Extraordinary Circumstances: The Journey of a Corporate Whistleblower »

Cynthia Cooper was one of Time's 2002 Persons of the Year. She was the vice president of internal audit for WorldCom and subsequently MCI. Cynthia was featured as one of twenty-five influential working mothers in Working Mother magazine, and earned the distinction of being the first woman to receive the AAA Accounting Exemplar Award and to be inducted into the AICPA Business & Industry Hall of Fame. She resigned from MCI in 2004, following the company's successful emergence from bankruptcy, and now shares the lessons she has learned through her experiences with professionals and students. She and her husband Lance reside in Mississippi with their two daughters.

My team and I were ordinary people who found ourselves facing extraordinary circumstances.

—Cynthia Cooper, former Vice President, WorldCom

The longer WorldCom Chief Audit Executive Cynthia Cooper stares at the entries in front of her, the more sinister they seem. But the CFO is badgering her to delay her team's audit of the company's books and directing others to block Cooper's efforts. Still, something in the pit of her stomach tells her to keep digging. Cooper takes readers behind the scenes on a riveting, real-time journey as she and her team work at night and behind closed doors to expose the largest fraud in corporate history. Whom can they trust? Could she lose her job? Should she fear for her physical safety?

In Extraordinary Circumstances, she recounts for the first time her journey from her close family upbringing in a small Mississippi town, to working motherhood and corporate success, to the pressures of becoming a whistleblower, to being named one of Time's 2002 Persons of the Year. She also provides a rare insider's glimpse into the spectacular rise and fall of WorldCom, a telecom titan, the darling of Wall Street, and a Cinderella story for Mississippi.

With remarkable candor, Cooper discusses her struggle to overcome these challenges, and how she has found healing through sharing the lessons learned with the next generation. This book reminds us all that ethical decision-making is not forged at the crossroads of major events but starts in childhood, "decision by decision and brick by brick."

At a time when corporate dishonesty is dominating public attention, Extraordinary Circumstances makes it clear that the tone set at the top is critical to fostering an ethical environment in the work-place. Provocative, moving, and intensely per-sonal, Extraordinary Circumstances is a wake-up call to corporate leaders and an intimate glimpse at a scandal that shook the business world.

Dedication.

Introduction.

Acknowledgments.

Chapter 1: A Dark Cloud.

Chapter 2: Graduation Day.

Chapter 3: New Beginnings.

Chapter 4: Hotlanta.

Chapter 5: The Turnaround.

Chapter 6: Coming Home.

Chapter 7: Building A New Life.

Chapter 8: King of the Resellers.

Chapter 9: The Hottest Company in Town.

Chapter 10: Nowhere To Go But Up.

Chapter 11: A New Era.

Chapter 12: The Glass Sieve.

Chapter 13: The Tide Comes In.

Chapter 14: The Minnow Swallows the Whale.

Chapter 15: Finding Balance.

Chapter 16: Top of the Mountain.

Chapter 17: A Double-Edge Sword.

Chapter 18: A Titan Stumbles.

Chapter 19: The Rule of Ten.

Chapter 20: What is Prepaid Capacity?

Chapter 21: Growing Suspicions.

Chapter 22: A Surprise Visit.

Chapter 23: The Confrontation.

Chapter 24: A Desperate Search for Counsel.

Chapter 25: Washington Attorneys Visit the Deep South.

Chapter 26: Navigating the Storm.

Chapter 27: A Visit to Federal Court.

Chapter 28: The United States Versus Bernard J. Ebbers.

Chapter 29: The Judgement.

Epilogue.

Notes.

Index.