Sherron Watkins was Vice President of Corporate Development at the Enron Corporation. She is considered by many to be the whistleblower who helped to uncover the Enron scandal in 2001.
It has been remarked that her actions cannot be considered whistleblowing in a strict sense, because she only wrote a concerned internal email message to Enron CEO Kenneth Lay warning him of potential whistleblowers in the company and pointing out that there were misstatements in the financial reports. Her memo did not reach the public until five months after it was written. Dan Ackman argued in Forbes Magazine and in the Wall Street Journal that, for this reason, her actions did not constitute whistleblowing and actually helped provide legal cover for Lay.