we got. We had over 12,000 views for this series. And it was not born out of, ‘Here it is—off you go.’ We drip-fed it into the business. We did a trailer in a documentary-, Netflixy-type style, you could say. I feel really bad saying this because I am not a cool person at all, but we dropped an episode every week for four weeks. And I know it works because people were contacting me, saying, ‘When’s the next episode going live? I want to make sure that I watch it.’ So, I had people contacting me, wanting to binge-watch the series. And don’t worry, we weren’t taking people out of the business for hours on end to watch documentaries. These episodes were between eight and 10 minutes long—you could get yourself a cup of tea, have a little break, watch this, and go back to your work, or you could pause it and keep going through it all. So, we monitored and measured success in different ways, and it was complemented by more standard-type vignette training as well to bring a whole package together in our compliance toolbox, you could say.

Amanda Raad: I love that. And it also just builds on all the research out there about when people voluntarily choose to watch something, how their level of retention is so different and their level of engagement, and even the length of the content—how long people can actually stay focused on certain tasks—and, as you say, part of the bigger toolbox. So, there’s some of the other more traditional supporting mechanisms in place too. Brilliant.

Rebecca Mayfield: It’s about empowering people. I can point a finger and say, ‘Do not do this. Do not do that.’ And the more rules you give someone—it’s human behavior to work around a rule. You empower somebody who understands that certain difficult situations are going to happen at work, but you can raise your hand, to coin one of Richard’s phrases, ‘If in doubt, shout.’ And that’s what it’s all about because that’s where engagement comes from. This was launched in the summer 2025, and we’re still getting high levels of engagement through it.

Richard Bistrong: Fantastic. What an incredible experience and what an inspiration, Rebecca. And I just will share: it is possible to get a film crew in a London taxi and conduct an interview while in motion, but that’s a different story. Winding down, Rebecca, I’d like to talk to you about your advocacy and volunteer work. You really touched me in our conversations with how you pay it forward and you give back to the community, especially underserved communities. Do you mind sharing a little bit more of that and why you decided to embark on such passionate work?

Rebecca Mayfield: I’ve really been thinking about this, and I think it boils down to leaders that I have seen and admired, and one of them is definitely my mom. She’s a leader in her own right as the figurehead probably of my family, but also in her career, and she always volunteered. I think as a child, I didn’t really pay that much attention, or knowingly pay attention, because I think I was, and I saw what she did for underserved communities. And ultimately, my mind’s eye takes me back to the little girl that I was, sitting in assemblies, seeing people that were showing that you can achieve anything and do anything. I think sometimes in underserved communities that you can think that that’s your lot, that’s where you’ve got to stay, and you shouldn’t aspire to more. I’ve always wanted more, but with more, there is a responsibility to pay it forward or give back, whichever way you want to say it. So, I do like to work with schools in underserved communities because those children in those assemblies or in those groups that you’re talking to, that was me, that was you, that’s everybody. We have a duty, I think, to pay it forward and keep giving back.

Rebecca Mayfield: I once set up an apprentice scheme with the learning and development team at Meggitt and brought 40 children from an underserved community to the school for a day. These children were likely to go on to be under the poverty line, in a really difficult situation. And one of the boys from that applied for the apprenticeship scheme, and he got in. I remember going back to the school before he left after he got the news that he’d got in, and he said to me that I’d changed his life. And it wasn’t me—it was everybody. We’d all had a part to play in it. Those things just stay with you forever, and you think, ‘Just one person. That’s all it takes.’ And we can all do that. So, yes, it’s really important to me because I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for certain people who helped me along the way, my career development, bringing me in to circles to have a voice at the table, and entrusting me with the responsibility that we all have, and I don’t think we should ever make light of that.

Richard Bistrong: Thank you so much, Rebecca. What a heartfelt and what a heartwarming story and journey. Let’s talk about takeaways. Amanda, any key takeaways that you’d like to share?

Amanda Raad: I loved the words thinking about relationships versus transactional engagements, and I just think that’s so right with everything that we do. And I also really love the encouragement to be willing to do something different: recognize that there are so many paths and so many ways and to really empower people, versus trying to restrain people or put them in their box. And then finally, I can’t not respond to the amazing answer about the bigger, broader impact that we all can have, and I have to say it’s why I went into this profession in the first place. It never ceases to amaze me what an impact we can have every day actually in every engagement that we have. There’s a lot of opportunity there, and so, I really love that you shone a light on that. So, thank you very much. What about you, Richard?

Richard Bistrong: I think having experienced this firsthand with Rebecca, we really are only limited in our imagination, in our creativity when it comes to designing and implementing out of the box whether it’s training or an initiative or a campaign. And I think Rebecca was right: sometimes, we just get so down into the detail that we don’t take that fresh look and to say, ‘How can we inspire people to do the right thing?’ and to avoid—Amanda, we always come back to this quote—just always focusing on the ‘tsunami of regulations’ that we all have to deal with. So, thank you, Rebecca. And, Nitish, I’ll turn it over to you for your key takeaway and to lead us out.

Nitish Upadhyaya: It’s fun, right? We can actually really have fun doing this. We can have a laugh. We can be creative. We can create an experience. I love the idea of thinking about kids and looking at things through a child’s eyes because it’s what this is supposed to be about, and I think that really makes a difference. So, something I bring in my work anyway, and it’s reinforced that message as we go on.

Rebecca Mayfield: I remind myself all the time, and one thing I want to share with you guys, is that—and you’ve just said, really—play isn’t just for children. We do serious jobs. And it’s not just us—loads of people do serious jobs and have a responsibility associated with it. But just because there’s a serious nature doesn’t mean that you can’t add a layer of fun, of humor, of empowerment. Richard mentioned about limiting ourselves. Why do we revert to limiting ourselves when, actually, opportunity is so broad?

Nitish Upadhyaya: What an amazing takeaway to leave our listeners with. And I suspect lots of our listeners are going to be wanting to find out more about you, the work that you do, so where can listeners get in touch with you?

Rebecca Mayfield: Probably first place, LinkedIn. I love linking with lots of people. There’s nothing wrong with stealing with pride. If anything that we’ve talked about today flips a switch and you think, ‘You know what? I want to do a bit of that,’ then go for it.

Nitish Upadhyaya: Ethics and compliance, bringing the fun. Thank you so much for your time and stories.

Rebecca Mayfield: A pleasure. Thank you for having me.