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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS
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WWW.CRAINSCLEVELAND.COM
NOVEMBER 17 - 23, 2014
HALLE TERRION
PATRICIA GAUL
General counsel, chief compliance officer TransDigm Group Inc.
Senior vice president, general counsel, CFO PlayhouseSquare Foundation
Halle Terrion is great at her job. No surprise there, as she had four years to try out. Before she became the top lawyer for Cleveland-based TransDigm, she was the company’s main attorney as a partner at Baker Hostetler. Just doing her work for TransDigm at Baker was a full-time job — really. “The year before I came, I billed 2,000 hours with TransDigm,” Terrion said. “I started representing the company in 2004, and I came on in 2012.” Or, put with more emphasis by her boss, TransDigm CFO Greg Rufus: “She was our goto attorney at Baker. That’s one of the reasons we hired her — she billed us 2,000 hours! I said Halle, ‘Come on!’” She came on board and came on strong, jumping into her role as the first general counsel for a company with a small corporate headquarters, but a large global presence as a premier provider of aerospace parts and assemblies. It meant not only quickly fitting in with an intimate staff of only about 30 people at the company’s downtown headquarters, but also an ability to quickly grasp the complexities of a sophisticated company with more than 7,300 employees in total. “It takes some confidence to come into a small corporate office and say, ‘I’m going to be your GC,’” Rufus said. “But we didn’t miss a beat with Halle.” Terrion said she likes the fact that the corporate staff is small. It meant she knew most of them before joining the company and, now that she’s there, it means there is less red tape. “You can get things done; we have zero bureaucracy,” Terrion said. There is, of course, outside help. Baker has probably not lost out on revenue because TransDigm still uses it as its chief law firm and it taps between 30 and 40 outside attorneys for some sort of help each year, estimates Rufus. But, he adds, “I think we got one of the best attorneys out of Baker.” Terrion’s chief strength at Baker, and now
At a theater complex where costume changes are part of the show, Patricia Gaul wears many hats behind the scenes for the operator of the city’s restored theaters and local development corporation for its theater district. Gaul not only fulfills the role of general counsel overseeing the legal concerns of PlayhouseSquare but also serves as chief financial officer for the outfit with a 2013 budget of $74 million. She supervises a staff of 10 in the finance department and about 20 in its human resources department. Art Falco, CEO and president of PlayhouseSquare, said, “We’re very lucky to have her. She’s able to juggle so many things at once and keep a calm demeanor, which is a great asset.” Part of Gaul’s role is to oversee outside legal counsel, which includes a natural role for a CFO: watching the bills. “We value the outside legal services we get, but we’re also judicious,” Falco said. In addition to handling insurance claims and other potential legal challenges for the theater operator, which also has significant property holdings in the district, Gaul handles the legal side of its leases with tenants and helps the organization advance its purposes. “She has the knowledge to help us move projects forward,” Falco said, from managing limited liability corporations it forms to conduct real estate development projects to helping cobble together funds to make the projects a reality. Gaul has been at the foundation since 1988 so she has played a role when much of what is PlayhouseSquare today came into shape, from the renovation of the Allen Theatre to its property acquisitions made early on when private developers did not embrace the district. A recent contribution was with the district’s rehabilitation of the former Hanna Annex office building to apartments as Willoughby-based K&D converted the annex building to the Residences at the Hanna. That deal required coordinating the sale of the annex to K&D, which involved overseeing complex legal and financing transac-
FINALIST with TransDigm, might be her ability to do deals. TransDigm is both high-growth and highly acquisitive in its mindset. Its sales have gone from roughly $800 million in 2008 to about $2.3 billion for its fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. All told, Terrion has helped the company acquire 46 other businesses ... and counting. “I like deal work,” she says, with what seems to be a familiar sense of understatement. Not that her life is all fun and negotiations. She also has to handle compliance issues, securities law, export regulations, training on anticorruption, employment law, environmental law. You get the picture. Along the way, she even has learned her way around an airplane, says Rufus, who got a kick out of watching Terrion show some visiting former co-workers from Baker what was what on an aircraft at a company event. “She’s explaining to all these other lawyers how the parts work on an airplane. … You’d have thought she was an engineer,” Rufus said. Terrion laughs at that idea. “I sound a little like an engineer — until someone starts asking questions,” she says. She can be forgiven if she can’t answer a mechanical engineering question though. Terrion does, after all, have a whole other job outside of the law — she’s raising three children in Bainbridge. “I basically work and in my spare time I’m a limousine driver,” she quips. — Dan Shingler
FINALIST tions such as federal and state historic tax credits that helped finance the project. It also meant fashioning new leases for tenants who moved to the Hanna Building to vacate space in the annex for its redo, the nomination said. The project is a major step toward the foundation’s goal to enliven the theater district as a 24/7 neighborhood for the times when the theaters are dark. Funds from that deal and other sources went into the $16 million enhancement of the theater district earlier this year with gateway entrances and a massive chandelier hanging over Euclid Avenue at East 14th Street. For that, Gaul oversaw the financing of the project, construction contracts it required and working with the city to obtain building permits to allow the project to proceed. Gaul has an accounting degree from Georgetown University and a law degree from Cleveland State University’s Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. Outside the Square, Gaul serves on the finance and audit committees of Downtown Cleveland Alliance, the nonprofit that oversees maintenance, security and advancement of downtown, and is on the audit committee of the Greater Cleveland Partnership. She also serves on the board of trustees of Willowood Manor Senior Housing in Fairview Park and is on the finance committee for St. Ignatius of An— Stan Bullard tioch.
KEVIN BROKAW
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General counsel The Geis Companies In the past four months, two projects that The Geis Companies said totaled $283 million — The 9 and the new Cuyahoga County headquarters — have opened for business. Kevin Brokaw, like the company for which he works, has had a hectic year. Fred Geis, who owns the Streetsboro-based real estate developer and industrial contracting company with his brother, Greg, said Brokaw “will do whatever it takes.” “A lot of people say that about their co-workers,” Fred Geis continued. “In his case, it’s true. Night after night, he had consecutive 20-hour days to keep the project on track. That’s the kind of depth you don’t get out of everyone. He has the capacity to do that and the capacity to speak for ownership in a way that’s insightful. We have the confidence to let him speak on million-dollar decisions without checking with the house. He has our complete trust.” Brokaw was promoted to director of development in 2013, while retaining his duties as Geis’ general counsel. Since 2012, the company has more than doubled in size, transforming from 45 employees to 105 in fewer than two years. The employee count is expected to reach 350 when the apartments at The 9 are completed next year. “His role, as well as his responsibilities with the company, have grown exponentially in the past year as a result of the company’s tremendous
FINALIST growth,” the nomination said. Geis, according to the nomination, has projects as far away as California, Boston, Mexico and Germany, and Brokaw’s legal expertise is “called upon to help the company continue to effectively manage” its expansion, “while mitigating its financial risk.” Fred Geis said Brokaw had many obligations during the development of The 9 — from contractual work to “meetings with financers, tenants and subcontractors.” Brokaw, who joined Geis in 2009, teaches urban development classes at Cleveland State University. He’s given speeches on the subject to the Mortgage Bankers Association, the Urban Land Institute and the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association, and he’s involved with Project REAP (Real Estate Associate Program), a minority develSee BROKAW, page 22