MCI, in an effort to distance itself from the accounting scandals that plagued the company when the it went by the name WorldCom, named a defense contractor veteran as its chief ethics officer.

Starting Tuesday, Nancy Higgins will be MCI's executive vice president of ethics and business conduct and chief ethics officer, reporting to MCI Chairman and CEO Michael Capellas. Capellas appointed an interim chief ethics officer in January after he took over the company in November, but Higgins is the first permanent chief ethics officer at MCI, still officially named WorldCom.

Higgins most recently served as vice president of ethics and business conduct for Lockheed Martin. Prior to that, Higgins was a senior corporate attorney with Boeing, where she headed the first company-wide ethics organization.

"Nancy brings a rare combination of direct experience in developing and overseeing large-scale ethics programs, a proven 10-year track record for creating best practices and, most importantly, an absolute passion for the job," Capellas said in a statement. "MCI strives to be a model of good corporate governance with best-in-class ethics compliance."

Capellas noted that MCI has taken several steps to build a culture centered on ethics, including:

• Ethics training for MCI's 55,000 U.S.-based employees and contractors.
• A company code of ethics, distributed to all employees.
• A "zero-tolerance policy" dictating that any suspected violation of MCI's code of ethics will be fully investigated and immediately dealt with.
• A confidential ethics hotline allowing employees to raise ethics or business conduct concerns.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.