But in the real world, when the black turned to red and laughter turned to despair over lost jobs and ruined lives, the wild ride careened out of control.,”

Enron's "Vision and Values" campaign features a voiceover stating, "It's a wild ride" followed by choral, lighthearted laughter as the screen fades to black.

But in the real world, when the black turned to red and laughter turned to despair over lost jobs and ruined lives, the wild ride careened out of control.

Lynn Brewer, founding chairwoman and CEO of the Integrity Institute, Inc. and former Enron executive, would hang on for dear life as she garnered more and more evidence of the mounting financial scandal, but eventually made the leap that would ultimately blow the whistle on the company and its executives.

Brewer detailed her experiences as the Mission Week keynote speaker Thursday afternoon.

"The story was about complacency about corruption as much as it was about corruption itself," Brewer said.

After six months at Enron, Brewer discovered the company was pledging borrowed money for a natural gas partnership. She would offer a letter of resignation only to be told by her boss how valuable her stock options were.

She then went to Portland, Ore. to sell power in California, but only stayed one week because of what she saw as unethical bonuses being given to traders.

Because she was "100 percent invested in the company," she moved on to the public relations office only to once again offer a letter of resignation because of more shady dealings.

Instead, she was offered a new job offer in broadband, which she took. This job also led her to discover more corruption involving monopolistic trade violations.

At this point, she went to the employee assistance program to spill the beans about Enron's dealings only to find cold responses to the tune of, "inasmuch as my wages are paid by Enron, I can't take this job."

Brewer eventually left one year before the implosion, signed a confidentiality agreement and went to a lawyer to file suit on behalf of investors who had lost a considerable amount of money as a result of Enron's fraudulent dealings.

After a live radio broadcast in which she divulged everything she knew about the scandal, Brewer signed a book deal that led to "Confessions of an Enron Executive: A Whistleblower's Story."

"I said I can get off this mountain and get out alive or I can end up like this," she said, cutting to a clip from the movie "Vertical Limit," one of several popular culture video references Brewer used throughout her presentation.

Because Brewer herself was sucked into the corporate vortex time and time again, she offered advice on how to avoid the same pitfalls.

"Unless you have strength of your faith and your values, you will succumb to the pressure," she said. "My hope is that you begin to think about the decisions you make, especially with the first job you get because you will be the most vulnerable at that point in your career."

Carly Krizmanich, a College of Business Administration freshman, said Brewer's speech was very informative.

"I was kind of surprised that she initially saw the problems but stuck with them, although, in the end it kind of helped," she said, referring to the extra information Brewer gained before going to the media.

Dominique George, a fifth-year senior in the College of Engineering, said she liked the relevancy of the topic.

"I thought she did an excellent job of connecting it to real life," she said. "She used much more practical ethics than Mission Week speakers in the past."

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