Jerome Mayne

Finance professional to federal inmate — a seriously funny true story. Normal-guy choices. Big-boy consequences.

Jerome Mayne is a former white-collar criminal. He was not a Wall Street kingpin or criminal mastermind. He was a finance professional who saw the trouble, knew he was crossing lines, and still found ways to believe the catastrophic consequences belonged somewhere farther down the road. They did not. His choices sent him to federal prison, changing his life and the lives of people around him.

Choices and Consequences is a serious, funny and candid keynote about rationalization, ethical drift, judgment and accountability. Jerome takes audiences inside the thinking that made those choices easier to justify at the time: minimizing, reframing, normalizing and convincing yourself that what you are doing is not really that bad.

The keynote is a perspective shift, not a morality lecture. The stories and lessons spark critical discussion around judgment, ethical drift and accountability. Audiences see how self-talk changes perception, how small permissions become patterns, and why the most important moment is often before a decision feels obviously wrong.

Audience takeaways

• Recognize rationalization before it becomes a decision-making habit.
• Spot ethical drift — the gradual movement of a personal or organizational line.
• Notice reframing and minimizing language that makes a risky choice easier to accept.
• Understand how small exceptions can compound into legal, financial, reputational and operational exposure.
• Give teams a shared language for questioning a choice before it becomes an organizational problem.
• Separate short-term justification from long-term consequence — and remember the lesson because it is carried by story and humor, not a compliance lecture.