JonathanD.Selbinhasspenttwenty-fiveyearsatLieffCabraserHeimann&Bernsteinrighting wrongsforvictimsofdiscrimination,fraud,andenvironmentalcrimesP98
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Air Force veteran Christopher Aluotto has applied his military training to a variety of legal roles, including managing contracts for Google
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Bhavin Patel attributes Compass Group USA’s growth over the years to the emotionally intelligent, caring tone set by the company
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Kelly Turner has regularly stepped outside her comfort zone at Goldman Sachs as the company has grown its workforce, branched into new markets, and increased its global presence
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Through new approaches to stimulating innovation and creativity, Ariana Woods has helped Capital One increase its patent portfolio sevenfold in less than three years
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Jonathan D. Selbin comes from a family of equal rights activists. At Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, he carries on his parents’ tradition by representing “the victims of misconduct.”
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Malika Herring is filled with gratitude for the many people who have contributed to her success. At BP, she continues to develop relationships and serve as a resource for others.
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Western Pennsylvania native and Chiquita Legal Counsel Kristopher Zinchiak saw the value of a strong work ethic firsthand. From an early age, he’s been refining a five-stage process for success.
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American Airlines’ Daryl Dorsey has established a reputation as a highly effective litigator and bankruptcy specialist
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A passion for the plant guides Arun Kurichety as he helps KushCo operate in the budding cannabis, CBD, and hemp industries
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Melissa Demmon prides herself and her team on their consistency, which has helped build Sompo International’s reputation for high-quality claims work
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Twentysomething Fatima Arash of Diamond Properties has spent all but a few months of her legal career in-house. She has quickly proven that she is a force to be reckoned with.
P126 P157or so the story goes, someone asked legendary poet Robert Frost what he had learned about life. He responded, “In three words, I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life. It goes on.”
The four-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry hardly led a life untouched by pain. His father died when he was a child, leaving the family destitute. His wife and four of his six children preceded him in death. Yet when he looked back on it all, what came to mind was a message of hope.
This story resonates as much with me now as it did when I first heard it as a teenager. Back then, every last second felt significant, weighted with breathless wonder and possibility. Writing my senior paper on Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, I left exclamation points and comments in the margins and copied out my favorite lines, underlining them twice: “I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart: I am, I am, I am.”
I spent spring break of my senior year of high school visiting concentration camps and memorial sites in Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic with my Facing History and Ourselves class. The day we went to Majdanek, the sky was a washed-out gray, the rain falling in a fretful patter and smearing the windows on the bus. Once inside the camp, we could see the surrounding city from where we stood. As the brutal reality of the place set in, my vision blurred. My legs could not hold me. I sat down in the grass. All around me were the quiet sounds of crying. But then the rain stopped, and a rainbow emerged. All is not lost , the newly bright sky seemed to say. Keep going.
Persistence in the face of hardship is never easy, but we keep going. Melissa Oberkfell certainly has. Oberkfell has braved uncertainty and repeated reinvention throughout her nontraditional career. Despite rejections from hundreds of jobs, she persevered; she is now happily settled as a fintech lawyer at Early Warning Services. After suffering a career-ending injury, Dan Opperman switched tracks from professional baseball to law. Today, he is a successful in-house attorney at New Mexico Finance Authority—and a prostate cancer survivor.
These are but two of the in-house attorneys highlighted in our feature section, Marketplace. These legal leaders, who work in the high-octane realm of finance, are calm in a crisis. They have deftly maneuvered through legal gray areas, demonstrated agility and adaptability in adversity, and faced the unknown with clear-eyed composure.
As these stories show, even when a thousand anxieties lurk on the path from Point A to Point B, Point B will arrive eventually. Even on the bleakest, most endless days, it is worth remembering that nothing lasts forever. Point B will come, the rainbow after the rain, and each moment we are on this path brings us closer to it.
Meanwhile, when the going is good, treasure it. Every last second. No matter what, life goes on—and we will go on with it.
Hana Yoo Managing Editor
Celebrating legal leaders’ latest efforts and achievements, including transactions, expansions, negotiations, and inclusion initiatives
Christopher Aluotto’s career has taken him from the Air Force to managing legal issues associated with Google’s Cloud contracts
By Stephanie Zeilenga“I OFTEN HEARD THE PHRASE ‘FLEXIBILITY IS KEY TO airpower’ while serving in the United States Air Force, and that appreciation for flexibility has been an asset outside the military as well. Anyone who has worked with me knows that I never turn down a challenge,” says Christopher Aluotto, senior counsel for Google.
The nine years Aluotto spent in the Air Force imparted more than flexibility and discipline. As an Air Force judge advocate, he also received worldclass legal training that continues to influence his work at Google. “As a junior officer, I was paired with senior trial lawyers who taught me trial strategies and tactics—not an experience I likely would have had as a civilian,” he says. “And as a contracts attorney, I was paired with a very senior lawyer who provided dayto-day training on everything I needed to know about government contracting.”
Aluotto shifted to civilian life in 2002. The transition wasn’t difficult. He continued his work in government contracts—a natural segue following his work in the Air Force—and he says all of his employers have valued his military background. First, he built a government contracts group at a small law firm in Cincinnati, Ohio, from scratch. “I learned a lot about the importance of hiring the right people who not only have the right experience but also the emotional intelligence and ability to work as a team,” he says. “It took a number of years building up a client base, but by the time I left the firm, it was a thriving practice group.”
Then, in 2009, Aluotto joined Philips as an in-house counsel, building a compliance program to oversee the company’s public sector contracts. He also served as the business unit attorney for its nuclear medicine group.
Finally, in 2012, Aluotto was recruited by Google to repeat the success he’d found at Philips. “I again built from scratch a compliance program to make sure Google complies with any contract it has with federal, state, or local government agencies,” he says. “One innovation I made was to develop a compliance dashboard so management knows at any given time the health of our compliance program. In creating our government contract compliance program, I had to learn Google’s business and identify various stakeholders who needed to be consulted. Identifying the right stakeholders is critical to getting any program approved by management.”
Now, Aluotto is part of the Google Cloud commercial team. He is responsible for negotiating agreements with both government and commercial customers. Aluotto’s work involves drafting and negotiating cloud agreements, professional service contracts, and licenses for software and artificial intelligence models.
He also typically takes the lead on more complicated cloud contracts. “These tend to be large enterprise contracts with the company’s top commercial customers,” he says. “Many of the commercial contracts I work on involve highly regulated industries, such as financial services or healthcare. When working with these customers, we have to account for their compliance requirements.” Needless to say, Aluotto’s expertise in working with contracts for the government, another highly regulated industry, has proven invaluable.
Christopher Aluotto Senior Counsel Google“Anyone who has worked with me knows that I never turn down a challenge.”
Christopher Aluotto
Commercial and Government Contracts, leadership in ensuring compliance and ethics in the delivery of Google Cloud technology, software and services to Google’s government partners.
As trusted government contracts counsel for Google, Faegre Drinker has witnessed first-hand Chris’s integrity, collaborative spirit and proactive approach to compliance and ethics. We join Modern Counsel in recognizing his valuable
The explosive growth in cloud over the past few years creates a challenge for cloud attorneys. “More businesses are learning about the power of cloud computing and are dedicating more IT spend in that area,” he says. “Google has placed an emphasis on its cloud services, so being responsive to the business team and to customers is a challenge as the company’s cloud business grows.”
Another challenge is educating customers about how cloud computing works. “Cloud computing is very different from traditional software, which is downloaded and installed on a machine. Cloud services are generally provided through a multitenant distributed network. So if a customer asks you to change a component of the service, that change will apply to all customers. So, for every negotiation, you need to understand the customer’s compliance requirements. You also need to understand how the cloud services address those regulatory concerns,” Aluotto says.
Throughout his career, Aluotto has learned how to evolve and pull off complex projects within a constantly changing business landscape. “Organizations are constantly evolving. When changes are made within an organization, it’s important to ensure that you consult with all stakeholders. Otherwise, you can have your project derailed at the last minute. If you want to change a process or procedure, it’s also important to be able to clearly and succinctly explain what you want to do. If a ninth grader can’t understand it, then you probably want to rethink how you are approaching the issue. And never lose sight of common sense.”
Faegre Drinker:
© 2020 Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP. All Rights Reserved.“Chris Aluotto empowers his outside counsel to collaborate with Google’s business leaders. This fosters a committed compliance culture based on an innovative and effective compliance program. We look forward to future collaborations and further advancing Google’s government business objectives.”
–John G. Horan, Partner Faegre Drinker salutesAssistant General Counsel Bhavin Patel recounts his not-so-clear path to the law and reflects on the values that prompted him to finally plant his feet at Compass Group USA
“Growing up, all I ever wanted to do was be a pilot,” says Bhavin Patel, assistant general counsel at Compass Group USA. “I wanted to fly—first, as a cargo plane pilot in the military, and then eventually as an international commercial airline pilot. My room was always filled with pictures of planes and model airplanes.”
But when Patel joined the Air Force Reserve after graduating from high school, his dreams of becoming a pilot ground to a halt. “When I took my physical, I found out that I was partially color-blind,” Patel explains. “Even now, most Doppler radar is color coded. But I had already taken the oath, so I decided to stay.”
Patel served in the Air Force Reserve for more than ten years, during which time he obtained a bachelor’s degree as well as his JD. But for Patel, his path to the law was by no means clear and straightforward.
“When I first got to college, I thought I would study aerospace engineering so that I could at least still work on planes. But all the math and science intimidated me,” Patel recalls with a laugh. “I looked into a lot of other options and ended up taking an African American studies class with a fairly significant civil rights component.
“I learned things in that class that I never would have anywhere else,” the AGC continues. “And one of my favorite topics in the class was constitutional law as it applied to cases like Brown v. Board [of Education].”
But even after discovering his passion for the law, Patel says, he did not immediately think of going to law school. “I had a good friend in college who was also taking legal and law enforcement classes, and we decided that becoming police officers was what was going to make us happy,” he says, chuckling. “But the more classes I took, the more I realized that I was far more passionate about the law than about legal enforcement.”
The University of Tulsa College of Law may not have been “the highest-ranked law school in the nation,” Patel says, but it was an incredible learning experience for him. During his three years in the JD program at Tulsa, Patel was continually inspired by his professors’ zeal for everything from contract law to public defense work. Patel himself considered becoming a public defender for a time and even completed an internship with the district attorney in Golden, Colorado, during his final year in law school.
After graduating, Patel took the Colorado bar, moved to Chicago, and then moved back to Colorado to work at a midsize law firm in Denver. “I did some criminal defense work, some commercial litigation, and some employment law,” Patel says. “And I did like the employment law side of things, but at the time, I never thought that that was what I was going to exclusively practice.”
But just a few years after joining the firm, Patel was recruited to the Mountain States Employers Council, where he focused on administrative employment and labor law. Patel dreamed of transitioning in-house, though, and in August 2007, he accepted a position on the in-house team at Compass Group USA.
“When I applied, I honestly thought at first that I was applying to work at Compass Bank. I had never
heard of Compass Group,” Patel says, laughing. “But now I’ve been here almost thirteen years, and we joke that we’re the biggest company on the planet that nobody’s ever heard of.”
At Compass, a family of companies specializing in food, hospitality, and support services, Patel has finally found work that he loves just as much as the thought of being a pilot. “I wanted to get into law in order to advocate for individuals,” he explains. “I never thought I’d work for a corporation. Of course, when I was younger, that was because I had an idealistic view that all corporations were heartless.
“Some corporations probably are,” he adds. But not the one he’s working for. “Though Compass knows that it has to make a profit, this company truly cares about folks. I always feel that I have opportunities to help take care of our employees.”
As assistant general counsel, Patel helps oversee everything from wage and hour issues to harassment and retaliation matters. But no matter what he’s working on, he always makes a point of being kind: “Especially in employment law, it’s easy to get caught in an adversarial context. These are very personal matters—people dealing with harassment, people calling each other names or racial epithets,” the AGC remarks. “You have to step away from that ‘us versus
At Littler, we are lawyers. We are also innovators and strategists, passionate problem solvers and creative disruptors. And we are committed to helping our clients navigate the complex world of labor and employment law by building better solutions for their toughest challenges.
Compass
Patel credits his general counsel, Jennifer McConnell, and the other “incredible leadership” in the legal department with setting this kind of emotionally intelligent tone. And according to the AGC, it is that “human touch” that has helped bolster the company’s growth over the years.
“When I started at the company, Compass Group was about a $9 billion company with roughly one hundred and forty thousand employees,” Patel says. “Right now, we’re valued at about $20 billion and have close to two hundred and fifty thousand employees. So our growth has just been astronomical.
“The legal department has expanded a lot as well,” Patel continues. “But no matter how much our teams change, everyone working here remains excited about the work. There are no big egos, no chest thumpers. In the legal department, caring for the people around us is just as important as looking out for the interests of the company.”
Bob Cameron, Shareholder EQT Plaza450
Fisher Phillips is honored to be legal advisor to Compass Group USA. Fisher Phillips provides practical business solutions for employers’ workplace legal problems. We congratulate Bhavin on this well-earned recognition in Modern Counsel fisherphillips.com
Littler proudly congratulates our client and friend, Bhavin Patel, on his achievements and well-earned recognition. Bhavin’s value-driven leadership epitomizes Compass Group’s culture. We value our partnership and look forward to what we will accomplish together.
We are pleased to support Fisher Phillips’ friend Bhavin Patel
TO SUSAN KIM, WORKING IN HEALTHcare has always felt inevitable. “Both of my sisters are doctors, my mom was a pharmacist, and my dad very much wanted me to be a doctor growing up,” she recalls with a laugh. “I had no interest in medicine, but healthcare law has been a natural fit.”
And as senior counsel at Essilor USA, one of the most prominent ophthalmic companies in the world, Kim leverages her dual passions for law and healthcare to help address the severely underrecognized threat that myopia poses to children and adults across the world.
Kim began her career as a corporate transactional attorney, securing key roles at firms such as Fish & Richardson and Block, Garden & McNeill after graduating from the University of Texas at Austin School of Law in 2003. But soon, Kim says, she found herself gravitating toward healthcare.
Kim transitioned in-house in 2013 to serve in the legal department at the UT Southwestern Medical Center and later accepted a role as senior corporate counsel at CCS Medical. But it is at Essilor that she has truly found a calling.
“Essilor is a mission-driven company. We are committed to improving lives by improving sight,” Kim says. “Vision is something that seems simple, but it has a huge impact on our overall well-being, especially for children.
“That mission really touches me on a personal level because I am very, very highly myopic,” the senior counsel continues. “Though it’s hard to know for sure, I do think sometimes that if my parents had been more informed about
“Myopia, or nearsightedness, is one of the most common visual concerns worldwide.”
potential treatments when I was growing up, maybe it wouldn’t be as bad right now.”
In addition to offering a wide range of popular eyeglasses and lenses, Essilor is dedicated to increasing vision health awareness and helping educate the new generation’s parents, whose children are at risk of developing myopia.
“Myopia, or nearsightedness, is one of the most common visual concerns worldwide,” Kim says. “One out of three people in the world suffer from myopia, and it is estimated that by 2050, half the world’s population will be myopic.
“But I think that because myopia is so common, many people and parents hold this belief that it’s not very serious,” she adds. “But it is in fact crucial, not just to children’s eye health but to their entire lives.”
When children have difficulty seeing objects at a distance, Kim explains, they may not be able to complete their homework correctly because they cannot see the board well at school. They may not be able to play sports or participate in other extracurricular groups, which can lead to lower self-esteem.
But many parents are simply not aware of the eye care best practices that can help prevent their children from being put in those situations, Kim points out. Some do not know that children should receive their first full eye exam at six months old. Other parents rely on school vision screenings to identify any potential vision issues, but according to Kim, most do not realize that school vision screenings cannot equal comprehensive eye exams.
“That is why we have launched our new Myopia Matters campaign,” Kim says. “We have partnered with the professional eye care community as well as social influencers to actively encourage parents to take a proactive role in their child’s health and vision.”
As senior counsel, Kim has been providing crucial support to Essilor’s marketing and brand teams as they work on rolling out the Myopia Matters campaign on social media, television, apps, and even a movie trailer called Out of Focus that tells the “story of myopia” in a way that even young children can understand.
“There are so many options and potential solutions available today. People just have to know about them to take advantage.”
Susan Kim Senior Counsel Essilor USA
Dentons is privileged to work with Susan and the rest of the Essilor team, as the ophthalmic industry leader continues to raise the bar in the development and manufacture of innovative lenses, lens coatings and vision diagnosis and treatment technologies.
Apart from the importance of healthcare, one of the most important lessons Susan Kim learned from her family was the “simple importance of treating others the way you want to be treated. My mother used to repeat that over and over again,” Kim recalls. “That has become my golden rule—I treat everyone, whether they’re outside counsel or internal business teams, with the same respect.”
Just as Essilor is dedicated to providing quality vision care solutions worldwide, Dentons is committed to delivering prompt and cost e ective business solutions of uncompromising quality and pragmatism on a global stage. And just as innovation is at the heart of Essilor’s mission, Dentons stands apart in its drive to develop and deploy new technologies to improve the delivery and operations of legal services. dentons.com
“As a mother, I want to do everything I can to help both my child and others,” Kim stresses. “I hope that by helping more children visit an eye care professional for comprehensive eye exams, we can help identify myopia before it starts impacting those children’s lives. If left untreated over time, myopia puts eyes at greater risk of developing more threatening conditions, such as retinal detachment and cataracts.
Dentons.
“We have to educate the public in a way that is both relatable and impactful,” the senior counsel says. “There are so many options and potential solutions available today. People just have to know about them to take advantage.”
Dentons:
“We congratulate Susan Kim on this well-deserved recognition. Her unwavering dedication to excellence and integrity is inspiring.”
–Gadi Weinreich, Partner, Healthcare Practice
© 2020 Dentons. Dentons is a global legal practice providing client services worldwide through its member firms and a iliates.
Please see dentons.com for Legal Notices.
*Acritas Global Elite Law Firm Brand Index 2013-2020.
Husch Blackwell LLP:
“As outside privacy counsel, we have had the pleasure of working with Susan on several projects. She is knowledgeable, practical, hard-working, and we have truly enjoyed working with her.”
–Eric Levy, Senior Counsel and David Stauss, Partner
ERIN WONG IS A DIPLOMAT AND A negotiator. A business advisor. A seasoned attorney and team leader. As an intellectual property (IP) and patent counsel director at Juniper Networks, a California-based technology company known for its efficient, streamlined solutions to complex networking problems, Wong makes it her top priority to find solutions that work for everyone— the business included.
Modern Counsel recently caught up with Wong to chat about her perspectives on being an in-house counsel at a fast-growing company like Juniper.
I’d love to hear more about your path to Juniper. How did you first get into IP and patent law?
I actually studied biology in undergrad, but I took some prelaw classes as well to round out my education and found out that I had more of an affinity for the law than for science. After college, I decided to work at a law firm to see if it was something I was interested in as a career. I worked at that firm all throughout law school, first as a parale-
gal and then as a patent agent. I became an associate when I graduated.
I always wanted to work in-house, though, to be closer to the business, the business strategy, and the big-picture decisions. So when an opportunity came up to work at Juniper, I took it. I started as a patent attorney but have since branched out into other areas like trademarks, copyrights, and standards. I also get to work with a lot of different teams, like the engineering team, the marketing team, and the corporate development team. Being here has really expanded my perspective.
How does that perspective help you in your work within the IP team?
Every team and every person here has a different perspective and different priorities. But I’ve learned to really appreciate different perspectives within the business because no matter what, everyone has the same goal: for Juniper to be successful.
My vision is for the IP team to be a trusted advisor to the business, to sit at the table and have an open, honest
conversation with the business teams and develop credibility with them. In the legal department, we speak a lot about being a competitive advantage for the company. That means building close relationships so that people feel comfortable asking us any question, big or small. We don’t want to just be there when a team gets into hot water. We want to really be at the table for every step in the process so that we’re already part of the conversation when decisions are made.
Erin Wong IP & Patent Counsel Director Juniper NetworksI understand that your team has recently developed a novel patent strategy. Can you tell me more about that strategy and how it helps serve as a competitive advantage for Juniper?
Giving the best possible support to our business teams means reevaluating our strategies as we grow in size and expand into different technologies. And as Juniper grew, we realized that each technology area encompassed by the company was at a different growth stage in terms of patent portfolio and strategy. We couldn’t apply the same strategy to every one of those areas; it became much more important to treat each area as its own start-up or business and provide each area with its own individual strategy.
In doing that, we’re ensuring that Juniper is capturing the most valuable innovations, efficiently prioritizing and allocating resources for those innovations, and enabling the company’s agility within the market space.
What a wonderful concept. Can you tell me a bit more about what it means to you to enable and facilitate these kinds of ideas?
The in-house counsel role is often stereotyped: we’re seen as the team that says no or the team that blocks creative projects rather than enabling them. If we want to be trusted advisors and partners to the business, we have to debunk that stereotype and be an enabler of ideas. This means understanding the business goals and helping the business meet those goals.
It’s about finding a healthy balance between legal risk and business gain. It requires having an open dialogue so that I say yes when possible, but I
can also be confident expressing when there is a risk, and then work as a team with the business to find a solution. You can gain respect when you are honest but can also help find creative workarounds to meet business goals.
What advice would you give to an up-and-coming executive working in this space?
If something seems scary, say yes. Not everyone gets offered stretch assignments—so instead of worrying about whether I have enough experience, I view it as someone’s belief in my abilities and my grit. And typically, if you’re given such assignments, you will get support from a team and advice when you need it. Say yes.
Shumaker & Sieffert, P.A.:
“Erin has that rare combination of a sharp, experienced legal mind and a talent for developing practical, business-minded solutions. It is a pleasure to work with Erin as she applies these skills to protect the IP of one of the world’s most innovative networking companies.”
–Kent Sieffert, FounderShumaker & Sieffert attorneys deliver high-quality patent protection to clients around the world using a combination of legal expertise, consistent processes, and technical depth.
Shumaker & Sieffert, P.A. commends Erin Wong for her recognition by the industry and Modern Counsel.
Joy Huibonhoa thinks the insurance industry could do a better job at selling itself to potential employees
By Russ Klettke Joy Huibonhoa SVP and Deputy General Counsel Arch Capital
the insurance industry has a glamour deficit. Insurance wasn’t her first choice for a career path. Yet she finds within the industry many interesting and inspiring people, challenges, and opportunities that hold great appeal— once people know about it. Today, the senior vice president and deputy general counsel for Arch Capital Services—which is part of the Arch Capital Group companies that write insurance, reinsurance, and mortgage insurance globally—advocates for persons of color, women, and people from underprivileged backgrounds to look at the insurance industry as a great place to have a career.
The numbers back her up. The Insurance Information Institute cites US Bureau of Labor statistics posted in 2019 that show strong job gains in health insurance carriers (16 percent growth from 2016 to 2019) and with agents and brokers (9 percent gain). The job hunt website Monster.com further advises candidates to look to the insurance industry for job openings as Baby Boomers retire. Moreover, the types of positions being created in insurance mean that new employees are recruited from the healthcare, financial services, call center, sales, and marketing industries—as well as the legal field, as Huibonhoa’s case shows.
The job with Arch Capital found her more than the other way around. She spent five years as outside counsel, first at a large and then a smaller firm, and then a couple years in a venture capital firm before joining Arch in 2002. What she recognized early on is both her family history and her own personal preferences pulled her toward business and going in-house.
This was somewhat evident even before she went to law school. Upon completion of her undergraduate degree at Harvard College, she tried journalism as a Hong Kong correspondent for Fortune magazine and an intern at the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour in Washington, DC. A subsequent pivot to law school (Northwestern University) was “a reasonable choice to make, though I quickly learned that being a lawyer in a law firm setting wasn’t for me.”
While all of these experiences took her far from home in Malibu, California, it really took her on a familiar path to working in business, albeit from a lawyer’s perspective. Her parents were entrepreneurs and real estate investors, so she had an early grounding in it.
“My parents believed in owning your future through education and economic security,” she says. “They strove for economic independence through their entrepreneurial endeavors.” That natural affinity for enterprise, with all the twists and turns involved, proved time and time again to be an asset.
Her stint in venture capital (Katalyst Ventures), which she describes as part incubator and part accelerator, was a great training ground. “I had to jump into many projects and develop skills as a service provider,” she says. “It required me to communicate effectively, not just as a lawyer, but as a businessperson.”
She says it was there she got a taste of pitching to investors and working as colleagues with experts outside of the legal arena, including IT, marketing, and finance. Still, when recruited to work at Arch, she wasn’t interested in the litigation side of insurance. As it happened, the company was undergoing a major recapitalization and shift in
“My parents believed in owning your future through education and economic security.”
business strategy. “It felt entrepreneurial,” she says, “though minus the matter of obtaining early-round funding. We had an ‘all hands on deck’ sensibility and a real sense of purpose.”
Her career has ascended with the company ever since, and she is grateful to Arch for the opportunities she’s had to stretch both her legal and business skills. Over time, the presence of women and people of color has increased, but by her estimation, the industry overall can do better. Leadership and governance bodies still skew to the status quo, though she is proud of Arch’s efforts to move the needle.
“Here’s my two cents to the human resources people in this industry,” she offers. “We should create awareness about where good jobs are. And we can make it more interesting to a broader audience.” She also believes that leadership can be more proactive in encouraging professional development at the ground level and elevating the careers of those who may not typically get a shot at rising up the ranks. “Opportunities for diversity and inclusion are right in our backyard.”
Huibonhoa has learned that no one is immune to unconscious bias, including herself. As a result, “I try harder to look at people as individuals first,” she says. Her future goals include providing more encouragement to women and people of color to look into careers in insurance. Her nearly two decades with the industry indicate it’s a great place to land—and stay.
Cahill:
“Joy manages an impressive portfolio of legal matters without ever breaking a sweat—crafting business-oriented solutions while seamlessly melding her passion for diversity. Cahill is proud to be her partner.”
–Kimberly C. Petillo-Décossard, Partner
Cahill is known for innovative trial strategies and financing solutions that draw on the strengths of the entire firm and reflect a wider perspective than that typically afforded by the specialized niches and micro practices that make up a large law firm. A passion for challenging and distinctive work is at the heart of our firm culture and explains why Cahill consistently wins cases and ranks among the most active firms in the financial league tables year after year.
www.cahill.com
Cahill applauds our friend and client Joy Huibonhoa and is proud to join in recognizing her achievements.
“IT’S LIKE WORKING FOR A START-UP INSIDE a big company,” says Lisa Bowser, associate general counsel at Cognizant. After joining the tech company in 2015, Bowser moved from commercial transactions—licensing agreements for existing products—to support for software development groups in 2017.
“It is interesting to be doing something so entrepreneurial, the next level of sophistication,” she says of helping Cognizant rise to the first tier in the industry.
This rise is part of the legacy of an expanding organization. “Cognizant has had phenomenal growth,” Bowser says of the company’s transition from offering professional IT contractor services to providing front- and back-end tech infrastructure, applications, and services. “We add technology, not just humans, to companies,” she explains. When Cognizant acquired TriZetto, a health insurance claim processing software company that deals with a significant percentage of all health insurance claims in the US, several years ago, the company delved further into
Lisa Bowser Associate General Counsel Cognizant
developing its own tech. Bowser now supports those development teams.
Bowser’s IP role involves reviewing software that Cognizant develops and acquires to offer specialized digital solutions to companies around the world. When handling IP and tech transactions, she works on licensing and software as a service (SaaS) agreements to deploy the newly developed software. Her skill set makes her part of an emerging specialty in product counsel: multifaceted attorneys who need to take on “a quarterback role” in software product development. She coordinates with team members working on security, privacy, and regulatory reviews that are undertaken before the software can be offered to clients. As new products roll out, Bowser also completes a complex checklist of critical legal support that includes copyright registration, trademark clearance, licensing agreements, and coordinating with the team that completes open-source software integration reviews.
Bowser’s focus, however, is hardly limited to new tech. At the same time that she moved
Lisa Bowser tackles a wide variety of legal matters at Cognizant, including IP and tech transactions, trademarks, copyrights, and software product developmentinto IP, she assumed the role of the company’s chief trade
mark counsel. Digging in, she realized that Cognizant’s products and services offerings had expanded considerably compared to what was reflected in trademark registrations filed closer to the company’s inception, when it focused on placing contract tech workers in-house at companies. Bowser led an impressive enhancement of Cognizant’s trademark protections, updating and expanding descriptions of the company’s products and services in forty-four countries.
Her work on the trademark project required a great deal of reaching out to understand all that is happening at Cognizant. “We have more than 280,000 employees worldwide,” she explains. “This was a huge deep dive into what we do.” The trademark project meant registering under the additional trademark classifications of the products and services the company provides, from education to healthcare and financial technology to a broad range of information technology applications and services.
Bowser’s range of skills mirrors the range of products she supports at Cognizant. In a moment, she says, when many companies that are not traditional tech companies are becoming tech driven, Cognizant is positioned to offer B2B support, facilitating moves to digital platforms. Bowser and her team support the development of solutions to enable companies to ride the next technology wave. Right now, among other things, Cognizant is helping clients develop work-from-home capabilities with secure connections.
Bowser, her contract managers, trademark search and copyright application specialists, and the subject matter experts she leans on to help spot issues make sure the legal path is clear for ever-expanding services.
Bowser’s global trademark process has also increased her knowledge about the whole company. New leadership at Cognizant promises to lean in on expanded marketing. Bowser is happy to know that, as she continues to support small team product development work, she is also well positioned to support the global marketing team in enhancing her company’s name recognition and reputation in the US and around the world.
“I learned about our impressive technology, such as AI and analytics, that make a company’s operations more efficient and its interactions with clients more memorable,” she says, excited about the company’s upcoming projects.
“I can help increase brand awareness and recognition.” In a fast-changing industry, she is proud to assist in Cognizant’s transformation.
IF YOU’VE GONE ON A DATE IN THE PAST TWO decades, there’s a good chance it’s involved Match Group. The parent company to dating brands like Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, and Match had been endeavoring to connect partners digitally since Match launched in 1995, at the dawn of the online dating industry.
By Billy Yost“One third of marriages start online, and so do more than forty percent of all relationships,” says Jeanette Teckman, vice president and associate general counsel of litigation and IP at Match. “Any dinner or meeting I attend almost always includes someone (or a close friend or family member) who has met their significant other on one of our platforms.”
Teckman joined Match Group in 2017 after cultivating litigation experience at the law firm Gardere, Wynne, & Sewell and wider in-house, litigation, employment, and IP roles at Verizon and TRT Holdings. Coming to Match Group has provided an opportunity to help the company that was on the forefront of internet dating evolve along with technology and customer expecta-
Jeanette Teckman on her role as vice president and associate general counsel of litigation and IP at Match Group, the company that helps people find loveJeanette Teckman VP and Associate General Counsel of Litigation & IP Match Group
tions. “Match was a pioneer in this space back when there was a stigma associated with meeting someone online,” Teckman says. “Part of my role is helping spread the message of the good our companies do and helping regulators recognize what Match Group stands for.”
As data privacy and other regulations across the world continue to expand, Teckman says protecting that information, always a priority, becomes even more so under her purview. “Laws are being updated constantly, and it can be challenging to navigate those con-
stantly evolving laws and regulations, but it’s also a key part of what I do.”
Working with outside regulators represents only a fraction of Teckman’s wide range of responsibilities. When asked how she’s able to effectively manage IP, litigation, and everything else that falls under the in-house function, she pauses. “I would say lack of sleep,” Teckman responds with a laugh. “But there is something to that. One big misunderstanding that people have is that when you’re in-house, it means fewer hours. That has not been my experience.” She says she feels like she works as much, if not more, than in her firm days due to the sheer scope of her role and her desire to always give it her all. And for good reason.
“Being responsive is critical to being effective in-house,” Teckman says. “Your business partners need to know that when they contact you, you’ll respond quickly and with good advice.” She says she’s proud to have a smart and reliable team working both below and above her, especially in CLO Jared Sine. “His advice and guidance have been priceless,” Teckman asserts. “Knowing he’s counting on me motivates me to do my best work.”
Motivation doesn’t seem to be a problem for Teckman. The mother of a three-year old routinely runs marathons, triathlons, and mud runs. She also attends (and teaches) bootcamp workouts five days a week. “I am competitive and love a challenge,” Teckman says. “That desire translates into throwing myself into my work and looking at my cases and projects from every angle I can. If I lose a case, I want to know it’s never from a lack of preparation or effort.”
Teckman says she tries to approach her litigation work with fresh eyes each and every case. “A lot of people will just follow a road map of how a case has been handled before,” she explains. “I’m always looking for a new way to win. You might find something that others have missed or a new argument no one has thought of before.”
It’s not just litigation where Teckman feels the desire to perform at her best. “My view is that I should never say, ‘That’s not my job,’” she says. “Whatever you want to throw at me, that’s my job. I’m willing to step up and do whatever needs to be done.” That’s how she has continued to expand her roles into assisting with government relations and employment law as well as providing general business counsel to her in-house clients.
Teckman’s motivation also informs how she manages her team—not as an alpha-minded drill instructor, but as someone who trusts the abilities of her colleagues. “As a manager, I try to avoid micromanaging because you need to treat people as the adults they are,” Teckman says. “I know they can handle the work and they know when to seek my help.” The AGC also says leading by example is a priority. “I’m not ever going to ask someone to do something that I myself wouldn’t also do,” she affirms. “We’re all in this together, and that’s so important to keep in mind.”
Having a team that is able to not only effectively collaborate, but truly enjoy each other’s company is a highlight for Teckman. “Being here just has such a great feeling of being home,” she says. “I take great pride in the entire team that’s assembled around me. Everyone here has core values that I appreciate and make me feel like I’m in the right spot. We’re trying to help people find love and a soul mate. What can be better than that?”
Norton Rose Fulbright US LLP: “Jeanette is smart, hard-working, thoughtful, and well versed in numerous areas of the law. She is an excellent attorney—and most importantly, she just gets things done!”
–Robert Greeson, Partner
The foundations of TMX Group date back to 1861 with the founding of the Toronto Stock Exchange, which at the time listed just eighteen stocks in total. TMX Group now deals with equities, derivatives, fixed income, and energy markets exchanges, including the Toronto Stock Exchange and a number of other Canadian markets. In March 2020, the Toronto Stock Exchange celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of the launch of the world’s first exchange traded fund (ETF), but the celebration was short-lived.
Just two weeks later, TMX was again in the headlines, not for an anniversary but for its commitment to helping provide for those in need during Canada’s own COVID-19 crisis. TMX Group donated $50,000 to Food Banks Canada, a charitable organization with national reach dedicated to helping Canadians living with food insecurity.
“At all times, but particularly in times of crisis, our country’s food banks play a crucial role in helping people in need,” said TMX Group interim CEO John McKenzie in a prepared statement. “In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, we encourage all Canadian organizations to band together to lend financial assistance to these and other vital support agencies.”
While TMX continues to lend itself to the coronavirus outreach efforts, the organization is still tasked with overseeing the vital markets that help keep worldwide economies functioning. And while TMX may be a Canadian institution, more than half of its revenue comes from outside of the country, creating a number of regulatory and financial management challenges for TMX’s legal team.
Those challenges fall under the purview of Senior Vice President and Head of Legal and Business Affairs, Enterprise Risk Management, and Government Cheryl Graden, who has been with TMX since 2013. In 2015, Graden was promoted from VP of cash and clearing to her present role, in which she runs a centralized legal team that oversees all of TMX’s businesses.
“We are very pleased to have Cheryl taking on this vital role within the organization,” said CEO Lou Eccleston in a prepared statement. “She has already had a distinguished career, and given
her vast experience and skills, I know Cheryl is well prepared and ready to lead our legal team into the future.”
Since earning her promotion, enterprise risk management and some government relations work (particularly that based in the US) has also become part of her day-to-day. In addition, Graden serves as corporate secretary for the publicly traded company, as an officer for TMX Group Limited and its subsidiaries, and as a member of the TMX Group Executive Committee.
The SVP’s breadth and depth of experience have earned her a reputation as an expert in the energy and clearing space. She has spoken on the issue across North America, including the 14th National Forum on Energy Trading Compliance and Regulatory Enforcement Conference.
Despite the current global pandemic, TMX will likely be keeping Graden and her team busy for the remainder of 2020. TMX Group announced it will continue with plans to extend market hours and release products in 2020 and 2021, with an emphasis on the company’s derivatives business. It’s full steam ahead for the company founded during the American Civil War, and they won’t let coronavirus stand in their way.
WilmerHale:
“Cheryl is the consummate in-house attorney. She grasps the nuance of every legal and regulatory issue within the larger context of TMX’s business goals and objectives, and is an exceptional strategist. She is a delight to work with.”
–PaulTorys congratulates our client and friend, Cheryl Graden of TMX on her recognition in Modern Counsel.
torys.com
M. Architzel, Partner
Wit employs her twenty-one years of United Airlines legal expertise to bolster the company’s best-in-class status
By Sara DeeterVANIA WIT PUTS HER BEST FOOT FORWARD, NO matter what. It’s a mind-set her father impressed upon her all throughout her childhood, and it is what has driven Wit and her teams to success at United Airlines.
Wit’s parents immigrated to the United States from Bolivia in the 1960s, eventually settling in the greater Chicago area. Wit remained quite close to home for college, majoring in political science at Northwestern University.
“When I was accepted at Harvard Law School, that was a big deal,” Wit recalls. “My father passed away in the fall of last year, but that was probably one of the proudest moments of his life. He had very much instilled in me the importance of not only pursuing your passion but also of excelling and always doing your best.”
Following her graduation from Harvard, Wit returned to the Chicago area, soon making a name for herself at local law firms as an experienced litigator as well as a talented labor and employment attorney. But then, about twenty-one years ago, a position opened up in the legal department at United Airlines’ headquarters. For Wit, there was never even a question of whether she would accept.
“Growing up, I was always traveling to Latin America to visit family and friends,” Wit explains. “I looked forward to those trips so much, and I always associated airplane travel with great memories. So I was fascinated by the idea of working in aviation at United.”
Kirkland & Ellis is an international law firm representing clients in restructuring; M&A, private equity, and other corporate transactions; complex litigation, dispute resolution, and arbitration; and intellectual property matters across multiple industries, including consumer and retail, energy, healthcare, industrials, media, real estate, transportation, and technology. The firm has fifteen offices around the world, in Beijing, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Hong Kong, Houston, London, Los Angeles, Munich, New York, Palo Alto, Paris, San Francisco, Shanghai, and Washington, DC.
Kirkland offers the highest-quality legal advice coupled with extraordinary, tailored service to deliver exceptional results to clients and help their businesses succeed. The firm invests in the brightest legal talent and builds dynamic teams that operate at the pinnacle of their respective areas. Kirkland prides itself on having lawyers across all practice areas who work together as an integrated, multidisciplinary team to provide seamless service, with a focus on innovative, pragmatic problem-solving. We also aim to make a difference in our clients’ businesses and communities and are committed to providing top-notch pro bono legal services. We believe in empowering our lawyers, encouraging entrepreneurialism, operating ethically and with integrity, and collaborating to bring our best to every engagement.
Working at one of the most prominent companies in the aerospace industry certainly keeps Wit busy. The company connects hundreds of thousands of people around the United States and the world every year.
As vice president and deputy general counsel, Wit primarily works in litigation with teams responsible for intellectual property, labor, employment and benefits, international, and antitrust and global competition. Last year, she also had the legal operations group under her purview. Reflecting on it all, Wit says, “Really, I’m just trying to protect our passengers, protect the brand, and protect our employees so that the company can put its best foot forward and drive the customer experience.”
“Vania’s unwavering commitment to excellence is inspiring,” says Atif Khawaja, a litigation partner at Kirkland & Ellis. “A thoughtful strategist, she thinks ahead and around corners with creative and practical judgment. She is always a pleasure to work with—calm, collected, and on top of everything. On top of it all, Vania is an exemplary leader who cares about her team, United, and the larger community.”
Helping the company put its best foot forward is not always perfectly straightforward, Wit notes. And in her two-plus decades with United, Wit has seen a lot of ups and downs.
One of the major milestones was the company’s merger with Continental Airlines at the end of 2010. “That was a tremendous point in time for both companies because we were trying to integrate both workforces, both cultures, and create one, united company,” she says. “And that was
According to Vania Wit, the merger between United Airlines and Continental Airlines made the company stronger and more impactful than it’s ever been—and not just in terms of its business. “We started the legal department’s pro bono program about a year after the merger,” Wit explains. “Our leaders called on us to think about how we could make a difference. As lawyers, we have a unique set of skills, and this program is a way to really leverage those skills.”
Through United’s pro bono program, attorneys can support any organization they wish to, Wit says. She herself is heavily involved with the National Immigrant Justice Center.
“Everyone has a different passion,” Wit notes, “and we felt that that passion would only increase participation across the department.” Indeed, more than 70 percent of United’s attorneys participate in some type of pro bono activity, Wit reports. “It is truly something to be proud of.”
very challenging, but we laid a really solid foundation for the company moving forward.”
Indeed, the company as it stands today is one of the strongest in the industry, renowned for the welcoming and inclusive environment it fosters in its offices and stations across the globe.
“I am really proud of the attention that United places on diversity and inclusion. The company goes to great efforts to make sure that it is not a standalone subject or department but rather integrated in everything we do,” Wit remarks. “We have operationalized diversity and inclusion, in a sense; it is embedded in each and every one of our business objectives, policies, and training programs.”
Wit is the executive sponsor of the women’s employee business resource group and a member of UNITE, a multicultural business resource group designed to give every employee a voice for their ideas and concerns. “And we’re listening,” Wit notes. “Our leaders are listening to those thoughts and concerns, and they definitely want to leverage them.”
Leveraging those ideas has helped Wit and the other leaders of the legal department set a tone that she hopes influences other departments across United. “When I look across the legal department, I see a lot of intent when it comes to representation and inclusion,” Wit says. “Our leadership is very passionate about bringing this into the conversation, and I do think we’ve set a high bar.”
Of course, Wit aims to have the legal department and its attorneys and legal professionals serve as role models. And in her experience, that only happens when people focus on working as a team, rather than getting too caught up with the kinds of projects they’re assigned to or how they measure up against their colleagues.
“It’s easy to fixate on those things, especially early in your career,” Wit acknowledges. “But in my experience, you can’t be so worried about your next step that you lose focus on what you’re doing in the moment. No matter what you’re working on, there is always value in putting your best foot forward. You just never know where it’s going to lead you.”
MARYROSE MANESS’S CONTINUAL push for learning, teamwork, and innovation has helped keep Warner Music Group and its employees in harmony. Having been with the company for more than a decade, the senior vice president and deputy general counsel oversees multiple practice areas, including employment, privacy, records management, and trademarks and domain names. She also advises on employee relations, wage and hour, disability, affirmative action, OSHA, immigration, and benefits matters.
Maness may not be a musician herself, “but from a very early age, I had a keen interest in entertainment and the arts,” she says. “I took ballet for many years, I acted, and I played the clarinet. So when I first went into law, I wanted to figure out how I could utilize my creative side.
“Of course, it wasn’t until twelve, thirteen years ago that I figured out how to accomplish that,” Maness adds with a laugh. “I started networking and asking folks for advice, and just a few months after I started networking with Warner Music, there was an opening in the legal department. I had the job within a month.”
One of the “big three” recording companies and a world leader in the music industry, Warner Music is renowned for the quality of both its artists and its teams. In fact, Maness prides herself on her ability to create high-performing legal teams through a skill that is all too often overlooked: interviewing.
Maness SVP and Deputy General Counsel Warner Music Group
“I really do think it’s a skill you have to learn and fine-tune,” the SVP emphasizes. “When I interview people and ask why they want to work here, I often hear about how much they love music.
“It certainly doesn’t hurt to love music,” Maness acknowledges. “The
Maryrose Maness on how she combines an extensive legal background with her passion for creativity and innovation at Warner Music Group
people who work here are so passionate about music, and they show it in everything they do.” But to be part of a topnotch legal team, Maness says, you also have to have a passion for the complex and ever-evolving legal structures that surround that world of song.
Maness specializes in employment law, performing nearly all of the company’s day-to-day legal work in addition to providing guidance for other practice areas and working with Warner Music’s leadership to manage key business decisions and strategies.
Even at this point in her career, however, Maness continues to develop her skill set. She frequently branches out into unfamiliar practice areas, such as mergers and acquisitions, to learn as much as possible.
“In our legal department, it’s so collaborative. Nobody really feels like you’re encroaching on what they do if you simply want to participate,” Maness enthuses. “Everyone is very open to teaching you a new aspect of the law, so you can really get involved in as many areas as you want, even though you do have a subspecialty.”
That knack for adapting to new areas of the law has served Maness well in recent months as she and her teams have worked to adapt to AB-5 legislation. This ruling from the state of California sought to curb “particular practices in certain industries. For example, some individuals were being paid as independent contractors when they should really be employees of the company,” Maness explains.
AB-5 has “sweeping” implications for just about every company operating in California, Maness says, and she and her colleagues have been working hard to find internal solutions so that Warner Music can remain compliant.
But they’ve also been working on an amendment to the legislation, one that “specifically addresses the music industry and the needs of our artists and provides a fair and balanced solution that will benefit everyone involved.”
Maness and her team often tailor their work to the unique environment inherent to the music industry, she says. Recently, they developed and delivered a live antiharassment training program geared toward the specific issues seen in the music world.
“We wanted all of our employees and managers to be able to relate to the material,” Maness explains.
“There is so much in the media about harassment claims, and we really wanted to educate our workforce on how the company feels about it, the position we’ve taken, and the reporting mechanisms we’ve put in place.
“We also just wanted to engage everyone across the company on these issues,” the SVP continues.
“You can have all the right policies in place, but on top of that you still have to engage with your employees, your managers, and your leaders to understand what’s on their minds and how you can address things proactively.”
NCR’s Ben Prevost discusses his transition to customer contract negotiations, how he keeps negotiations friendly, and the service-focused nature of his role
By Stephanie Zeilenga
Ben Prevost Chief Counsel, Retail NCR Corporation
AFTER SPENDING FIFTEEN YEARS PRACTICING complex commercial litigation, Ben Prevost did a career 180 in early 2019. At the time, he was senior litigation counsel at NCR Corporation, which provides enterprise technology for restaurants, retailers, and banks. When approached with the opportunity to become chief counsel for NCR’s retail segment and sink his teeth into a whole new area of law, he eagerly accepted.
Now, Prevost supports the legal needs of NCR’s retail business. This includes a heavy emphasis on customer contract negotiations for the sale of NCR’s software, services, and hardware. He also advises retail leadership on risk assessment, works with NCR’s product management and marketing teams, and provides supports on other legal issues as needed.
Modern Counsel chatted with Prevost about the challenges of transitioning to a new practice area, how his expertise in litigation informs the work he does today, and more.
What interested you in the legal field?
My mother was a lawyer, and I always viewed a law degree as a valuable way to understand how things work in general. The law is the framework for so much in our society.
Before joining NCR, you practiced complex commercial litigation. Now you’re chief counsel for retail. What was that transition like?
Having spent my legal career as a litigator, the transition to a corporate or transactional role was essentially a career change. As a litigator, you generally help clients resolve disputes about what happened in the past. In my current role, I’m helping clients reach agreement about future business deals. It’s much more forward focused, as opposed to looking in the rearview mirror.
What were the challenges with that transition to your current role?
One of the main challenges was learning NCR’s retail business so I could support it. In my litigation role, I wasn’t devoted to a particular line of business. Another challenge is that litigation is fairly predictable in terms of the schedule because the rules outline the process and phases of the dispute. In deal work, however, the schedule is much less predictable,
driven both by internal client needs and customer preferences.
How did your time as a litigator prepare you for what you do now?
Much of complex commercial litigation boils down to contract issues and interpretation. I spent most of my career litigating business agreements, and that experience helps me avoid certain pitfalls in negotiating new contracts. I know what’s likely to be fought over should a dispute arise. My litigation background also helps me assess the overall risk in a deal and communicate to clients in a clear, concise manner.
What are you working on now?
Our company is highly focused on shifting to a recurring revenue model and, for our retail business, much of that is driven by subscription software. I’ve worked with a cross-functional team to develop contract templates for selling software on a subscription basis. Supporting a major strategic initiative has been a great way to learn the ins and outs of recurring revenue and has expanded my network within the company.
What have been your biggest wins at NCR?
Any successful completion of a complex master agreement negotiation with a major retailer, which can take several months, feels like a big win. Our executive leadership stresses the fundamental importance of “taking care of the customer.” But in my role, I’m often placed in an adversarial setting across from in-house counterparts at customers’ legal departments. Negotiating large contracts in a collaborative, open, and honest manner and establishing rapport with the customer’s lawyer help remove the adversarial nature of the process. Ultimately, I’ve found it’s possible to take care of the customer while also protecting your company’s interests.
What are some of the challenges you face in the day-to-day? How do you solve them?
My role is highly service focused in terms of supporting our businesspeople. A project or deal is always the highest priority for the individual sponsoring it, and a challenge arises when another matter must take priority. I’ve found being honest and upfront with clients is always the best approach. Tell them you will turn to their matter as soon as possible but you have other deals in progress that also need attention. They will understand. Just be sure to follow up and don’t leave them hanging.
What impact has your work had on NCR?
I’d like to think the business leaders I support know they can rely on me to deliver sound, riskbased advice on potential deals and other legal issues. I try not to be too “lawyerly” and speak in normal, business-friendly language. And to my earlier point on working with customers’ lawyers on sometimes difficult contract negotiations, I’ve hopefully represented our company and strove for favorable terms in a way that develops relationships and sets the course for future collaboration and success.
& Knight:
Holland & Knight joins Modern Counsel in celebrating BEN PREVOST, NCR Corporation’s Chief Counsel, Retail, for his accomplishments, dedication to the legal profession and commitment to the community.
It is our privilege to work with Ben and the entire NCR legal team. www.hklaw.com
Thomas E. Hill, Partner Tina Tellado, Partner Los Angeles, CA 213.896.2400
Copyright © 2020 Holland & Knight LLP All Rights Reserved
“Negotiating large contracts in a collaborative, open, and honest manner and establishing rapport with the customer’s lawyer help remove the adversarial nature of the process.”Holland
“Ben is a sophisticated attorney, willing collaborator, and valued strategic partner. But best of all, he is a true gentleman. It has been our pleasure to work with Ben on behalf of NCR.”
–Thomas Hill, Partner
THERE WAS A TIME IN 2009 WHEN IT SEEMED LIKE anyone with a Facebook account or smartphone was going to be leaving the world behind to take up a solitary life of farming. FarmVille, which sparked one of the first truly worldwide mobile gaming crazes, was in full effect, and everyone from CEOs to actual farmers found themselves immersed in a pleasant, peaceful digital world of crop production and cow milking. The game had nearly thirty-five million daily users at its peak, and at least that many people had received a Facebook notification letting them know their friend needed a hand cleaning up their digital stables.
The author of that game was Zynga, founded in 2007. In the thirteen years since, the company whose self-proclaimed goal is to connect the world through games has brought its latest and greatest creations to social platforms. Some of the games, like Words with Friends and Chess with Friends , CSR Racing, and Zynga Poker, have become long-lasting staples of
mobile gaming. Their latest game partnership will no doubt prove next level in terms of name recognition. Zynga is in the process of rolling out Harry Potter: Puzzles & Spells in limited markets, a release that comes on the back of an already incredibly strong fiscal year. The company’s mobile revenues in 2019, which account for 94 percent of the company’s overall revenues, were up 53 percent year over year, reaching a whopping $1.32 billion. There’s little doubt that the Harry Potter title, along with titles like Puzzle Combat and FarmVille 3 , will continue to boost Zynga’s outreach, even as competition in the marketplace increases.
In addition to the steep competition posed by companies like Activision and Electronic Arts, the COVID-19 pandemic has provided as many challenges at Zynga as at any other company. Zynga has responded in kind. As part of a game developer coalition, Zynga took part in the #PlayTogetherApart cam-
paign, which aims to spread coronavirus awareness and social distancing precautions to as wide an audience as possible.
“Our mission at Zynga has always been to connect the world through games, and it has taken on a new dimension as we face this global crisis,” said Bernard Kim, president of publishing at Zynga. “We are honored to support the important work of the World Health Organization and provide our players with a support system during this period of physical distancing. The #PlayApartTogether initiative activates positivity and community that can help us commit to the urgent task at hand.”
Helping Zynga navigate both the legal complexities of the pandemic and Zynga’s continuing expansion, even in the time of crisis, is senior counsel and head of global employment Johanna Carney. The attorney was in-house at wellknown data security company Symantec prior to joining Zynga three years ago.
Part of Zynga’s market bullishness at the time of writing, in March 2020, is due to Carney’s help in expanding Zynga into a global operation and advising the gaming company through adept acquisitions that make good business sense. Tailoring integration strategies for the small companies Zynga acquires is essential to ensuring a successful transition. To allow the companies to operate optimally, Zynga must utilize the best parts of their practices and integrate areas where Zynga can be of service.
Along with her work at Zynga, Carney has offered her time to the International Justice Resource Center, whose mission is to “empower people to claim their human rights using international legal protections.” The organization provides informational resources, tools, analysis and reporting, individualized advice, and nongovernmental association staff training to guide advocates and individual victims in understanding and protecting their rights.
Carney, almost a decade into her legal journey, is eventually eyeing a GC position, and there’s no doubt that her business partnership at Zynga and community outreach at the IJRC are creating a well-rounded GC from whom any organization could benefit.
We are proud to recognize Johanna Carney, Senior Counsel and Head of Global Employment at Zynga, for her leadership and accomplishments.
Helping clients overcome the challenges of competing in the global economy through a new type of thinking and a different mindset.
We are Baker McKenzie bakermckenzie.com
Inderpreet Sawhney came relatively late to law but is now a best-in-class global leader at Infosys
WHEN INDERPREET SAWHNEY JOINED INFOSYS AS general counsel in 2017, it caught the attention of CEO Vishal Sikka. “I am delighted to welcome Inderpreet Sawhney to Infosys. Inderpreet has a strong and diverse global experience over a career spanning twenty-four-plus years, and her expertise will be integral to the transformation journey we are on,” Sikka said in a statement.
Sawhney served as a partner at the Chugh Firm for fourteen years prior to going in-house as a general counsel at Wipro in 2011. Along her legal journey, Sawhney has been recognized repeatedly for her strategic vision and business partnership, including the 2006 Minority Bar Coalition Unity Award, the 2010 Outstanding Mentorship Award from the South Asian Bar Association of Northern California, the 2010 North American South Asian Bar Association (NASABA) Cornerstone Award, and the 2013 NASABA Corporate Counsel Achievement Award.
The journey from childhood to award-winning lawyer wasn’t an easy one. The self-described “Army brat” lived in substandard military housing growing up, and her family relocated every two years. “In India, everything changes from one state to another—the language, food, the way people dress,” Sawhney told the ACC Docket in a September 2019 article.
But after forgoing her economics studies in favor of law school, a decision she says was very late as far as most Indian students’ education paths go, she gained both internal and firm experience prior to relocating to the United States for the first big dot-com boom. “There was this buzz around, and I wanted to step in and take advantage of that,” Sawhney recalled to the ACC Docket
It was during this period that Sawhney learned one of the most important lessons of her career: to separate the message from the messenger. The lawyer feels it’s critical to try to remove the bias one might feel toward a colleague and instead, to do one’s best to resolve the issue at hand.
Since coming to Infosys—a consulting and digital services company headquartered in South Indian megacity and well-known IT hub Bangalore—the attorney has been tasked with overseeing litigation, M&A, compliance, IP, government relations, and employment functions on an international scale for
a company with 200,000 employees worldwide. “The most exciting thing about working for Infosys is its global footprint,” Sawhney told the ACC Docket. “We are so spread out and have such a large footprint that we have to have a dynamic system in place to make sure we stay compliant with everything we need to be compliant with.”
That requires Sawhney to travel to Bangalore, where nearly half of Infosys’ legal team is located, several times a year. On the way, she’ll likely also stop in the UK, Germany, or any of the company’s other bases to have face-to-face meetings with other members of her global team. Traveling, however, is ill advised as of this writing in March 2020.
Infosys has responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in full force. The Infosys Foundation, the philanthropic and corporate social responsibility arm of Infosys, donated more than $13 million to charities including the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund (PM CARES Fund), established in late March 2020 to combat
Inderpreet Sawhney Global General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer Infosys
the coronavirus pandemic and similar outbreaks in the future. It has also partnered with Narayana Health to open a hundred-room quarantine facility for COVID-19 patients near Narayana Health City, a well-known private hospital in Bengaluru, India.
The facility is focused on serving patients who are part of the economically weaker sections of the area and will provide essential medication at no cost to patients. “Diseases often hit the underprivileged the hardest because not only can they not afford proper treatment, but they also lose their livelihood when dealing with the illness,” Sudha Murty, the chairperson of the Infosys Foundation, said in a statement. “This is a small effort by the Foundation to ensure that the underserved people of our society get access to clean, hygienic accommodation, as well as appropriate medical treatment. We are thankful to Narayana Health City for their partnership and the thoughtfulness of this initiative.”
Taking a microscope to unique niches, specialties, regions, and regulations in the legal field and the high-profile lawyers who confidently and expertly navigate them
Introducing ten legal leaders who have proven they can grapple with seismic shifts in the international
At Goldman Sachs, Kelly Turner engages with constant change and growth as the company expands its workforce, global reach, and portfolio of financial services
By Sara Deeter
Kelly Turner
Goldman Sachs
elly Turner is ready for anything— even if she doesn’t know what it is. Throughout her life, and especially over her past fifteen years with Goldman Sachs, the vice president and senior counsel has made a point of embracing the opportunities and challenges that turn things upside down.
Turner began her JD studies at Tulane University Law School in 1992 following her graduation from Louisiana State University. Upon completing her degree, she spent close to ten years in private practice, first working as an associate at Stone Pigman Walther Wittmann and later as an associate at Haynes and Boone.
It was during her tenure at Haynes and Boone that Turner was seconded to Archon, a former subsidiary of Goldman Sachs. The New York City-based investment bank and financial services company had just established its own middle-market lending platform, which also meant the creation of a new corporate lending team. Turner was tapped to help get that team off the ground.
“I really liked that work,” Turner recalls. “In fact, I liked it so much that I interviewed for a full-time role. And though I wasn’t selected for that position, they basically created a role so that I could still come on board.”
In her newly minted position, Turner was responsible for overseeing a wide range of corporate contracts, “which I had never done before,” she points out with a laugh. “As a real estate and then a corporate finance lawyer, I had never negotiated a technology contract in my life.”
That willingness to step outside her comfort zone and take on the unknown has been a hallmark of her professional career, Turner believes, but it is also one of the philosophies that has most profoundly informed her life as a whole.
“It’s great to have one area that you can focus on and do really well in, but you still have to be willing to do more and continue learning,” she stresses. “I’ve moved from New Orleans to Dallas, from real estate to corporate finance and back again. My husband and I have adopted two children, which requires you to do and think about things that may not be normal or particularly comfortable for you.
“Life would be pretty boring if we weren’t always learning and trying new things.”
“But I think that’s what keeps things interesting,” Turner continues. “Life would be pretty boring if we weren’t always learning and trying new things.”
But in her first few years at Goldman Sachs, Turner’s knack for adapting to the unfamiliar was put to the ultimate test.
“In 2008, when the financial crisis hit, Goldman became a bank basically overnight,” the VP explains. “All of a sudden, we were subject to entirely new rules and regulations. There were also a lot of new laws and policies implemented as a result of the financial crisis, and we had just two years to ensure that our existing portfolio as well as our new portfolio were compliant with those rules.”
But the legal team tasked with elucidating those new rules and regulations was itself in a moment of flux, Turner says, since Archon had merged with Goldman’s legal department soon after the financial crisis.
“I happened to be on adoption leave at the time,” Turner notes, “so it was a little crazy coming back to work. We were all thinking the same things: what does it mean to work here now? Do we even do our same jobs?”
But the uncertainty lasted only a brief time, Turner says. Very quickly, she and the other members of Goldman’s legal team successfully managed both the company’s legacy assets and its newer assets in a manner that complied with all the new guidelines.
Turner’s swift yet measured response to this crisis is characteristic of her level-headed approach to her work. As Bruce D. Saber, a partner at DLA Piper, notes, “Kelly is an incisive and creative lawyer who provides thoughtful and calm leadership. Her legal talent, management style, and commitment to the community make her a singular counsel, client, and friend.”
Today, Turner supports a number of different teams working on real estate acquisitions, dispositions, lending, and asset management. And even though it’s been more than a decade since the 2008 turmoil, the work still keeps her on her toes.
“But I don’t think I would enjoy this work if I were always working on cookie-cutter deals,” she says. “I get to work with incredibly smart and creative people on all sorts of different products and deals, in many different jurisdictions. That’s what makes life here at Goldman so interesting.”
Years ago, when Kelly Turner and her husband were beginning to think about adopting, she had only vaguely heard of Texas-based nonprofit Tapestry Family Ministries. But over the past decade, Turner’s parenting approach has become inextricably interwoven with that organization’s mission.
“Tapestry was founded to help adoptive and foster parents in parenting what we call ‘kids from hard places,’” Turner explains. “Even kids who are adopted at birth have some trauma because they’ve been separated from their birth families.
“Parenting those kids is a little different than parenting kids who have always lived with their biological families,” the senior counsel continues. “You can’t do time-outs for a child who’s been abandoned, for example.”
According to Turner, Tapestry provides a number of services aimed at helping parents as well as local babysitters become “trauma-competent caregivers,” from support groups to an annual conference centered on key parenting challenges and issues. Turner serves on the board of directors for the organization—a board that is composed almost entirely of adoptive parents—while her husband volunteers as host of both the annual Tapestry conference and a podcast on parenting children from hard places.
At this point, “Tapestry is really a family affair for us,” Turner says. “We’re all very passionate about it—we parent all of our children, even our biological son, the same way because what trauma competent parenting really does is facilitate attachment and build connections within your family.”
Matthew Kidd, a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher with whom Turner frequently works, echoes her statements about the breadth of her practice. “I’ve worked with Kelly on everything from management agreements in France and Italy, leases in Latin America, and municipal bankruptcies here in the US,” Kidd says. “She’s always collaborative and a true partner, something that’s a real asset for an outside counsel to have on the client side.”
In the fifteen years since Turner joined Goldman Sachs, the company has experienced wide-scale growth, expanding into new markets, building out its portfolio of financial services, and bringing thousands of new employees into its global offices. But those same years have also seen a period of steady growth and development in Turner’s work outside of Goldman.
“I’ve been on the board of the Dallas–Fort Worth chapter of the ACC for about ten years now,” Turner says of her tenure as president and now second vice president of the Association of Corporate Counsel, a leading bar association dedicated to connecting and informing in-house counsel working in the United States and across the world. “When I first joined the board, we had maybe five hundred members. Now, we’re at more than a thousand.”
Many professional legal organizations—and even many events organized by individual companies and firms—do not focus on the topics that are most relevant to in-house counsel, Turner explains. Or if they do highlight those issues, they provide detailed, in-depth information on just one topic.
The Dallas–Fort Worth chapter of the ACC, on the other hand, has made a name for itself as the premier organization in the area for both networking and highly relevant programming.
DLA Piper congratulates our friend and client Kelly Turner, Vice President and Senior Counsel, Goldman Sachs, on her recognition by Modern Counsel as a leader in her field. We applaud Kelly for her thought leadership and for her work on meaningful projects that support the needs of our local communities.
“We host monthly CLEs [continuing legal education] on topical issues relevant to in-house counsel,” Turner says. “We also have a couple of larger events every year, including a forum with notable speakers and an all-day symposium where attendees can focus on whatever topics and ideas they’d like, from litigation and compliance to transactional matters and ethics.
dlapiper.com
“And our members get real value out of these experiences. They have to; otherwise it wouldn’t be worthwhile for them to take time out of their day to come,” Turner points out. “I am just so proud of the organization and the top-notch opportunities we’ve been able to provide to our colleagues in the area.”
Melissa Oberkfell was living a professional nightmare. She had a lengthy roster of credentials: an associate of applied science (AAS) degree in software development, a bachelor’s degree in business administration with a focus on operational strategy, a JD, an MBA, and a USPTO registration number.
A highflier with plenty of pluck, she assumed that there was no world in which successful businesses wouldn’t be beating down her door to hire her. “I submitted hundreds of applications,” Oberkfell remembers. “I had close to seventy-five different versions of my cover letter and just as many résumés, just trying to turn the cube a bit and highlight what I thought these companies might be looking for.”
Oberkfell’s story isn’t one that’s heard nearly enough. “The one thing I didn’t have was experience, but no one was willing to give it to me,” the lawyer says of the catch-22 professionals whose career paths don’t follow the “usual route” often find themselves in.
After an early, extensive career in IT, Oberkfell’s lack of a four-year degree was routinely named as the sole reason for her not moving up the ladder when the market took a downturn. She responded by amassing a string of initials at the end of her name that puts most alphabet soups to shame.
“I convinced myself, despite the fact that the market was bad, that my specific experience in technology would really lend itself nicely to that bootson-the-ground, business-minded perspective of an in-house attorney,” the lawyer says. Then came the punchline.
“I kept hearing that my tech experience was great, but I didn’t have a fouryear degree from Georgia Tech,” Oberkfell says, laughing. “I was told that I could have a JD from the worst law school in the country but would have gotten great offers if I had gotten my degree from a better-known university.”
It became so disheartening that Oberkfell started applying for paralegal and docketing clerk jobs, hoping she might be able to prove herself and rise in an organization. She was told she was overqualified.
Melissa Oberkfell
Fortunately, Oberkfell is the product of two driven parents. “Being bull-headed is just my foundation,” the lawyer says. “There just wasn’t anything that was going to stand in my way, and that includes hundreds of nos. I’m a problem-solver. I just had to figure it out.”
The first chance would come in the form of acting as GC for a small software company that could put Oberkfell’s patent abilities to work. And from there, the lawyer took off.
After a wide breadth of financial services partnership and legal experience, Oberkfell says fintech company Early Warning Services is the ideal culmination of a uniquely earned career trajectory. “I get to support a business that is exactly in my bailiwick and has enabled me to bring to bear just about everything I’ve ever dealt with,” the lawyer says. “I get to work down in the pit with crazy smart people; there are incredibly challenging problems to solve, and I get to work right alongside the team.”
When Oberkfell was introduced, it wasn’t just as a lawyer who had served as counsel across the table for the company. “My boss listed off all the things I’ve been able to do throughout my journey,” Oberkfell says. “It was amazing to hear it out loud and just know that yes, this is what I’ve done to get here, and this is how I can help.”
Oberkfell wants her story, and her ultimate success as a fintech lawyer, to raise a larger issue: the struggle of lawyers with less traditional paths. “This is exactly the kind of thinking I’m hoping my story can help change,” says the now senior product counsel at Early Warning.
“We need to evolve how they think about what talent means and how someone might be valuable to their organization,” she continues. “I have people on my team who have had fantastically different careers. You might never think to hire them for the position they’re currently in, but they’re some of the most valuable members of their teams. A lot of skills people try to compartmentalize are so much more fungible.”
There is a happy ending to Oberkfell’s story, but it took far too long to get there. In speaking with her about her career journey, a clear pattern emerges—waiting for that one chance that would help the lawyer get on the path where she knew she belonged. The setbacks are a great-
“There just wasn’t anything that was going to stand in my way, and that includes hundreds of nos. I’m a problem-solver. I just had to figure it out.”
est hits playlist of what happens when checking the boxes is more valued than the cumulative experiences that have made a person who they are.
“The practice of law has such a storied past, but I find some of the ‘eliteness’ of it pretty overrated,” the lawyer says, laughing, realizing she may be offending some with her bluntness. “The industry as a whole needs a shift of perspective so desperately.”
Not every lawyer is going to get virtually every degree available to live up to expectations, and not every lawyer is going to sit for hundreds of lunches filled with empty promises (“I had so many lunches that went nowhere, I probably don’t need to eat for the rest of my life”). Fortunately, Oberkfell hung in there. She hopes her struggle can serve as a wake-up call as to what exactly experience means— and who’s deciding.
theCapitalOne’sArianaWoodshasseptupled usheringcompany’sIPportfolioinjustthreeyears, inaneweraofinnovation
ByWillGrant
t’s no secret that technology has fundamentally changed the way that consumers interact with each other, their environments, and the companies and services they seek. Customer expectations are also changing, with the introduction of on-demand and personalized services leading the way. Nearly every industry has been swept up in the digital revolution, and financial services is no exception. Where one-on-one, in-person communication with a bank teller or representative was once the only way to conduct a transaction, as those transactions have moved to the digital realm, companies have either opted to operate on the forefront of these efforts or risked being left behind in the new century. Capital One fully embraced tech and—very early on— opted for the former.
According to Senior Director and Associate General Counsel Ariana Woods, Capital One is first and foremost a customer-centered tech company that does banking. “Our goal is to make our customers’ experience better,” Woods says. “Technology may not always be what gets them through the door, but our job is to make their lives easier from then on.”
And Woods and her team are utilizing new IP practices to drive that innovation at one of the world’s bestknown credit card and banking organizations.
Woods came to Capital One three years ago after establishing and building her substantial IP prowess, first at IP firm Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner and then at the original Silicon Valley start-up and innovation giant Hewlett Packard.
“HP was where I really got a good introduction to the mind-set of inventors,” Woods explains. “I was able to better understand what motivates creators and was exposed to complex cradle-to-grave issues that gave me insight into the entire IP life cycle.”
In coming to Capital One, Woods has helped reimagine and drive the company’s IP experience in startling ways. “If you looked at our portfolio over the past 18 years, there were about 150 patents,” Woods says. “Today, that number is more than 1,100.” In short, Woods was able to help Capital One septuple its patent portfolio in less than three years. But how?
“Part of my team’s job was to change patenting from side of the desk to front and center,” Woods explains. “We wanted to help change the culture to keep pace with the company’s tech transformation, to develop a creative ecosystem, and help recognize and celebrate the fact that our inventors are creative, innovative people with ideas to share. These are people who have a unique idea that no one else in the world has pursued before, and we think that should be acknowledged.”
One of the more novel approaches has been the creation of what Capital One calls patent parties, where imaginative activities like metalwork or glassblowing offer inventors a creative outlet to help stimulate outside-the-box thinking and an inventive mind-set. “We want our inventors to buy into our patent program,” Woods says. “We want them to go out and teach and evangelize to let people know that good ideas can come from absolutely anywhere.”
“We want to tap into the passion of our associates because it’s
their drive and ideas that keep us operating at the forefront of financial services.”
Woods says that widening the scope of what’s possible at Capital One has spurred amazing results. “At a high level, we’re patenting in traditional financial technologies like payment systems, ATMs, and smart cards,” Woods says. “But we are also innovating and patenting creative ideas in enabling technologies like cloud infrastructure and machine learning.” Woods says the company considers any ideas that are in line with Capital One’s mission to change banking for good and to improve customers’ lives and the world around them.
Woods notes that Capital One’s focus on innovation and change extends beyond what most people might think, like an increased focus on environmental IP. “That might include creating credit cards that use less plastic or mobile devices that autoshare point-ofsale information, so customers don’t have to print a receipt if they don’t want it,” Woods says.
It means augmented reality solutions that could identify how to allocate charitable donations. It also includes proprietary technology that works with a mobile device to analyze sounds in a room to figure out how much energy or water is being used. “All of these ideas showcase the spectrum of what we have coming in from our inventors, all designed to help make people’s lives better. We encourage that and support it any way we can.”
Part of Capital One’s IP success has derived from simply making it easier for inventors to move their ideas along. “We’ve created a robust but simple and fun program that allows us to harness all of these amazing ideas, regardless of where they come from,” Woods says. “We want to tap into the passion of our associates because it’s their drive and ideas that keep us operating at the forefront of financial services.”
For decades, Thierry Valat De Cordova immersed himself in a high-pressure legal career. Now, through mindfulness, he is clearing the clutter to focus on living the best life possible.
By Sara Deeter Thierry Valat De Cordova General Counsel, Chief Compliance Officer, and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Compliance Officer Dominion Capital
Thierry Valat De Cordova is the general counsel, chief compliance officer, and anti-money laundering (AML) compliance officer at Dominion Capital and its affiliate, RD Advisors. He is the general counsel of the US Autism Association, a managing director at a broker-dealer, a book translator, and a divorce attorney consultant. He is a student of ten different languages, including Arabic, Mandarin, Italian, Japanese, and French. He is a marathon runner, a swimmer, a mountain climber, a triathlete in training, and a soon-to-be scuba diver. On top of it all, Valat De Cordova is a passionate devotee of yoga, meditation, and mindfulness.
But it is because of that final component, the GC emphasizes, that he is able to manage all the rest. “Yoga and meditation, they’re like a companion to exercise and activity,” Valat De Cordova explains. “Yoga helps your body recover—all those long, smooth stretches—while mindfulness and meditation clear and strengthen the mind.”
Valat De Cordova “accidentally” fell into mindfulness and meditation about ten years ago, when he was struggling to balance family time with a high-pressure career in the financial services industry.
“I was with my wife and kid in Boston, and I found a basic eight-week mindfulness course. It attracted me because it was very scientific, very evidence based, with no religious content,” recalls the Harvard Law alumnus. “I remember thinking, at worst, nothing happens. But the best-case scenario is that I’m able to reduce my stress. From day one, everything just clicked.”
Almost immediately, Valat De Cordova began noticing small changes in his mind-set and behaviors. The people around him noticed how relaxed he was becoming, how he was “remembering how to laugh.”
“It’s not that I didn’t know how to laugh before,” he says. “But I was typically laughing at things in a mean or embarrassed way—laughing at someone, not with someone—not because something was inherently funny. Six months into my mindfulness and meditation practice, I remember just cracking up one day in a difficult meeting at work, looking at the absurdity of the situation we found ourselves in—and everyone else followed suit. It broke the tension, and the problem essentially solved itself.”
Laughter isn’t the only change that Valat De Cordova has seen in recent years. He has also given up coffee and alcohol, embraced Buddhism, conquered his fear of flying and taken dozens of trips around the world, experienced a divorce, transitioned between jobs, and begun radically expanding his perspective on what is possible. “I think that’s one thing meditation does; it helps you deal with change,” he reflects. “It gives you the perspective to be able to evaluate things in a balanced way instead of rejecting them out of hand.
Over the years, mindfulness has illuminated every aspect of Thierry Valat De Cordova’s life. It has taught him to listen to and accept the limits of his body. It has helped him embrace gratitude, equanimity, and deep listening. It has helped him see that everything is connected, even if it appears to be random. And Valat De Cordova is still trying to dig deeper, learn more, and be better.
“There is a Buddhist philosophy centered on this idea of ‘right living,’” he says. “It’s the idea that you help the world most, and do the most good, by being your best. Not anyone else’s best, your best. A tree is a small piece of the world, but it makes the world better just by being a good and beautiful tree.”
“Instead of immediately saying things like ‘No, I can’t run a marathon; I’ve never run except on a treadmill before,’ it’s about asking yourself the simple question, ‘Why not?’” he continues. These days, Valat De Cordova continues to meditate daily. Typically, he meditated while commuting to and from work at Dominion Capital. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he meditated at home immediately before and after work hours, trying to keep a strict work schedule.
An investment advisory firm led by two brothers, Dominion Capital is known for investing across a variety of assets, from real estate and blockchain to capital markets, structured products, and venture capital. And according to Valat
De Cordova, Dominion also fosters a company culture that perfectly aligns with his own dedication to mindfulness.
“The owners are very balanced in the way they think about things. They’re not subscribers of the mind-set typical of Wall Street, the ‘let’s make money at all costs’ gung-ho attitude,” he explains. “At Dominion, we still want returns, but we take a step back, breathe, and calmly figure out what level of risk is right under the circumstances. There is a great sense of calm and perspective here, despite the fact that the company has been extremely successful and engages in high-pressure trades daily.” Dominion was still in business during the COVID-19 pandemic, while many of its competitors in the real estate business stopped making new loans altogether.
In fact, since joining Dominion Capital in 2018 as the company’s first-ever general counsel and chief compliance officer, Valat De Cordova has built both the legal and compliance functions from scratch, helping grow the company into a formidable competitor in the fintech and real estate lending market.
But, to Valat De Cordova, his work at Dominion Capital and RD Advisors is much less about distinguishing himself as an expert legal counsel and much more about making a difference in the world, however small.
“Building an entire department, that creates jobs. Restructuring a company well in bankruptcy, that saves jobs. Drafting and strengthening all the policies and procedures the company needs, that helps Dominion act responsibly in the industry,” he emphasizes. “Showing others how to be calm while being fast, sharp, and focused—that helps Dominion and RD navigate through the most difficult times, and we find ourselves still floating while everyone else is sinking. And that helps preserve our capital and the jobs of the people around me.
“I’m a small part of the world and of the business, but I try to do everything I can to move the needle just a little bit closer to the right direction.”
WhenDanOpperman’sprofessional baseballcareercametoahalt beforeitevenbegan,hebecamea best-in-classlegaladvisor—arole
henowfulfillsattheNewMexico
FinanceAuthority
ByBillyYost
As a newly minted high school graduate, Opperman was throwing fastballs at speeds only tolerated on certain sections of the German Autobahn. “Since I was fourteen, I really never thought I would have to worry about anything but playing baseball,” Opperman remembers.
The pitcher got off the chartered plane in Great Falls, Montana, where the Dodgers sent their rookies to develop; he spoke at a press conference, headed to the ball field, changed, and started playing catch. “I felt a pop, and a month later, I was having my first surgery.”
Opperman was living every professional athlete’s worst nightmare. Repeated elbow reconstructions and repeated rehabilitation efforts were undertaken before the young pitcher got a chance to play in the majors. Opperman was forced to retire from baseball in 1993, exiting a career that never really got to begin. An understandable few years of anger and resentment followed.
“But the sun just kept coming up,” Opperman jokes. “And so I figured that I should get on with my life.”
Opperman’s story isn’t about what could have been. It’s about what he has accomplished. The chief legal officer (CLO) at the New Mexico Finance Authority has found another way to compete, pivoting to a successful legal career, raising two daughters with his wife Lisa (whom Opperman credits with helping pull him out of his post–MLB heartbreak), and successfully battling prostate cancer along the way.
Having been drafted straight out of high school, Opperman had no college experience and no degree. But his wife was an office administrator for
Everything was happening exactly as planned. Dan Opperman—six-footone, 160 pounds, and selected eighth overall in the 1987 Major League Baseball draft by the Los Angeles Dodgers, seven men down from first overall pick Ken Griffey Jr.— was on his way.
a small New Mexico law firm, and as Opperman worked toward obtaining his undergraduate degree, he grew close with the attorneys there and decided that a future in law might be right for him. He applied to law school and was accepted, though not without a serious caveat.
“They brought in all the students who had been accepted so we could meet with some of the law professors,” Opperman remembers. “There was one I remember quite well who told me that because of my background as a pro athlete, I should ‘seriously consider’ not enrolling because I was unlikely to be successful. He didn’t know anything about me or what I had been through. He had just tagged me as a ‘dumb jock.’”
The fire had returned. “When I look back, I would like to thank that professor because it gave me a reason to compete again,” the CLO says. “It was both for me and, honestly, to simply make a point of proving that professor wrong.”
Opperman’s former life has informed his legal practice as much as any of his law school classes did. “I can honestly relate everything I do on a daily basis to the lessons I learned through playing baseball and organized sports,” Opperman explains. “As a pitcher, I learned early that you can’t strike everyone out. You have to rely on the rest of your team to get the job done. I don’t think practicing law is any different.”
The CLO speaks highly of Legal and Compliance Counsel Bryan Otero (“an outstanding lawyer with general counsel experience, and my right-hand man”), whom Opperman hired at the New Mexico Finance Authority. “I’ve tried to build a small group together
in a way that builds on all those principles I learned growing up, not just with Bryan but across the organization as well,” Opperman says. “The biggest thing I’ve learned is that you don’t have to be everything to everyone; surround yourself with great people that you can trust and count on.”
That practice has served Opperman well not only in the boardroom, but at home. When Opperman was unexpectedly diagnosed with prostate cancer, his own home team—his wife Lisa and two daughters, Gaby and Abby—was there, ready, as always, to compete. “If my wife and kids were concerned, I sure never knew it,” Opperman says. “I’d like to think they’ve built off of my confidence and, in turn, I’ve built off theirs.”
That confidence, Opperman says, comes back to a familiar word. “I know this might sound silly, but my mind-set was, unfortunately, and always is, to win. I really don’t know another way, and I don’t think there’s another option. Compete every day.”
Opperman’s tumor was successfully removed in July 2019. The lawyer says that early detection of his prostate cancer, which played a huge part in the suc -
“As a pitcher, I learned early that you can’t strike everyone out.
You have to rely on the rest of your team to get the job done. I don’t think practicing law is any different.”
cessful surgery, can be traced to Lisa’s insistence on regular medical checkups.
“I took the same approach to the surgery that I take when looking through a legal or compliance issue,” Opperman explains. “I just wanted to get the facts and let those dictate where we would go from there. It wasn’t worth wasting time worrying about something that was a maybe.”
In the CLO’s case, the facts are simple. A young major league prospect who could throw fastballs at ninety-six miles an hour had his career cut short. He responded by embarking on a twenty-year law career that has not been defined by his losses but informed by them.
“It’s very easy to draw upon your successes, but I’d rather draw from my failures,” Opperman says. “All of those surgeries, the patience and perseverance to continue to forge ahead. It’s helped me mature and continue to learn as an attorney.”
and the entire team at the
Mexico Finance Authority on their remarkable achievements.
Dan is an outstanding advocate for and advisor to NMFA. We wish Dan and the NMFA team continued success.
ForBitOoda’sKseniaSussman,operatingin uncertainlegalwatersisjustanotherdayat thepioneeringdigitalassetsbrokeragefirm
ByBillyYost
he challenge for Ksenia Sussman couldn’t have been any clearer. After spending eleven years at Barclays Investment Bank, she elected to move to a start-up. “Entering a start-up world is completely different from a traditional, established, conservative three-hundred-year-old institution,” Sussman sums up. Barclays was founded in London in 1690—a start-up of sorts, just one founded the same year the clarinet was invented.
In taking on the general counsel role at BitOoda, founded in 2017, the company’s sole in-house lawyer doesn’t just oversee anything that might be considered of legal note. She’s also the lock-and-key protector of the pioneering company, whose aim is to deliver transparency and promote normalization of industry practices in the digital asset space. Sussman didn’t just move to a start-up; she moved to a start-up operating in a space with minimal legal precedent and only the most rudimentary understanding by the wider public.
While blockchain, bitcoin, and digital currency may have made their way around the headlines, the burgeoning financial digital assets industry is still a nascent one in terms of regulation and adoption of standardized practices and procedures. “We’re operating in a world with very low legal certainty,” Sussman says frankly. “From the legal and business perspective, I think we operate with a more conservative approach precisely due to this fact.”
Being on the forefront of the digital initiative offers BitOoda a well-deserved voice in the conversation, but Sussman says that it can be difficult figuring out which conversation they’re supposed to be part of. Determining the jurisdictions and regulatory institutions with which the company is looking to comply is hardly well defined.
It’s motivated BitOoda to work with organizations like the Association for Digital Asset Markets (ADAM) to develop norms in practices and policies. “There are industry participants who clearly want to operate in a fully regulatory compliant manner,” Sussman says. “But we also need guidance from
“But we also need guidance from regulators to tell us what the rules are, not just enforce guidelines they have not officially defined.
We should all proactively help this industry develop standards that work with regulators.”
regulators to tell us what the rules are, not just enforce guidelines they have not officially defined. We should all proactively help this industry develop standards that work with regulators.”
Operating as the sole lawyer at BitOoda after spending a decade deep diving into commodities and strategic investments, Sussman says, is a lot like jumping from a passenger liner onto a sailboat.
“I’m now part of this whole operation, as opposed to doing my one small job that’s part of a much bigger thing,” Sussman says. “You’re making sure the sails go up, you’re catching the wind—and even shifting your weight if you need to. It’s up to you as much as everyone else to make sure you’re going in the right direction.”
That doesn’t mean Sussman is doing it all. “We interviewed a lot of companies and firms to find the right fit for us as far as outside counsel and collaborators,” Sussman says. “We have to make sure they not only understand our needs but the issues that accompany our business. Whether you’re hiring someone internally or as a consultant, you’re effectively asking them to act as your right hand, and so that took us time.”
Part of what drew Sussman to BitOoda is her love of disruptive technologies. “I want to continue to be a lawyer who is a business partner that effectively helps companies in those nascent stages navigate new rules and regulations,” the GC says. “At the same time, I want to help disrupt traditional financial business and ways of doing that business through the utilization of new technologies.”
Sussman is in the rare and enviable position of being able to help break new business ground in a developing industry, not just from the legal department but as a trusted advisor to the business.
For those seeking to emulate Sussman’s ability to jump from the rock solid into the unknown, Sussman says it’s fairly simple. “Just keep an open mind and be willing to learn as much as you can,” the GC says. “At a small institution, a lawyer is going to be called to work on things that may not seem like a strictly legal function, but you have to remember that you’re on the sailboat and embrace that.”
Sullivan & Cromwell: “Ksenia Sussman has made extraordinary contributions to the development of the legal and regulatory regime for innovative financial services.”
–David Gilberg, Partner
There’s a thoughtfulness in each of Rebecca responses, a moment of contemplation before she conveys her thoughts as economically and clearly as possible, volumes even in its silence. The senior counsel for litigation and employment at mortgage company
Ocwen Financial spent a decade billing hours, cultivating dozens of client partnerships in industries of all kinds.
Ocwen FinancialAll the while, she knew that she would be better able to serve a single client, working more closely and collaboratively on a wider breadth of issues, as she now does as part of Ocwen’s legal team.
The attorney’s implicit focus on relationship building, especially on organically developing trust throughout her organization, is clear from the way she chooses to communicate. And her ability to not only help Ocwen’s team of attorneys internally navigate multiple high-profile M&A transactions over the past several years, including its 2018 acquisition of PHH Mortgage, but also maintain a dedicated family life illustrates a professional dedication to continuous self-education as well as a firm belief that change can almost always be harnessed for good.
When going in-house at Ocwen, Sipowicz says she had to quickly learn that serving one client with many different business units would require a far different approach from her private practice days.
“When you’re in-house, your clients are the different business units, but they’re also your colleagues,” the lawyer says. “If you don’t work to develop that level of trust between the in-house counsel and the internal clients, then that advice that’s being given is not going to be accepted. You’re not going to be able to find a solution that benefits the company as a whole.”
Sipowicz believes it is paramount to keep the larger picture in mind when cultivating relationships. “You all work for the same company and should have the interest of the company in mind,” the lawyer says. “Building that internal colleague-to-colleague relationship ensures you’re working for the betterment of the company regardless of what position you’re in.”
Coming from the legal department always comes with its own inherent chal -
lenges—for instance, the dreaded “Department of No” stereotype that is as tired as it is unhelpful—but Sipowicz takes them head-on. “I always have had an open-door policy,” the attorney says. “I encourage people to come and talk to me. Early on, I made sure that people saw me on the floor walking around.”
Most importantly, the senior counsel says she makes an active effort to be open to suggestion and conversation and avoid the “take it or leave it” answers that can often be attributed to lawyers who don’t feel connected to the business.
In successfully surviving multiple mergers and integrations of new teams at Ocwen alongside the rest of the legal department, Sipowicz says that embracing growth, rather than fearing it, has made her a better in-house counsel.
“Part of being an effective lawyer is to always be willing to learn,” Sipowicz says. “Each new change, growth, or issue is an opportunity to learn more and become not only a better attorney, but a better advocate for your client. If you’re not open to those opportunities, you’re doing yourself a disservice along with your company.”
When challenged with the implantation and integration of merged legal teams, the senior counsel says her willingness to keep an open mind has served her well. “Just because the way you did something as your legacy entity doesn’t mean that your new colleagues don’t have great ideas to improve the way you run your department or even manage your caseload,” Sipowicz says. “That’s the exciting thing about adding new voices. And
you have to be open to hearing them and working together to become a more cohesive team.”
The senior counsel’s dedication to her role is matched only by her desire be as present as humanly possible for her two elementary-aged children. It’s a balancing act that few, Sipowicz included, feel that they’ve mastered.
“If there anyone out there who’s perfected it, I’d love to talk to them,” the lawyer says, laughing. “But my priority will always be my children. I love what I do and I love working, so it always come down to working with the organization to find a way where everyone feels satisfied.”
For Sipowicz, that means making herself readily reachable, even outside of office hours. “I’m willing to be available almost all of the time, but also knowing when to work out with my team when that just won’t work,” the attorney says. “That comes back to building that trust and knowing that your department believes in you.”
It’s provided the lawyer the time with her kids that she says is especially important for her young daughter to understand. “She sees a mother who is able to have it all, and it lets her know that she can do exactly what she wants and still have a family.”
Duane Morris LLP:
“Rebecca balances deep professional loyalty and engagement with practical objectivity to discern the smartest paths to high value legal outcomes. While always constructively honest getting the job done right, she keeps winning personal and fun.”
–Brett Messinger, PartnerHouser LLP:
“We have worked with Rebecca Sipowicz for many years, and in that time, she has always surpassed our expectations—we always look forward to working with Rebecca.”
–Eric Houser, Partner“Each new change, growth, or issue is an opportunity to learn more and become not only a better attorney, but a better advocate for your client.”
Everyone on Deputy General Counsel Maria Manley-Dutton’s team at SITE Centers knows from experience that they can count on her
By Sara Deeterorking in real estate is something that you either love or hate. Either you catch the real estate bug or you get out of the industry as fast as you can.
Maria Manley-Dutton, deputy general counsel of real estate and leasing at SITE Centers, was just seventeen years old when she started out in real estate. “And I loved it,” Manley-Dutton says simply. “It got in my blood, and I’ve stayed in the industry ever since.”
Manley-Dutton found herself in real estate by a twist of fate, she says, “graduating from high school on a Sunday and going to work full-time as a secretary at a real estate company on Monday.” But while it wasn’t her originally planned career path, Manley-Dutton very intentionally chose to remain a part of the real estate industry in the ensuing years.
During her three years in the JD program at the University of Akron School of Law, Manley-Dutton continued to expand her knowledge of real estate. And after graduating from law school, she started working for a local developer before moving on to Developers Diversified, which later became DDR and is now SITE Centers.
Maria Manley-Dutton
SITE Centers is an Ohio-based real estate investment trust that focuses primarily on shopping centers such as the Winter Garden Village in Orlando, Florida, and the Nassau Park Pavilion in Princeton, New Jersey, though the company continues to branch out into new areas. In the years since Manley-Dutton joined SITE Centers’ legal team, the company has naturally seen many changes and periods of growth. But one key aspect has remained largely the same.
“I recognize I am only as successful as the team I keep,” Manley-Dutton explains. “The majority of my team has been with me from day one. We’ve been on this road together, and we’ve really just become a family. And when you’re doing work that you love and working alongside people that you love, why would you choose to go anywhere else?”
Manley-Dutton and her team oversee all of the commercial leasing matters for the company’s various shopping centers, work that ranges from liaising with tenants to preparing ancillary documents to finding ways to introduce broad-ranging language supporting SITE Centers’ sustainability measures into each and every one of the company’s lease documents.
“Sustainability is something that the company, and our property management team in particular, is very passionate about,” Manley-Dutton notes. “It’s very near and dear to our hearts, so it’s just a matter of making sure that we can provide the legal support and flexibility to create and sustain those initiatives at the property level.”
Of course, that work is not always as straightforward as it may seem, Manley-Dutton notes. Some tenants are much more inclined than others to embrace these initiatives. But no matter what challenges her team members face, the deputy general counsel is determined to allow everyone room to make mistakes.
“I tell my team all the time, we’re not saving lives here,” Manley-Dutton points out. “Let’s just figure out what you’re doing great and what you need to improve so that we can keep from repeating the mistake.
“But then you really do have to move on from the issue,” she continues. If you’re creating an atmosphere where your team members are constantly reminded of their mistakes, “it’s like putting an athlete
on a field when that athlete can think of nothing but how afraid they are to make a mistake. It’s just not going to work.”
But to Manley-Dutton’s mind, the most critical— and most frequently overlooked—component is making sure that your team knows that they’re not taking risks that you wouldn’t take yourself.
“To me, that’s the golden rule. I’m never going to ask you to do something that I wouldn’t do myself,” she says. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the team had to “work very quickly to respond to all of our tenants” as they complied with government mandates. SITE Centers also had to comply with government mandates as it pertained to the company’s shopping centers. Manley-Dutton worked alongside her team to get everything done.
“I’m not going to shy away from helping, especially now,” she remarked in her March 2020 interview. “You can’t lead from the front. You can’t just sit in your office and say, ‘Do this and do that.’ I sit among my team so that we can talk about how we’re going to accomplish this together.”
Without a doubt, Manley-Dutton’s team knows that they have her unreserved support. In recent years, the deputy general counsel has hired back two members of her team who had previously been
“That’s the golden rule. I’m never going to ask you to do something that I wouldn’t do myself.”
laid off. “We had had a change in management and needed to cut overhead,” Manley-Dutton recalls of the decision to let go of her team members. “We had to make some really tough decisions—and everyone on my team was really high performing, which made it even tougher.
“But after these two people left, I kept in contact with them,” she continues. “They told me that, given the opportunity, they would come back to work for me again.” Within a couple years, there was an opportunity to bring those individuals back on board.
“It was a wonderful thing to be able to do, and it’s been great for the people who stayed to see those individuals coming back,” Manley-Dutton says. “We really do support each other, no matter what.”
Rudolph Fields LLP:
“I have had the pleasure of working with and learning from Maria for more than fifteen years. She is the epitome of what it means to be a leader, and it is an honor to be part of her team.”
–Adam Hirschfeld, Partner
Sonkin & Koberna:
“Maria possesses a rare combination of legal expertise and practicality. She fosters strong relationships with outside counsel and tenants, and she has successfully navigated the changing retail landscape. We appreciate the opportunity to partner with her.”
–Lori M. Ambriola, Partner, and Rick D. Sonkin, Esq.,
Managing MemberWalter | Haverfield:
“I first met Maria more than fifteen years ago as a young lawyer fresh out of law school. She has always taken the time to assist in my professional development, and her counsel has proven to be invaluable. Maria is a selfless leader, an incredible mentor, and a true friend.”
–KevinMurphy,
Partner and Head of the Business Services GroupAres Management’s Brett Pugliese collaborates with the leadership team and HR business partners to reach goals such as increasing the employee footprint
By Cora Berg
rett Pugliese works smarter, not harder. The principal and associate general counsel’s responsibilities include the domestic and international employment law function at Ares Management, a leading global alternative investment manager.
“My job,” he explains, “is to guide business decisions regarding our employee base in an informed and commercial manner.” This, he says, means a lot of dialogue with the leadership team as well as HR business partners.
More than happy to explore different tactics to solve problems, Pugliese says that he and Ares are all about collaboration. “Sometimes that means a call with representatives from half a dozen different business groups to make sure that all stakeholders are involved,” he says. “And sometimes that means taking my laptop over to our head of HR’s office and working next to her for the afternoon so that we can talk through solutions in real time.”
The results are successful business decisions and, equally important, strong relationships and trust. “It’s a great feeling when work becomes more about the people and the partnerships,” Pugliese says, “when it isn’t purely transactional.”
Colleen Hart and Kate Napalkova, executive compensation partners at Proskauer Rose, work closely with Pugliese. “What sets Brett apart,” Hart says, “is his depth of knowledge and his ability to operate across functions and bring people together.”
Pugliese’s collaborative approach is critical as Ares continues to execute on its strategic initiatives, drive strong risk-adjusted returns for its clients, and build shareholder value. As an example, when the firm makes a strategic acquisition, Pugliese plays a key role. From the early stages of diligence through employee integration, he helps guide transactions. When new offices open, he jumps in to work closely with external counsel, ensuring everything is in place for new hires.
“It’s always exciting to start familiarizing myself with a new jurisdiction’s employment laws,” he says.
The associate general counsel credits Ares leadership with creating an environment where he can thrive by providing candid and constructive feedback. “It’s easy to feel confident when you’re receiving positive feedback,” he says of the delicately balanced support he receives, “but I feel an even stronger sense of accomplishment when I see myself succeeding in an area that used to be completely foreign to me. It’s always a huge confidence boost when I reach out to external counsel to check something and find out my instincts were right.”
Though Pugliese continues to build strengths at Ares, he arrived at the company with a unique knowledge base that has proved useful. He began his career in-house in the entertainment industry. “Starting my career in-house, without the more formal training that comes with the law firm path, taught me how to be resourceful more than anything,” he says. Working
as the only employment lawyer at an independent film and television studio, he relied on law school lessons and research to find solutions.
“Unique and real-world employee relations matters taught me how to spot issues, ask the right questions to figure out the business goal, and navigate the best path toward it,” he says. Though it is unusual for an in-house attorney to make the leap across sectors, he explains, “My background in a different industry has provided a lot of value to Ares in that I’m able to provide a diverse perspective.”
Along with his legal work, Pugliese is a member of the Ares Inclusion and Diversity Council, where he works with other members to launch firm-wide initiatives that support Ares’ drive to foster diversity in the workplace, including the development of several employee resource groups (ERGs). “In a very short time, our ERGs have become quite active, throwing various events open to all employees,” he says. Pugliese himself coleads the LA chapter of the Out at Ares ERG and helps plan celebrations for Pride Month throughout the company.
Mornings generally see Pugliese working closely with the international HR team based in Ares’s London office, focusing on stateside matters later in the day. With this breadth of responsibility, it is no wonder he says that, in more than five years at the company, “I can count on one hand the number of days that I found myself bored.” For Pugliese, Ares is a company willing to support employees in new endeavors. He’s excited for upcoming opportunities. At the same time, he understands the critical importance of work-life balance in ensuring the longevity of his career and love of his job.
“I work extremely hard and have always been dedicated to my job, but I make sure that things like my friends, family, and health are a priority,” he says. As he happily reports, “I wrap up almost every day feeling accomplished and ready to settle in at home with my partner and our puppy.” A smart way to work indeed.
“Unique and real-world employee relations matters taught me how to spot issues, ask the right questions to figure out the business goal, and navigate the best path toward it.”
Stephan Eberle has always been willing to take a risk and try something new—a quality that comes in handy in his work at venture capital firm Scale Venture Partners
By Sara Deeter
Good in-house counsel efficiently and expertly execute on legal tasks. Great in-house counsel know what it takes to learn something new.
Stephan Eberle has never shied away from learning new things at Scale Venture Partners, where he provides both the legal and the business guidance necessary to build the company into an industry leader. As general counsel and head of limited partner relations, Eberle’s flair for business and legal finesse help position the firm at the forefront of one of the most competitive industries in the world.
Eberle started out as a commercial litigator after graduating from the University of California, Hastings College of Law in 1993. But after six years in the field, Eberle transitioned in-house. “I wanted to build things, not fight over them,” Eberle explains. “Litigation was very interesting and taught me many of the skills I use to this day, but I needed to try something different.”
In 1999, Eberle accepted an in-house position at the SVB Financial Group & Silicon Valley Bank, where he worked on commercial transactions as well as litigation and product development. “I only expected to be there for a couple years,” Eberle notes. “But there were so many great opportunities that came up while I was there that I ended up staying for more than a decade and a half.”
During Eberle’s seventeen-year tenure at the Silicon Valley giant, he rose from counsel to deputy general counsel and gained a broad range of experience in legal matters as well as areas like people management and mentoring, strategic investing, mergers and acquisitions, global expansion, and risk management. He also played an integral role in founding the company’s venture capital investing program.
“One of Silicon Valley Bank’s leaders, who eventually became CEO, called me up one day and said, ‘We’re looking at potentially setting up some venture funds. Would you be interested?’ I had never done something like that before, but I was very interested, and the venture capital platform soon became an important part of the business,” Eberle recalls. “You can’t be afraid of the unknown, especially in this field. Lawyers are smart
people—good at reading, analyzing, interpreting, and then applying. And that’s exactly what it takes to learn something new.”
It was that willingness to embrace the unknown, in addition to his extensive legal experience, that molded Eberle into a great candidate for the general counsel role at Scale Venture Partners, a venture capital firm that works with technology companies focusing on business and enterprise software, including software as a service, cloud computing, and software and development operations technology.
“In this space, you’re in the innovation economy,” Eberle says. “You get to see all of these emerging technologies—software that powers business, including online commerce—and work with the amazing companies that are trying to develop and deploy those technologies. It’s just a fascinating part of the economy. I feel so lucky that I get to sit right in the middle of it and literally watch global business transform.”
Of course, both the technology industry and the venture capital sector are highly competitive, Eberle acknowledges—but not nearly so cutthroat as Hollywood would have us believe.
“People may not realize that venture capital is extremely collaborative,” the GC says. “Venture capital firm investing strategies can differ quite a bit, with some firms investing when a company is first starting out and other firms investing when a company is larger and getting close to an exit, like an IPO. That results in a need for venture firms to work— and invest—together during the life of a company to help build and grow a company. It also has resulted in a network of GCs for venture firms that work together collaboratively, which is a great resource.”
Scale Venture Partners, for example, primarily works with companies that are in the initial stages of revenue. As general counsel, Eberle guides his firm’s legal work on the firm’s investments in those companies while ensuring that the firm’s activities
“Lawyers are smart people— good at reading, analyzing, interpreting, and then applying. And that’s exactly what it takes to learn something new.”Stephan Eberle
Proskauer is a leading law firm, providing a wide range of legal services to clients worldwide. To learn more about the firm, visit Proskauer.com.
are in line with current laws and regulations—and there are “always” new regulations coming out, Eberle notes.
“Part of what a GC does is operationalize those laws and regulations,” he says. “I focus on turning them into something that can be effectively and efficiently acted upon so that the business can remain compliant. That is a constant challenge because the laws in this space are constantly evolving and being interpreted.”
Eberle doesn’t mind that challenge. Far from it, especially since those challenges are balanced by the profound sense of meaning that he derives from his work as a whole.
“As head of limited partner relations, I act as the primary contact for our existing investors and also work to identify potential new investors over time,” Eberle says. “Maintaining and building deep relationships with those investors is very interesting and highly rewarding.
“I get to really understand the investors themselves, the institutions and groups they’re working with, and the reasons they’re trying to generate returns,” he continues. “We could be responsible for generating the returns that someone is depending on for their retirement, education, or health and welfare. It makes our efforts to provide solid returns for them incredibly meaningful.”
Proud to work with and support our client and friend
General Counsel, Scale Venture Partners
“We could be responsible for generating the returns that someone is depending on for their retirement, education, or health and welfare.”
Portraits of today’s top legal executives, the remarkable careers they have cultivated, and the management strategies and best practices they employ to succeed both individually and collaboratively
Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein’s Jonathan D. Selbin has spent twenty-five years fighting for consumers, employees, and other victims of misconduct
By Billy YostPortraits by Peter Garritano
Selbin’s desk. He had finished five days of depositions with a client involved in a massive class-action lawsuit against Home Depot, the ultimate settlement of which would eventuate sweeping changes in the company’s hiring and promotion practices. Up until the suit, men and women were placed in almost entirely different pipelines. Men started on the sales floor, where they were on a fast track for promotion, management, and sometimes even vice-president-level positions. Women were relegated to cashier roles and, at best, promotion to the customer service desk. A gender-based glass barrier to promotions had been either consciously or unconsciously created and maintained.
Selbin shared more about himself with this client than many, due to the sheer number of deposition days required. He shared the stories of his parents engaging in civil rights work in the 1950s and 1960s and Vietnam War protests in the 1960s and 1970s in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Calls for his father’s firing from Louisiana State University were common, but
both his mother and father believed, like the saying, that staying neutral was tantamount to siding with the oppressors. Selbin’s mother, who is Jewish, fled Nazi Germany in 1937 with the assistance of multiple people, including a State Department officer who granted her a visa and a Czech reporter who fended off Nazi soldiers hassling her family on a train out of the country.
But that didn’t explain the banker’s box. “After all of those days, I couldn’t believe there might be more—more documents or more evidence,” Selbin says. There wasn’t.
“Inside was a white cowboy hat and a note,” Selbin remembers. “The note said, ‘You wear the white hat. You made me feel like Rosa Parks, and you helped me from the back of the bus.’” Selbin still has the hat and the note to remember why he does what he does.
For twenty-five years at the firm Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, Selbin has acted as a voice
for defrauded consumers, victims of environmental damage, employees who’ve been discriminated against, and small businesses fighting much larger corporations. “In everything that we do, we represent the victims of misconduct,” Selbin says. “Big companies have the power and the money to afford the very best and biggest firms to represent them, and they’re entitled to that. Our job is to level the playing field.”
Selbin’s colleagues have the highest opinion of his abilities and inclinations. “Working with Jonathan has always been a pleasure because it is so clear that his number one priority is helping the class members he represents,” says Steven Weisbrot, Esquire, chief innovation officer at Angeion Group.
The Home Depot class-action litigation would result in the complete restructuring of the company’s employee pipeline, and Selbin gives them credit for how quickly they changed course. “They wholeheartedly embraced the changes we wanted them to make in their hiring and promotion practices,” the lawyer says. “They realized they’d be a better and stronger company if they valued women and men equally.”
It’s a sentiment that Selbin practices as much as he preaches. When his firm represented the plaintiffs in a class-action suit involving the conduct of former gynecologist Dr. George Tyndall—accused of decades of gender violence and sexual abuse by countless students at the University of Southern California— Selbin elected not to assume a lead chair role on the well-publicized case.
“There were already two men, and there was something odd about three male lawyers representing literally thousands of women,” Selbin says. He supported his junior partner Annika Martin obtaining that role in the case, which eventually resulted in widespread and sweeping institutional changes and payment of $215 million to the class, the largest sex abuse class action settlement ever. “It’s important to help younger partners find their footing and role as leaders, and this case was a high-profile chance to do it.”
Selbin and his family are also doing their part to carry on the tradition laid down by his parents. After the presidential election of 2016, Selbin says, it was time to make their own stand. “Within days, we were being hit
Jonathan D. Selbin has engaged in a wide variety of class-action matters over the years and understands the negative public perception those suits may carry. That’s why the “Front-Loader Odor” suit of the 2010s was so impactful. Whirlpool and other brand front-load washing machines that failed to self-clean became mold and bacteria cesspools. The companies had not only failed to adequately notify customers about the new care requirements of the decades-old technology consumers assumed they understood, but also responded to complaints by trying to sell customers a special cleaning product to keep mold from developing. “It’s the kind of case that everyone can relate to and understand,” Selbin says.
“Big companies have the power and the money to afford the very best and biggest firms to represent them, and they’re entitled to that. Our job is to level the playing field.”
Tapped by leading law firms around the globe to manage the most complex class actions, Angeion Group is setting a new standard for innovation in settlement administration and legal notice. Led by a proven executive team that has supported more than 2,000 class action administrations and the distribution of more than $10 billion to class members, Angeion has become one of the most trusted service providers in the legal industry, supporting a prestigious array of clients worldwide.
Since its founding in 2013, the company has changed the status quo in class action notice, harnessing the power of digital media in novel ways. Through its deep media experience, substantial legal expertise, and the ability to think outside the box, Angeion is helping its clients reach millions—even billions—of class members more effectively than ever before.
Through its dedicated infrastructure, flexible use of technology, and dedicated employees, the company has also raised the bar for customer service excellence in complex claims review and administration, giving counsel and the court peace of mind. In 2019, Angeion Group was recognized as part of the Inc. 5000 as one of fastest growing companies in the United States.
“We’re not under any illusions this one person is going to change the world [through the Selbin Voting Rights Fellowship]. But they will make a difference.”
with requests from every imaginable wonderful organization that was going to need help in the next four years,” Selbin says. “Civil rights organizations, women’s rights organizations, immigrant rights organizations: we wanted to help them all but wanted to make a more impactful difference.”
The family (including Selbin’s now sixteenyear-old son) decided that working to ensure voting rights in areas widely known for discriminating against minority voters would help create the most change. “The hope is that more people will have access to exercise their right to vote, and when more people have and can exercise that right, the outcomes are better.”
In partnership with nonprofit Equal Justice Works, the Selbin Voting Rights Fellowship offers an opportunity for a new lawyer to work for voting rights on behalf of citizens who often face hurdles in trying to secure voting access. “We’re not under any illusions this one person is going to change the world. But they will make a difference.”
The fellowship is on its second fellow, who is working in partnership with the Brennan Center for Justice policy group.
Equal Justice Works has also had a larger impact on Selbin’s spare time. The lawyer is a board member for the nonprofit, whose mission is “create opportunities for lawyers to transform their passion for equal justice into a lifelong commitment to public service.” It’s a mission close to the lawyer’s heart.
JND Legal Administration:
“Jonathan is a litigator’s litigator. He always sees the forest through the trees and fights for what is right and what makes sense, rather than to simply make a point. It has been a pleasure working with him on many of his important settlements.”
–Jennifer M. Keough, CEO & Cofounder
Robert Tanenbaum was 100 percent sure he should be working in national security. Then he went in-house.
By Billy Yost Robert Tanenbaum Managing Director and Associate General Counsel Navient
ROBERT TANENBAUM’S LEGAL JOURNEY IS A reminder of just how much things can change, even when you feel like you know exactly what you are supposed to be doing in life. “I didn’t really enjoy law school,” Tanenbaum recalls frankly of his student days. “I wasn’t one of those students who always knew they wanted to be a lawyer.” Rather, Tanenbaum had been bound and determined to pursue a career in government, with or without a law degree. The JD had seemed like effective résumé padding, if nothing else.
How then does a reluctant attorney with the intent of working for the CIA wind up a managing director and associate general counsel for Navient, one of the largest student loan servicing corporations in the world?
“Rejection paved the way for my career,” Tanenbaum says, laughing. “In retrospect, I never would have imagined being an in-house attorney. I love it, and I’m fortunate that it played out this way.”
Rejection may have informed the lawyer’s early career moves, but it isn’t what’s made him an effective litigator at Navient, where he holds that rare in-house position managing litigation full-time. The AGC’s unorthodox journey has provided a wealth of experience that helped Tanenbaum earn his in-house role and, ultimately, turn down the job interview for which he had been waiting his entire career.
With every move Tanenbaum made from his law school graduation in 2007 on, he was intending to find a way to carve out a career in government: an internship with the Department of Defense, an externship with the Department of Justice Counterterrorism Section, a two-year federal clerkship for the Honorable Judge Harold A. Ackerman. At the same time, the young attorney was applying for any relevant position he could, at agencies including the CIA and the NSA. But something wasn’t clicking, and Tanenbaum wasn’t sure why.
“Once you do a clerkship, you’re really on track to becoming a litigator,” he says. “You’re almost wasting that clerkship experience if you don’t work to apply it, and so that’s what I did.”
Tanenbaum went into private practice, cultivating extensive litigation experience. “I learned so many additional skills,” Tanenbaum says. “I was taking depositions and learning what it means to have a client and what client service really means.” He took his first case to trial and found, despite his reticence, that he performed quite well under pressure.
“I really learned how to say yes to virtually anything that was thrown at me,” Tanenbaum remembers. “As part of client service, I wanted to be positive and find a way to take on whatever I could. I found that good things come your way when you do that.” Navient was that next good thing.
Coming in-house at Navient provided more than just Tanenbaum’s first business-focused role. Before accepting the position, the attorney had agreed to another interview at the CIA, months in advance, and Tanenbaum virtually forgot it about upon going in-house. It was his chance to go for the role he thought he’d always wanted.
“But I already loved it at Navient,” the AGC says. “I had made my first really conscious decision to take a role that wasn’t just going through the first available door that had been opened for me, and this felt right. I canceled the interview.”
Recently, Tanenbaum has been promoted to managing director, widening his responsibilities while, at the same time, learning to dial back some of the skills that had made him so effective in the firm world. “It took some time to learn that I was in a more collaborative and business-focused environment,” the AGC says. “As a litigator in private practice, aggression tends to be rewarded both in practicing and in your career. Here, the focus is on helping the business, not on pounding your chest or pounding the table.”
But that doesn’t mean the lawyer’s previous experience doesn’t come in handy from time to time. The rise of “debt-relief” companies misleading customers into defaulting on their loans and filing unwarranted lawsuits
“The focus is on helping the business, not on pounding your chest or pounding the table.”
against loan servicers required more than a solid defense. “These are practices that can ultimately ruin our customers’ credit, and something we were hearing about all over the place,” Tanenbaum says. The legal team launched two racketeering lawsuits in the Eastern District of Virginia in 2017 and 2019 against unscrupulous “debt-relief” companies and attorneys.
The lawyer says that directing Navient’s outside counsel to go to court or arbitration when it is warranted has helped discourage pointless litigation and baseless claims. Although he may no longer have an interest in working in national security, Tanenbaum still employs a Latin phrase that is well known among military organizations: “Si vis pacem, para bellum” (“If you want peace, prepare for war”).
When it comes to real wins, Tanenbaum has clearly triumphed career-wise, excelling in a role that turned out to be his dream job. Not bad for an accidental attorney.
Ifrah Law:
“Robert Tanenbaum combines exceptional legal acumen with business-savvy insights. I’ve worked with many in-house counsel over the years, and he’s one of the best. Congratulations on this impressive recognition.”
–Michelle Cohen, Member
Stradley Ronon:
“Robert is what every outside counsel looks for in a client. In addition to his breadth of substantive knowledge, Robert is a true partner with outside counsel to develop and implement a practical and collaborative litigation strategy.”
Stradley Ronon is proud to recognize the achievements of Robert S. Tanenbaum Managing Director and Associate General Counsel Navient
–Eric M. Hurwitz, Partner and Cochair, Financial Services Litigation
“As part of client service, I wanted to be positive and find a way to take on whatever I could. I found that good things come your way when you do that.”
Malika Herring on the importance of fostering relationships and the people who have been critical to her success at BP
By Zayvelle WilliamsonMALIKA HERRING KNOWS NO ONE CAN find success or overcome challenges entirely by themselves. Over the course of her career, she has received support and found inspiration from many of the people she has met. That willingness—and eagerness—to nurture and develop relationships has helped enable Herring’s success as senior litigation counsel at BP. She hopes to continue to give back and help institutionalize a giving and people-first culture.
A journalism major at the University of Houston, Herring enrolled in the Loyola University New Orleans School of Law in 1998. At Loyola, Herring says, she became very involved in campus life and developed close bonds with many different people, “as many people do in school,” Herring points out. “But one day several years postgraduation,
while I was working in private practice, I ran into one of my classmates, who let me know about an available in-house position with his employer, Walmart, in Bentonville, Arkansas. He also endorsed me internally for the role.
“After I gained the position, I received an incredible learning experience and an opportunity to meet some amazing people,” Herring says. But more than that, years later, “it really gave me the experience above other candidates when I applied to BP in Houston. Additional relationships proved helpful, as I was able to call several people I knew at BP to discuss the posted position and learn about the company culture beforehand. I am forever thankful for my classmate and the people I have met and worked with along the way who have contributed to my success. Those experiences reinforced
for me how important it is to develop relationships and to be a resource for others. It makes a difference, and I make efforts to do that when appropriate.”
Today, as senior litigation counsel at BP, Herring still relies on the power of relationships to help manage the oil and gas corporation’s immense portfolio of work. “I have a bit of a volume practice; I handle hundreds of cases at any given time,” Herring explains. “I also manage litigation across eighteen to twenty-three different states, so I partner with our internal business clients and with many law firms who help us defend the company in both commercial and tort matters.
“Between those external partnerships and our amazing people working internally,” she continues, “we have strategic coverage of litigation and risks
The world is seeing an everincreasing need for energy so that people and communities everywhere are able to function and thrive. BP knows that that energy must be sourced and delivered by people as responsibly as possible:
to address and resolve any issues the company faces. I depend on those relationships to achieve success for the company.”
“Malika’s strategic leadership of her virtual legal team provides effective and efficient management of litigation for BP nationwide,” says Cathie Pyune McEldowney of Maron Marvel Bradley Anderson & Tardy, a law firm that serves BP as national coordinating and local counsel in matters throughout the US. “She’s intelligent, thoughtful, and a subject matter expert. We’re honored to support her.”
With external and internal teams alike, Herring strives to be a team player and foster relationships. She has been both mentor and mentee in formal, internal BP mentoring programs as well as in more informal settings. “That’s something that is part of my fiber,” she reflects. “I try to find opportunities to be a resource for others, to give time to those seeking it, and sincerely thank people for their help. I am truly a recipient of those gifts from others.”
Herring has had a lot to thank her colleagues for throughout her eleven years at BP, she says. Even in the most challenging times, such as the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill, the people of BP work closely together to learn from their challenges to help build a better future.
“I am fortunate to have worked for BP both before and after the Deepwater Horizon event,” Herring remarks. “As a result, I have become intimately familiar with both the business of BP and other people working in the industry. This experience has primed me to further understand the power of people. BP is an organization that really does put people and safety first.
“Of course, the company and the industry as a whole have changed and evolved over the years,” she adds. “In the legal department, we’ve been able to provide guidance and information based on a real understanding of our company’s experiences. Many of us, including myself, lived those experiences alongside the business.”
That type of informed advice and counseling makes a real difference to the organization, Herring notes, and having that kind of impact and working with great people are just a couple of the things she loves most about working at BP.
According to Herring, the company as a whole is dedicated to making a positive impact on the world, whether through its sustainability efforts or its various diversity and inclusion initiatives.
“Diversity and inclusion are very important to BP for myriad reasons,” Herring says. “We are a global business, and it’s important that the differences we see in the world around us are reflected in our workplace as well as within our suppliers.”
She notes, “Diversity and inclusion are also a core belief of the company, and one of my passions as well.” As the current Americas chair of the BP Legal Ethics and Compliance Diversity and Inclusion Committee, she works with twelve to fifteen other passionate BP employees who have made a commitment to recruiting and retaining top diverse talent.
Herring is also a member of the legal department’s external counsel management committee, which helps BP’s legal department manage and evaluate its relationships with outside legal partners.
“That committee, among other things, obtains the diversity and inclusion data of our external law firms so that we can review and discuss that information,” Herring explains. “For the past few years, we have recognized the external law firms who are really showing up and making strides in diversity and inclusion and honored them through an award program. However, there is so much more work to do in this area, and we remain positive and committed.”
Through her participation in such committees, Herring ensures that she is fostering relationships with individuals and firms that are not only efficient but also devoted to upholding BP’s values. “Everyone at BP, myself included, wants to do our part to add value and to help the company and its partners mirror the communities in which we serve,” Herring emphasizes. “People and relationships have made a difference professionally and personally.”
Miller Nash Graham & Dunn LLP: “Malika is an exceptionally skilled and driven attorney who leads a dynamic team at BP. We’re pleased to recognize Malika for her invaluable contributions!”–TrajanPerez, Partner
“We are a global business, and it’s important that the differences we see in the world around us are reflected in our workplace as well as within our suppliers.”
Congratulations to our client, partner and friend, Malika Herring. Recognition for her guidance, creativity and loyalty is well-deserved.
Malika, thank you for your creative, steadfast guidance, goodwill, and tremendous loyalty.
For over twenty years, some of the world’s leading companies have relied on Maron Marvel Bradley Anderson & Tardy to obtain favorable results in cases involving complicated legal issues in some of the most challenging jurisdictions. Offering more than just a solution, we provide clients with a dedicated partner who is versatile, progressive, and knowledgeable.
We’re honored to work with Malika Herring and the BP team as they continue to innovate and shape a world of possibilities. millernash.com
Miller Nash Graham & Dunn balances a unique blend of tradition and innovation to meet the evolving needs of our clients, our people, and the communities we serve.
WHEN ASKED TO DESCRIBE HER CAREER PATH , Melinda Stier affectionately labels her journey as a “Kimpton boomerang.”
Stier began a career with Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants, an industry pioneer for introducing the boutique hotel concept to the United States, in 2004 but left the company after three years in 2007. Now the senior vice president and general counsel at Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants, Stier returned to Kimpton in 2016. “To me, it was a real joy that the opportunity arose for me to come back,” Stier says.
“When I left Kimpton, I was pursuing a long-held dream to spend at least some time in my career in international human rights, which came from a place of compassion for others and a global perspective. Quite honestly, that interest tied into the reason why I came back,” Stier explains.
She returned to Kimpton almost two years after its acquisition by InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) in 2015. “As a result, I was coming back to a new chapter for the company. I was completely drawn to the global aspect of that and the aspiration to grow the Kimpton brand globally,” she says.
Stier was interested in connecting her legal career to a global enterprise, and returning to Kimpton offered the perfect opportunity for exactly that. In her current role, Stier is responsible for working on
all development deals in the Americas. “I negotiate the management contracts, and I have been able to do that now in Mexico, Honduras, and Grenada—all of these different destinations for us,” she says. This new role has not only come with new experiences and opportunities but also new lessons for her. “It has allowed me to expand my horizons, and I have learned about new areas of law.”
With these new lessons, Stier is also particularly enthusiastic about the focus on education and training that IHG, as an umbrella company, has offered to employees at Kimpton. “They [IHG] truly do utilize resources to enhance our skill sets,” Stier says. Due to the nature of her primary negotiation responsibilities, Stier has found these training offerings to be integral in honing her negotiation skills.
“We had a comprehensive negotiations training that was led by one of Harvard Business School’s negotiations professors, and in addition to that we also have ongoing trainings at Kimpton that focus solely on honing your interpersonal skills,” Stier explains. “These training courses are phenomenal, and they truly build on the workplace culture at Kimpton; we want people to improve themselves.”
This emphasis on education and continuous improvement speaks to the nature of Kimpton’s ever-evolving legal function. With the changes in tech-
nology and industry trends, the hospitality industry must focus on new areas of significance, such as data privacy. “It’s a noticeable trend, and not only do we have an entire part of the organization that focuses on that, but it is beginning to come up in our contractual negotiations,” Stier says. “It’s important for counsel to know where various states are with laws regarding this area.”
Kimpton’s US offices, based out of California, have adapted to the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), a statewide statute set in place to enhance privacy rights and consumer protection for citizens of California.
The EU and EEA areas have already enacted a similar law regarding data privacy and protection: the Global Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). “It’s a consumerwide issue, but because we are a global organization that is grown out of the UK, we have had a real leg up on CCPA thanks to GDPR,” Stier says.
Just as it is vital for the legal team to gain the trust of the companies and property owners that Kimpton negotiates with, Stier believes that a strong legal team is founded on trust. “You have to have the confidence that your employer trusts you, and on the flip side, I have to have the confidence that my team is going to take responsibility for the subject matter in their job descriptions. From time to time, that requires giving people the benefit of the doubt, but trust and complementary skills are what keep my team so unified.”
When we partner with our clients to practice law, we do so not just with integrity, but with ingenuity, agility and ambition. And in so doing, we are able to make a powerful, positive and lasting impact.
Learn more at goodwinlaw.com.
At Goodwin, we use law to enable our clients’ success.
ROZAN SIMONI HAD AN EARLY LESSON in grit that has driven him throughout his fifteen-year career in law. Shortly after law school, he decided to move from his hometown of St. Louis to Scottsdale, Arizona, where he knew no one. Based solely on a job offer, he packed up his car and began the drive.
Exactly a year later, the country entered the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Deals dried up, and Simoni found himself at a crossroads. He watched his billable hours drop significantly. Nevertheless, he decided to persevere.
“I had to reinvent myself and learn new areas of law, but, never for a second, despite being right out of law school and in debt, did I think about quitting the practice of law,” Simoni recalls. “I was convinced that I would succeed.” Persevering through a difficult start is what helped him build the foundation for his success. It also taught him to be practical when looking for solutions to complicated issues.
Rozan Simoni has established himself as a successful cross-cultural communicator and leader at COFCO International thanks to a foundation built on grit
By Blythe LongNow, fifteen years later, Simoni is making sure that COFCO International is staying interconnected across borders as the company’s general counsel and corporate secretary of North America. COFCO International is a global agribusiness that sources, processes, trades, and distributes agricultural products to the world, with $32 billion in revenue, eleven thousand employees worldwide, and a footprint in six continents. Simoni emphasizes that cultural sensitivity is the key to success in an interconnected, multiflag business.
“Building trust by understanding nuanced approaches based on cultural sensitivities, being sincere, and relying on professionalism makes collaboration across borders easier,” he says. Simoni acknowledges that technical skills are
important for a business and M&A lawyer like him. However, understanding different cultures and people is equally important. What works when negotiating in the US may not work in other countries, and acknowledging these differences is what helps drive his success. “Learning to communicate cross-culturally is key to building trust,” he explains, “and with trust, you are able to drive the transaction to a close.”
Working across borders does bring its challenges, Simoni says. Understanding your audience and their customs is the first thing you must do before taking a seat at the negotiating table. He recounts a time his team experienced this firsthand. While negotiating face-to-face with a Finish company in Helsinki, his teammates began to argue among themselves in Spanish. Simoni requested a break, took his teammates out of the negotiating room, and had to set forth new rules, including no communicating in front of the counterparty in Spanish. “Our team needs to speak with one voice, and you don’t know who on the other side speaks Spanish,” he emphasized.
Once his team returned to the negotiating table, they finalized the deal. Later that night, they learned that one of the key executives from the counterparty had lived in Spain and was fluent in Spanish. Simoni’s leadership helped his team successfully and professionally negotiate without jeopardizing the deal. He knew that Spanish was a popular language, and it was not surprising that someone else would speak it. “I am able to solve issues by acting as a bridge between different cultures,” he says. “I’m able to understand my audience and why we are negotiating.”
Regardless of geography, Simoni has adopted a leadership style that centers on genuine relationships. In his experience, authenticity opens doors, instilling trust and confidence in a leader’s abilities. “Combine trust and confidence with passion and honesty, and people will work with you and support you,” he notes. “You need to build a network of people who are willing to help you succeed and contribute to your ultimate goal. That way, when the going gets tough, you have people in your corner.”
Simoni uses the same perseverance he learned early in his career today, along with his multicultural background, when conducting business across the world. He is frequently up early in the morning,
Rozan Simoni General Counsel and Corporate Secretary—North America COFCO International
Let the Sunshine In Rozan Simoni decided to go in-house with COFCO International because of its mission: to build a global agribusiness that meets the rising demand for food all over the world in a sustainable way. To achieve this mission, he says, “we harness the power of people by embedding a culture of positivity.” COFCO calls this culture the Sunshine culture.
Sustaining COFCO’s Sunshine culture comes down to the individuals who make up the company. Fittingly, the center of the COFCO logo is the Chinese word ren, a foundational Confucian virtue that can translate to “humanity.” Embedding ren in COFCO’s logo represents how the business, at its core, combines the concepts of people and harvest—both symbolizing vitality and teamwork.
calling colleagues located in Europe or Brazil, and in the evening, when Asia opens for business, he interacts with colleagues in Singapore and Beijing. Throughout the day, too, with the help of technology, he holds meetings with colleagues scattered across multiple countries and continents.
It comes as no surprise that Simoni loves to travel. He has been to more than one hundred major cities worldwide and more than fifty countries. Through these travels, he has bettered his understanding of different cultures and helped keep cultural sensitivity at the heart of his business dealings.
Looking back on his career, Simoni reflects on the importance of persistence and a practical approach to problem solving. “What I learned is that grit, in addition to smarts, can help you overcome. That has served me well throughout my fifteen-year career to date.”
GROWING UP IN LOS ANGELES, THE daughter of a law professor, Kate Ides admits she had no interest in following in her father’s footsteps toward a law career.
“But people had always suggested and intimated that it might be a field that would interest me,” shares Ides, now the corporate vice president and assistant general counsel of litigation at AECOM.
In college, she played Division I basketball. Although the sport was a big focus throughout the early part of her life, she acknowledges that it was not something she saw herself professionally engaging in, either as a player or coach.
“I had been interested in education—even as a young child—and in my senior year of college, I decided to apply for Teach For America and got into the program,” Ides recalls. “I was placed in New Orleans and spent four years there mostly teaching, except for an interruption from Hurricane Katrina.”
Through her teaching experiences, Ides reached the conclusion that having good teachers in the classroom could only do so much. Her students’ outcomes and the city’s troubled schools were the result of systemic problems that could be addressed through policy or impact litigation.
“That’s where my own interest in the practice of law started,” Ides says. “I went to law school with a very different path in mind, thinking I would practice in the public interest field, perhaps focusing on education reform or juvenile justice.”
But as she learned, the best-laid plans are often foiled by circumstance. The economy tanked while she was in law school, and the narrative around public interest was that it was impossible to get a job in that field at the time.
Ides shifted gears and spent her 2L summer at a big law firm, O’Melveny & Myers, choosing it because of her Los Angeles roots and its plain commitment to pro bono work and the city.
“O’Melveny’s commitment to Los Angeles and all its members was palpable during my 2L clerkship,” she says. “I loved it. I also loved the work and the clients on whose behalf I worked. And as I expected, I was surrounded by partners and senior associates who impressed me.” Accepting a full-time job offer from the firm was an easy call.
In April of 2017, after more than six years at O’Melveny & Myers, Ides followed her mentor Carla Christofferson to AECOM. While previously the managing partner of the O’Melveny & Myers Los Angeles office, Christofferson had been hired as the executive vice president and chief legal officer of AECOM, which provides planning, consulting, and architectural and engineering design services for civil and infrastructure construction to public and private clients in more than 150 countries.
“When the opportunity arose, I chose to take it, in part, because of my respect and admiration for Carla. She played a critical role in my development as a litigator, and the prospect of teaming up again won me over,” Ides says. “Not to mention, I was also intrigued by the prospect of moving in-house and learning the ins and outs of a thriving Fortune 500 company while still continuing to serve my clients (now internal) as a litigator. Plus, AECOM is one of the few Fortune 500 companies headquartered in Los Angeles, and I wanted to keep that LA connection.”
Now in-house, Ides is a “thought leader on litigation strategy for some of the company’s highest-risk disputes,”
“I went to law school with a very different path in mind, thinking I would practice in the public interest field, perhaps focusing on education reform or juvenile justice.”
Ides says. Her day-to-day responsibilities include managing resolution of a “docket” of the company’s highest-risk disputes across the globe, from California to Sydney, Australia.
“Because of the nature of the dispute, there is sensitivity around the subject matter or costs that will be spent to protect the company’s interest,” Ides explains. “My objective is to resolve each dispute so as to enhance and protect the company’s profitability and reputation.”
But Ides hasn’t forgotten her original passion. She continues to engage in education issues outside the company by serving as a board member for two nonprofit organizations and acting as a mentor through the Los Angeles–based Motivating Our Students Through Experience (MOSTE) program.
“It partners professional women with girls in LA from underresourced public schools to encourage them to be college ready,” Ides says. “In 2011, I was paired with a seventh grader (also named Karla) who is now a senior in college. My aim is to be her sounding board.” These days, Ides and her mentee mostly collaborate on next steps as Karla exits out of college.
Ides feels she’s at a point in her career where she is looking to perfect her current role while staying open to opportunities that could help her advance to different in-house roles.
“I’m trying to continue to use my job to expose me to new aspects of business and operations so if an opportunity arises, I am confident that I can step into it,” she says.
–Marisa Secco, Partner
Congratulations to Kate Ides for her exceptional work and leadership at AECOM. V&E is proud to partner with her to craft effective, strategic legal solutions. We look forward to a rewarding relationship for many years to come.
A solid work ethic and dedication to the job have helped April Lindauer, deputy general counsel of fintech start-up Carta, blossom into a strong leader
By Keith LoriaHer road to Carta began with an internship. While attending law school at DePaul University College of Law, Lindauer worked for the Chicago office of the National Association of Securities Dealers (now the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority), where she learned about brokerage and financial services law.
“Starting with that job at FINRA is really what led me into working in financial services law for almost twenty years,” she explains. “What I like about it is the fintechs of today, like Carta, are really trying to solve complex problems, but we’re still dealing with more of an archaic set of rules and regulations. There’s been some modernization over time, but these are laws that were passed after the Great Depression, so working in that context is like a big problem-solving puzzle every day.”
Coming up with creative initiatives to solve those problems—as innovations come around that don’t necessarily fit into the way the financial markets have worked in the past— keeps the job fresh for her.
At Carta, Lindauer manages all the company’s day-to-day legal work and supervises a team of attorneys and paralegals. A typical day can include everything from working on complex contracts to managing an employment issue to interacting with senior management of different business units.
“We touch every area of the business,” she says. “The team I supervise is very diverse, and everyone comes with a different background and experience. We’re all expected to jump in. For example, currently, most of my team is at an internal sales conference, so I picked up some of the matters they are working on.”
April Lindauer got an early introduction to the life of an attorney. As teenagers, she and her four siblings took turns working in their father’s law office.
“I knew from a young age that it was something I wanted to do, inspired by the many summers working in his firm,” she recounts. Today, she serves as deputy general counsel for Carta, an eight-year-old tech company based in Palo Alto, California, that specializes in equity management for companies and investors.
When hiring, she notes, “We look for those who have experience in specialized areas. As we grow, we’re looking at where we have some knowledge gaps or experience gaps on the team. We’re at a place where it doesn’t make sense to rely on our outside counsel as much and [instead] bring someone on who can fill that gap.”
She also looks for someone who is intellectually curious, flexible, and willing to roll up their sleeves and be helpful in any aspect of the job.
Though the team is geographically dispersed, with Lindauer working in the New York City office and others at the California headquarters and elsewhere around the country, she feels Carta’s tech tools allow everyone to be a stabilized unit. She hopes to preserve the stability of that unit as both the company and the legal team expand.
When Lindauer joined Carta in April of 2018, the company employed fewer than three hundred people. Today, Carta is poised to hit a thousand and continues to grow, with plans to expand into new products in 2020.
“Our company mission is to create more owners, and our CEO, Henry Ward, has grown the business by looking at the needs of our clients and building upon what we’ve already built to manage the services they need and manage their equity,” Lindauer says. “I’ve never worked at a company that has grown this quickly. It’s been a pretty cool ride.”
They key to good leadership in the midst of such rapid growth, she explains, is to be collaborative and to listen to what other people think.
“I really want to know their ideas. I tend to need a lot of data to make a decision, so that leads to a style of asking questions and collaborating with everyone on the team,” Lindauer shares. “For example, I have an attorney who has a strong background in intellectual property, so if those questions fall on my desk, I collaborate with her.”
Lindauer also considers mentoring a big part of what she does and one of her major responsibilities as a manager.
“This morning, I spoke with one of my direct reports, and we were discussing an approach to a problem. I look at that as not just a function of me being a manager, but also trying to mentor them and help them grow in their practice internally,” she explains. “It’s not really directing but helping the attorney think through the different options available and what would be the next steps.”
Carta has also recently brought on some legal interns, and Lindauer has enjoyed working with law students as they start their careers, remembering fondly the opportunities she had almost twenty years ago in a similar role.
Looking ahead professionally, Lindauer would like to become a general counsel.
“The work I’m doing here has definitely helped me grow, and I’ve learned so much,” she says. “I really like building out, managing, and mentoring teams, so that seems like the logical next step for me.”
Norris McLaughlin:
“Our experience working with April has been nothing but positive. She is professional, hard-working, and very dedicated to the important mission that drives Carta’s business.”
–Daniel R. Guadalupe, Litigation Practice Cochair and Lead Outside Counsel for CartaVenable LLP:
“April draws upon her extensive in-house experiences to provide proactive legal and practical advice to move projects forward and to enhance corporate compliance. She develops terrific teams and, simply put, adds value to her clients.”
–Jonathan L. Pompan, Partner and Consumer Financial Services Practice GroupCochair,
“I’ve never worked at a company that has grown this quickly. It’s been a pretty cool ride.”
Kristopher Zinchiak was put to the test.
The legal department was going through a transformation, with its two employees transitioning into different roles within the company. “It created the perfect opportunity for me to show, from day one, that I have what it takes to run the department by myself,” Zinchiak says. “They say that success is when preparation meets opportunity, and my role at Chiquita has proven to be the perfect intersection of those two things.”
Zinchiak, who is legal counsel at Chiquita Brands and its shipping company, Great White Fleet, is charged with running the US legal department and spearheading its growth. “It’s a tremendous responsibility and certainly a challenge that I wholeheartedly embrace,” he says.
In Zinchiak’s experience, Chiquita “demands your personal best and understands firsthand that hard work and devotion to your craft are necessary ingredients for achieving success in any walk of life.” It’s an approach to work that Zinchiak shares and has been refining from an early age.
Zinchiak grew up in western Pennsylvania, where his grandfather worked in the steel mills and his father started a manufacturing business straight out of high school. “My family showed me firsthand what a strong work ethic really means, and I attribute so much of my success to having those examples in my life,” he says. “I knew that if I was the hardest-working person in the room—if I was really willing to make those sacrifices that other people weren’t—that I would reach my goals and I would outperform the competition.”
He saw this philosophy play out in his first job, where he found himself winning cases against attorneys who had practiced law for decades. “It certainly wasn’t because I had more experience than them or that I was smarter than them,” he says. “I attribute it to my willingness to outwork them, my resilience, and my hunger to learn, all of which I draw back to those western Pennsylvania roots.”
Zinchiak also credits his wife and children for their integral role in his success. “I wouldn’t be where I am today without the sacrifices and support of my wife, in addition to the incredibly strong source of
motivation that both of my children provide to me on a daily basis,” he says.
Competition and success came into play for Zinchiak on the basketball court too. He played throughout his school years and also coached younger grades while he was in high school and college. Through coaching, he discovered a love for leading and motivating others, and he began to develop his five-stage process for success, which he’s continued to use and share throughout his career.
For Zinchiak, success starts with your mindset. “You have to truly believe in yourself and your ability to succeed before anything else. This involves making a commitment to yourself that no matter what challenges come your way, you are going to persevere,” he says.
The second stage is about preparing for success. “It involves learning from your mistakes, fearlessly trying
Kristopher Zinchiak Legal Counsel Chiquita BrandsCarly Hoffman
“They say that success is when preparation meets opportunity, and my role at Chiquita has proven to be the perfect intersection of those two things.”
new things until you find out what works for you, being resilient, and having a keen awareness of yourself and what you need to do to find your personal path to success,” Zinchiak explains.
In the third stage, you experience some wins and see the fruits of your labor. Zinchiak says a lot of people and organizations get comfortable and stop here, but they could use these wins to continue to propel them to the fourth stage, which is when you begin to succeed so much that you expect it.
“If you’ve reached this stage, you’ve established a culture of success, and really anything less is unacceptable to you. You carry that expectation with you everywhere you go. And others begin to expect that from you as well,” he says. At the same time, external factors become more difficult to navigate, inevitable losses occur, and you may regress to stage three—or persevere to the fifth stage, where you succeed consistently and at a very high level.
“It’s at this stage that you have made winning a habit and you have reached the mountaintop,” Zinchiak says. “Stage five is reserved for only a select few, but for me personally, I love the relentless pursuit of striving for it every day and pushing yourself and those around you to reach your personal best.”
The stages of success describe a process, but they’re not necessarily prescriptive. Success is a personal journey that for Zinchiak requires discipline and character—staying true to his value system and doing the right thing, even when no one is looking.
“One of the ways I’ve chosen to define success in my career is leaving each place better than I found it,” Zinchiak says. “I found that success really is a byproduct, not a goal.”
Conrad O’Brien PC: “Kristopher develops great working relationships. He is hands-on but not controlling; invites creative thinking and enjoys discussions; provides timely support; and welcomes efficiency while recognizing that high quality legal work can be time consuming.”
–Robert Feltoon, Partner
Chiquita
In her second GC role, Vanessa Candela has cracked the code on effective leadership at Netcracker
By Billy YostVANESSA
counsel role started with three lawyers and a couple hundred million dollars in revenue. But she knew the company was just on the verge of a growth spurt. By the time she left, the company had more than doubled in size, and her team of legal professionals had grown close to twenty.
“It was such a great team and where I truly found my place,” Candela says. “I realized how much I liked being embedded in the business as more than just a legal advisor.” She had also built a legal department nearly from scratch.
And two years into her second general counsel role at Netcracker Technology, headquartered in Massachusetts, Candela has driven a reorganization, a realignment, and a globally minded business partnership that keeps her team embedded in the business.
Candela admits her initial reluctance to join Netcracker. After Dell had acquired her previous employer, the GC says the idea of working for any sort of subsidiary (Netcracker is a subsidiary of Japanese-owned NEC) in the future just seemed too risky.
“But through the interview process, I met my CEO, Andrew Feinberg, and I was incredibly impressed with the whole executive team,” Candela remembers. “Everyone was so intellectually curious, and I was excited about what they were doing and where they were headed. I made the leap.”
In establishing the new direction for the legal team, the new GC almost immediately hired on a data privacy expert as well as a pair of senior transactional
Vanessa Candela General Counsel and Secretary Netcracker Technology Nicole Connollylawyers. She was also intent on redefining what “partnering with the business” looks like from the legal perspective.
“I wanted to restructure how we support our business,” Candela explains. “My perspective has always been that the lawyers need to be close to the business in order to be effective. A lot of in-house teams sit in that ivory tower and don’t get a feel for what’s going on out there.”
The GC wanted her team to be aligned with sales leaders all over the globe. The commercial legal team was restructured to align with the global regions in which Netcracker operates.
“This was done under the premise that if lawyers don’t know what’s happening in the business, they can’t help beyond maybe marking up a contract,” Candela says. “The feedback that I’ve gotten from sales is that they feel better supported because legal understands the wider business goals.”
Early on in her tenure, Candela says it was also essential to have a wider discussion about risk tolerance for the lawyers on her team. “It would always be much easier to say that we’re simply not going to take any liability on. We’d also have no revenue,” the GC says, laughing. “You have to give your team air cover so they know it’s OK to take on some risk. We talked a lot about our own personal comfort zones in terms of liability, but I wanted to set my expectations from the outset.”
Air cover has also come in the form of continuing to align departments that have wider shared interests. “Just like I want my legal commercial team working closely with the sales organization, I want our security team to be aligned with our data privacy and com-
pliance lawyers,” Candela says. “We’re constantly refining and expanding on the ways, both technically and logistically, that we protect our customers’ data. That’s simply the reality of the world today.”
With her second general counsel role well underway, Candela says she’s cultivated her own philosophy about being an effective addition as quickly as possible.
“The way I’ve handled the GC role is to go deep initially, getting into the weeds so I could understand the business and get to know the people who were already here,” Candela explains.
“But these things always come down to your teams, and building and maintaining a strong team is absolutely critical. Eventually, after you’ve found where skill sets lie, you have to step back and let them do their thing from there.”
Candela has gone two for two with this philosophy so far, and it’s helped ensure that legal stays close to the business at Netcracker.
WE CONGRATULATE OUR FRIEND VANESSA CANDELA FOR HER OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENTS, LEADERSHIP IN LAW AND DATA SECURITY, AND RECOGNITION BY
IT HAS ALREADY BEEN A VERY GOOD YEAR FOR Vivint Smart Home, the smart home giant founded in 1999. US News & World Report awarded the company its Best Home Security System 2020 award, placing it at the top of a space that has become increasingly competitive. In the last decade, technological advances have brought about offerings including home monitoring, security, and accessibility from owners’ smartphone apps. Vivint also took home Best Professionally Installed Security System and one of the Best Home Security Systems with Cameras accolades in 2020 and 2019, respectively.
“Recognition as best in class from US News two years in a row highlights our commitment to creating innovative technology and providing a great customer experience,” said chief technology officer JT Hwang in a press release. “With an integrated suite of products, professional services, and flexible pricing, we’re making it easy for consumers to create an affordable and comprehensive smart home.”
It’s not just the awards. A simple internet search reveals that Vivint is on the leading edge of smart home technology. “This is the best video doorbell we’ve tested,” begins one review of the company’s latest smart doorbell offering. Boasting superior image quality and a wider-angle view than any of its competitors, the doorbell is the latest addition for a company that seems to be bent on continually redefining the field it’s operating in.
The market seems to be reacting accordingly. Subscribers are up 7.5 percent from last year, netting Vivint an additional $91.6 million in new revenue. Vivint’s $1.2 billion of revenue is up 10.1 percent from the year before. It’s staggering growth for a company already thought to be one of the top performers in its field. The average Vivint subscriber purchases fifteen devices from Vivint to connect to the smart home controller, which means Vivint has 20 million connected devices to its Smart Home Platform at present. And the company doesn’t show any signs of slowing down.
Jim Lundberg, vice president and deputy general counsel, is one of the legal leaders at Vivint tasked with helping the company’s legal and business priorities stay on pace with its rapid expansion. The lawyer has more than thirty years of legal experience, having worked both in private firms and in-house at Novell prior to coming to Vivint. The lawyer’s extensive résumé has earned him speaking engagements, including one at his alma mater Brigham Young’s Law Association’s Career Paths in Law and Technology forum. Outside of his legal role, Lundberg has also served on his Mapleton City, Utah, home’s city council.
Lundberg arrived to a small legal team at Vivint four years ago and has spent the subsequent time helping create more processes, procedures, and organization as that team grew, increasing the need for some standardization. Considering the literal scope of Vivint, which includes cameras in the home as well as ones facing the street, there are enough privacy issues to keep his team well occupied.
That growth included the acquisition of Mosaic Acquisition last year along with an additional $100 million in funding from the Blackstone investment fund.
“We were excited to complete our merger with Mosaic Acquisition,” founder and CEO Todd Pedersen said in a statement. “We are grateful to both preexisting and new investors in Vivint who share our vision for the smart home. In the meantime, we are pleased to report strong fourth quarter and full year results, highlighted by doubledigit revenue growth and a sharp increase in profitability.”
Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP: “Jim is an excellent litigator and fantastic advocate. We are thrilled to be able to partner with him.”
–Robert Berezin, Partner
Weil is proud to support Jim Lundberg and the excellent team at Vivint
Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP
Melissa Demmon and the claims team at Sompo International, one of the best in the legal malpractice insurance space, plays an integral role in every claim they resolve
By Clint WorthingtonThe lawyers and accountants malpractice claims team, led by Melissa Demmon, vice president and claims counsel of professional liability, is one of the teams that has contributed to this group’s exceptional reputation in the market. Together, the claims team plays an integral part in every transaction at Sompo International, ensuring consistent quality of service and helping drive the company’s success. And Demmon, with her years of experience in the claims field, helps that vital engine run.
Demmon’s legal journey began when she was a child and dreamed of becoming the first female US Attorney General. “Of course, Janet Reno kind of kiboshed that for me,” she jokes. Still, she knew she was fated for law, and other than a very brief stint in litigation, she transitioned to a discipline that fit her skill set much more organically: insurance claims and coverage.
Demmon joined the firm in 2012 as an in-house claims counsel. Since then, she has relished the chance to help build Sompo International’s reputation for high-quality claims work. Currently, she manages a team of five claims professionals as part of a larger professional liability claims team of thirteen. Much
of her time is spent acting as facilitator and liaison to the different members of her team, though she emphasizes autonomy among her team members: “There’s no reason everything needs to funnel through me.”
That said, Demmon finds tremendous satisfaction in communicating with her team. She tries to lead by example, working hard not to get into the weeds for her reports when they can be doing that themselves. Instead, she prefers to be a resource for information, strategy, and contact points they may not have.
This communication style only strengthens the trust Demmon has in her team, whom she describes as “a really great group of people who have a lot of depth of experience.” She explains, “When I came in 2012, we were relatively new to the legal malpractice marketplace, and from day one, my mission has been to make sure that my underwriters are completely confident in me and the team with which I work.”
Demmon prides herself and her team on their consistency, especially in a world where consistency doesn’t always mean repetition. “The most important thing we can be is consistent in the quality of our service,” she explains.
At global property and casualty insurance and reinsurance specialty provider Sompo International, the claims function has established itself as one of the most highly regarded in the industry. This is attributed to the collective expertise and client-centric approach that each of the claims teams brings to their specific product line.
That’s where communication comes in: even when Demmon and her team don’t have good news for their insureds or underwriters, the news is better received when it comes from a place of credibility. Providing measured, reasoned, and unassailable analysis is essential to maintaining the claims team’s reputation and relationships.
In contrast to the often male-dominated legal profession as a whole, Demmon has recalled nothing but overwhelmingly positive experiences as a woman in the claims space. She largely chalks this up to a lifetime’s worth of strong, compassionate managers and mentors, who have not only given her the leadership and legal tools to succeed but also insulated her from the negative experiences that female professionals sometimes have. “I have always felt that the claims side of the insurance industry has been a very femalefriendly environment,” she asserts.
The stability and consistency that claims work can grant to lawyers looking to transition from private practice doesn’t hurt either. “It’s a good career transition for a lot of lawyers who don’t want to count their life in six-minute increments anymore but still want to apply that hard-earned knowledge and experience,” Demmon notes.
Demmon and her team have certainly applied their hard-won expertise to their claims work—to Sompo International’s benefit. They routinely receive positive feedback from business partners in the industry. Demmon says of that feedback, “It helps reinforce our drive to provide the best service possible.”
Traub Lieberman:
"Melissa is a true professional, and her knowledge of the business of insurance, as well as the complexities of litigation, create an easy, collaborative relationship. She is also a thoughtful industry leader, and she is bringing the next generation along to follow in her impressive footsteps."
–Lisa Shrewsberry, Vice ChairWe are proud to celebrate the accomplishments of Melissa Demmon of Sompo International
Robyn Goldstein balances the best of both worlds: raising her two children and expanding her legal expertise in-house at Transocean
By Will GrantROBYN GOLDSTEIN’S CAREER THUS FAR has been one of successive and successful transitions. Prior to law school, Goldstein built out experiences in the public interest sector, writing curricula for the Peer Assistance Network of America and coordinating programming for the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston.
She attended law school assuming her career would land her in education law. While in school, she accrued experience at the Center for Juvenile Justice at the University of Houston Law Center. “I loved what I was doing but also realized how expensive practicing law was, and to do it well, it would be expensive,” Goldstein explains. “I wanted to be the best lawyer I could, so that’s when I decided that if I could get some big firm experience, I would.”
Goldstein would spend the next four and a half years at the Houston office of BakerHostetler, a large national firm, building out general litigation and employment law expertise. It’s where she would ultimately recognize the role she would serve above all others. It wasn’t litigator, employment lawyer, or the litany of new hats she would wear upon coming in-house at the world’s largest offshore drilling contractor, Transocean. It wasn’t even as an entrepreneur in partnership with her husband. “I always tell people and I will always tell people, I’m a mom first,” Goldstein says.
Goldstein admits that “I’m a mom first” can be a hard message to commit to in the legal life she has chosen.
children, and I try my best not to miss out on anything for them,” Goldstein says.
“When I speak to young lawyers, I tell them that you have to be true to yourself and be happy with where you are in your journey,” she continues. “It’s not easy to balance being a good parent and being a good lawyer, but it’s so important to be who you are because at the end of the day, it’s so important to be present in that moment be it at work or at home.”
The COVID-19 pandemic presented daunting new challenges in the quest to balance it all, with her children’s elementary school closed indefinitely due to social distancing. “Trying to be creative to both teach and entertain my kids each day takes a lot of effort, and then I sit down once they are settled in a routine and remember I have a meeting in ten minutes. And
Robyn Goldstein has added “successful entrepreneur” to her growing list of accomplishments. She and her husband recently purchased rights to StretchLab and Row House fitness centers in the greater Houston area. One of each is online at present, with more in the pipeline. Goldstein handles social media at night, after the kids have gone to bed, and also oversees retail purchasing. Her husband runs the businesses full-time. “It’s a whole new dimension for us,” Goldstein says. “I like to say I have two children, one dog, and many baby businesses to look after.”
It was in the hard and fast world of billable hours, after the lawyer had had her first child, that she realized what her particular set of priorities would look like for the foreseeable future.
“I worked with so many amazing lawyers who I still keep in contact with to this day, but there were also lawyers at the firm who felt like I had to be in the office at all hours of the day,” Goldstein says. “And while I loved what I was doing, I wondered if that mind-set was going to keep me from getting ahead.”
The opportunity to come in-house at Transocean wasn’t one Goldstein was actively seeking, but it has allowed the now senior counsel to spread her wings in a multitude of new directions. Most importantly, it’s allowed the lawyer to stay true to herself. “I am a good lawyer who works very hard, but I have two
when it begins, I now must give a disclaimer: ‘I’m sorry if you hear shouting or children in the background—we all share one office,’” Goldstein says.
Maybe the most encouraging part of Goldstein’s professional journey is that while being an active presence in the lives of her two children, she has also torn through a series of roles. Some were familiar and others virtually brand-new when she came to Transocean.
Goldstein was initially onboarded as a general litigator, overseeing the company’s litigation unrelated to the 2010 Macondo Well Incident, which was occupying considerable company resources. Her purview since has included employment law, handling the litigation related to Transocean’s lucrative patents,
helping draft Transocean’s initial sustainability report, and handling aspects of corporate reporting, drilling contracts, and compliance at various times.
“That’s the great part about working here. You have the opportunity to be part of areas of the law you never imagined you’d be part of,” Goldstein says. “I’ve really been able to become a well-rounded energy lawyer.”
Most recently, Goldstein has been part of the in-house and outside counsel team, preparing for trial later this year. “Sometimes, as an in-house lawyer, you manage from afar, and sometimes, you’re really invested at a close level,” Goldstein says. “The offshore industry is unique in and of itself, so we’ve worked very closely with our outside counsel to make sure that we’re speaking authentically. It’s been a really enjoyable process working with such a talented team.”
Twelve years into her legal career, Goldstein has found a way to amass experience and become a generalist in the truest sense. And the real success isn’t just in that continually expanding legal skill set, but in the knowledge that she has accomplished it all while staying true to herself—and to her family.
“Robyn’s professional excellence, judgment and authenticity set her apart”
REID BUMGARNER
“That’s the great part about working here. You have the opportunity to be part of areas of the law you never imagined you’d be part of.”
“THIS
Deborah Mason says of the ninety-seven-year-old company. She excitedly discusses the wide range of media data the organization works on, which extends far beyond the TV ratings long associated with the company.
“We have a lot of smart people looking at analytics in many areas. What is really unique about our position is that we are impartial and the one media truth for the industry,” says the general counsel of Nielsen Global Connect, who leads the North America commercial legal function for the Nielsen Global Connect business.
Mason describes Nielsen as a place where people are passionate about “data and creating innovative products.” In her previous role as deputy general counsel of Nielsen’s metadata and sports businesses, she and her team served about six businesses, providing everything from commercial contract support to legal risk training to policy development and strategy guidance around interplay with the larger Nielsen portfolio. The team supported businesses that, for example, developed purchasing and consumer models that answered valuation questions like, “If you place a logo on the shoulder of a soccer jersey worn in the World Cup, what is that space worth?”
In other areas of the business, her team supported the licensing of music, video, and sports metadata, music recognition software, and enhanced video discovery tools that enabled consumers to identify and locate new content they wanted to watch across vast content catalogs. Product development sits at the center of finding solutions to such complex concerns, and Mason’s team worked hand in hand with product development teams from idea origination through development and eventually commercial contracting.
“The legal function,” Mason says, “serves to protect the business from unnecessary or unacceptable risk, but it also serves to support and facilitate the business.” Ensuring protections are in place as she helps businesses get to “yes” is core to her work.
Before coming to Nielsen, Mason practiced in-house at a European market research company with a smaller US footprint. There, she was given broad responsibility early on as a result of the company having a small US legal team. She was forced to learn tactics different than those she had employed
Deborah Mason helps Nielsen get to “yes” as a leader in both data analytics and inclusion
previously, at a large law firm focused on private equity and M&A transactions. At a law firm, attorneys are often afforded time to explore many hypotheticals and can provide a pristine work product. In-house, on the other hand, “you have to triage,” she says. “Push forward and get comfortable being mildly uncomfortable.”
Everything from the granular, like specific language in contracts, to the big picture, like assessing and advising on strategic initiatives, falls under Mason’s purview. In general, Nielsen encourages her to pursue business-minded legal work. She remembers when higher-ups invited her to join a leadership team and advised her, “Think like a leader first and a lawyer second.” This thrilling moment acknowledged her role as a leader and encouraged her to engage her critical thinking skills to propel the business forward.
For Mason, this moment exemplifies the company’s dedication to inclusion at the highest levels. “I credit the people above me for looking out for me and encouraging me to apply for new roles and opportunities,” she says. “This has proven to be a place, in my experience, where leaders of all types are cultivated.”
As a leader herself, Mason seeks to elevate others and maximize their individual potential. Laughing, she describes her style as “overcommunication and availability.” She values listening and providing feedback, though she also looks for places to step back. “I don’t want people to be handcuffed to structures and preexisting roles,” she says. “I work to understand what they are really interested in and try to capitalize on that.”
Mason came to Nielsen in November 2015 and took on her responsibilities as deputy general counsel of Nielsen’s metadata and sports businesses in 2018. Most of her team was already in place: attorneys crosstrained and with specializations in areas like music licensing and video metadata. Over time, she has finetuned her focus on communication and support while developing a cohesive group structure.
In her current role as general counsel of Nielsen Global Connect, Mason leads a team who at this point can “work together seamlessly without missing a beat, even though the businesses we support have been cobbled together from acquisitions and legacy businesses and are constantly evolving to align with the ever-changing industry needs.” It makes for a challenging yet rewarding set of complicated businesses to lawyer to, but Mason and her team take have come to expect the unexpected. This is the true value of Mason’s leadership and work style.
New to the music and entertainment businesses herself, Mason enjoys the interest that friends and family outside of work now show in her job—more, she reports, than in the past, when she worked in private equity. She also enjoys Nielsen’s supportive, forward-thinking culture. “Change is not to be feared,” she says. “This is opportunity.”
Jenner & Block:
“Deb
is a thought partner in the truest sense of the word. She is at the top of her field and leads by example, building and supporting diverse and inclusive teams.”
–Alison Stein, Partner
“I don’t want people to be handcuffed to structures and preexisting roles. I work to understand what they are really interested in and try to capitalize on that.”
A look at the logistical challenges, evolving regulations, industry shifts, and cultural concerns outside the office that lawyers must analyze and navigate to manage their impact inside the office
By Billy Yost
Daryl Dorsey is American Airlines’ go-to international litigator. He’s gotten where he is by following his heart.
The allure of taking on a new role ranges from salary considerations to a wider set of responsibilities. When director and senior attorney at American Airlines Daryl Dorsey and his wife, also an attorney, decided to move to Dallas so that Dorsey could continue managing prepetition bankruptcy litigation and begin managing international employment for the world’s largest airline, there was a different kind of consideration for one of the newest in-house lawyers to think about: close to a thousand individual lawsuits in Brazil would be Dorsey’s responsibility when he arrived.
After one of the third-party vendors that American Airlines had hired to oversee fleet services filed the Brazilian equivalent of bankruptcy, a stack of suits for wages, severance, and other claims mounted quickly. Dorsey knew he would have to familiarize himself with litigating in Brazil immediately. He accepted the additional role, moving his family to Dallas, and meeting with local Brazilian counsel as soon as possible to get the lay of the land.
“The most challenging part about these cases is that unlike in the States, there’s no summary process where you can file a motion to dismiss unverifiable or fraudulent claims,” Dorsey explains. “There is a trial for absolutely every claim, so we can either settle or elect to litigate. It obviously comes down to whether or not we think the claims have merit.”
Dorsey says one of the most important changes he’s made is switching outside counsel in the region to Trench Rossi Watanabe, a Brazil-based firm with which Baker McKenzie has established a strategic cooperation. The switch, he says, has made navigating the mountain of prospective litigation more manageable. The cases are ongoing, but Dorsey is confident that they’ll all be resolved in due time.
“Daryl has an amazing and exceptional ability to deal with several relevant legal matters at the same time,” says Leticia Ribeiro, labor partner for Trench Rossi Watanabe. “He is able to quickly make key decisions despite the huge differences between the Brazilian and the US litigation systems. We are proud to assist him in his great challenge of managing international employment matters for American Airlines.”
As a Baltimore native, Daryl Dorsey has always kept his free time open for the sounds of Baltimore house music. Charm City is one of the best-known hotbeds of early house purveyors like Scottie B and DJ Spen, and Dorsey has been producing EDM beats that reflect his upbringing for a couple of decades. “Any downtime, you’ll probably find me at my computer, working away on beats,” Dorsey says. “I absolutely love it.”
Along with managing outside international counsel, Dorsey and the legal department are seeking to work closely with law firms that are reflective of the global population that American Airlines serves. That applies to both hiring in-house at American and in the firms the legal department employs as outside counsel. “As an African American man, I’ve worked with firms and have obviously seen the need for more diversity across a number of different areas,” Dorsey says. “My old firm was so great in this way, and I think more firms can find opportunities for women and minorities to work in the field.”
In the legal department at American, a subcommittee on equity, diversity, and inclusion is partnering with firms and other corporations to drive forward DE&I initiatives and recognize the value of shared partnerships in achieving those goals. Dorsey says it’s been a priority for the legal team since he came to American, and he’s happy to contribute to recognizing a wider set of voices in the industry.
Dorsey has cultivated a reputation as a highly effective in-house attorney and bankruptcy specialist. The lawyer took on 130 individual cases following AA’s emergence from bankruptcy in 2013, prior to being asked to oversee international litigation for the airlines. But the lawyer’s journey seems to have been most impacted by love and the US government. Initially on track to become an assistant United States attorney in Washington, DC, the Baltimore native elected to move with his future wife to Ohio so she could attend law school on a full scholarship.
Since that move, Dorsey and his wife have swapped moving motivations a handful of times, occasionally having to pass a new state’s bar exam together or letting one get a head start in a new city while the other wrapped up responsibilities back home. Dorsey spent significant time clerking for a Cleveland federal judge and his wife spent time at the Arizona attorney general’s office prior to moving to in-house and firm roles, respectively. The goal of an effectual in-house attorney is always true partnership, and this seems to apply to all aspects of Dorsey’s life.
One of Brazil’s largest law firms, Trench Rossi Watanabe has comprehensive expertise in all areas of the law. Founded in 1959, the firm provides legal services to national and international clients across several markets, helping them manage their business lawfully, ethically, and efficiently. Through our strategic cooperation with Baker McKenzie, Trench Rossi Watanabe offers its clients global access to one of the most extensive and solid legal networks in the market. We work collaboratively with knowledgeable lawyers in multiple jurisdictions to support and provide insights on our clients’ operations, wherever and however our clients might need it. Our highly skilled labor practice can help keep employees motivated and their clients’ business competitive through strategic employment practices and policies, advising on all employmentrelated procedures from hiring and termination to trade union negotiations. The most important directories, such as Chambers and Partners, the Legal 500, and Latin Lawyer, all recognize Trench Rossi Watanabe’s labor practice as highly recommended.
“As an African American man, I’ve worked with firms and have obviously seen the need for more diversity across a number of different areas.”
Rajesh Sharma of Apache Corporation, a Fortune 500 oil and gas company in Houston, has achieved his childhood dream of becoming a lawyer
By Bridgett Novak
Rajesh Sharma Corporate Secretary and Assistant General Counsel of Governance Apache Corporation
WHEN ASKED WHAT KIND OF LAW THEY practice, most attorneys in Houston say energy law. It’s not surprising, given that the city houses 4,600 energy-related companies and one-third of the state’s oil and gas workers. Rajesh Sharma is no exception. The securities attorney, a Houston resident since the age of sixteen, sees his job at Apache Corporation as “helping meet the world’s energy needs.” That also happens to be in the company’s vision statement.
Sharma brings a unique combination of skills to the Fortune 500 oil and gas company. He earned a bachelor’s and master’s in professional accounting at the University of Texas at Austin and spent several years as a CPA, including stints at two of the Big 6 (now Big 4) firms as well as at Arco Pipeline Company. After five years at Arco, he decided to go to law school—a goal he’d had since high school. After earning his Juris Doctorate from the University of Houston Law Center with honors, he held positions of increasing responsibility at various law firms, including Norton Rose Fulbright, Hunton Andrews Kurth, and Mayer Brown.
His tenure at Arco Pipeline Company showed him that he enjoyed an in-house environment. “At a law firm, you have lots of different clients with differing goals. At a company, everyone is working toward the same goal. I wanted to focus my efforts on helping one business succeed and be part of a team where everyone shares that passion,” he explains.
He started as Apache’s securities counsel in 2009. “My main internal clients were the corporate secretary and the governance officer,” he says. “They were both very experienced and very good at what they did, so I was able to
learn from the best; they both had a lot of experience to share.
“Apache’s general counsel Anthony Lannie thinks very strategically, and in an effort to cross-train me, he eventually asked me to be the assistant general counsel for mergers and acquisitions,” Sharma recalls.
Those tasks took him all over the world. “I’ve had the opportunity to work on transactions in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Argentina. While we take the lead in the negotiations, we do retain select firms in those jurisdictions, as these are very large and complex transactions. Our international deals are challenging and interesting and very impactful to the company. It’s been a privilege to work on them.”
In February 2016, the company’s governance officer left the company, and Sharma was asked to take on those responsibilities in addition to his M&A duties. When the corporate secretary retired in July 2016, the board appointed Sharma to the role. “I enjoy interacting with the board and engaging with shareholders on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) matters,” he says.
The company’s ESG efforts have been noticed, and Sharma is very proud to be part of the company’s efforts. Apache was recognized as one of the Just 100 by Forbes magazine and Just Capital for 2020. The list recognizes companies for their treatment of and engagement with stakeholders, including shareholders, customers, employees, communities, and the environment.
Apache was also named E&P Company of the Year (September 2019) by the Oil & Gas Awards and the US Chamber of Commerce’s Global Energy Institute. Sharma’s efforts have also received
“I wanted to focus my efforts on helping one business succeed and be part of a team where everyone shares that passion.”
Hunton Andrews Kurth is a global law firm serving the world’s leading companies. Our industry focus spans the energy, financial services, real estate investment and finance, insurance, retail and consumer products, and technology sectors. With offices wellsituated throughout the United States, Europe, Asia and the Middle East, Hunton Andrews Kurth is poised to help businesses around the world navigate complex legal challenges. For more information, visit HuntonAK.com.
recognition: he received the 2019 Corporate Sector Achievement award from the University of Houston Law Alumni Association.
As part of Apache’s focus on continuous improvement, Sharma is taking advantage of new technologies for streamlining communication—for instance, contracting with a board meeting software provider. “Before this software, board meetings were a very paper-intensive effort,” Sharma says. “Now we can upload documents to a shared site and members of the board team can review and comment on them wherever they happen to be, making board meetings more efficient.
“Making things more efficient is good business, but it also reflects one of the mottoes of Apache’s founder Raymond Plank,” Sharma continues. “He always emphasized a sense of urgency. Once the company decided that a certain move was appropriate, he said we should waste no time accomplishing it. We are able to move more quickly than our larger industry peers, so it is a competitive advantage.”
Sharma admits that the current climate, in which fossil fuels are being challenged and countries around the world are rewriting energy regulations, is tricky, but he says Apache is clear about its mission. “Our expertise is oil and gas exploration and production. We are a nimble company and will invest and restructure as necessary.”
Recent studies by the International Energy Agency (IEA) suggest that even in a carbon-constrained world, the demand for natural gas will continue to grow for the next twenty years, and natural gas and oil will continue to play an important role for decades to come. Apache will be ready. “We will continue to provide those energy resources in an environmentally responsible and profitable manner,” Sharma says.
We congratulate Raj Sharma, our friend and former colleague, on this well-deserved recognition. We are proud to work with Raj and the entire Apache team.
©2020Hunton Andrews
Kurth LLP
“Making things more efficient is good business, but it also reflects one of the mottoes of Apache’s founder Raymond Plank. He always emphasized a sense of urgency.”
TODAY, MUSIC FANS WORLDWIDE ATTEND CONCERTS and festivals in the shadow of tragedies such as the 2017 Las Vegas shooting. These events have rocked the public and the music industry, and their impact will be felt for years to come.
According to Richard Patti, industry leaders like Live Nation continue to do everything they reasonably can to ensure that no one endures such experiences ever again. As Live Nation’s senior vice president and associate general counsel, Patti deals with a wide array of security-related legal issues to help ensure that the company is more prepared than ever to protect every member of the music concert community.
“Even before the Las Vegas shooting, we had extensive security protocols in place as a result of the occurrence of terrorism worldwide,” Patti says. “And in my role as counsel at Live Nation, it’s been vital to keep up with the relevant laws enacted after 9/11 and the evolving guidelines to ensure that companies take the appropriate, commercially reasonable steps to protect people.”
Live Nation’s portfolio includes the operation or booking of at least 150 venues in the United States alone. Even before the Las Vegas shooting, he says, the company was already meeting or exceeding both industry and legal standards for maximizing the safety of the concert experience at its buildings and of the artists, fans, and staff who come together to create the event.
“The Las Vegas shooting was a catastrophic incident,” Patti says. “Though heartbreaking, such incidents—once the dust settles—also often present an opportunity to reevaluate, and we have continued to update, enhance, refine, and improve our approach in preparation for any Live Nation event. We will always strive to do all that we reasonably can to prevent attacks and to protect the lives and safety of all those involved in the show while preserving the spirit of the performance.”
As the leading live entertainment company in the world, Live Nation’s legal and operational strategy
includes engagement of outside experts on security risk management and expanded coordination with the authorities at all levels. But as Patti points out, physical protection is only one side of the security coin; these days, the other side is virtual.
Currently, he says, Live Nation is close to completing a “complete overhaul” of its e-discovery and data management legal protocols to ensure the protection and appropriate preservation of sensitive consumer data, business records, and communications.
“Privacy, data protection, and data management are serious concerns, and the trend has only been on the increase in recent years,” Patti emphasizes. “We want to make sure that we have the right staffing and resources in place to keep up with the latest technologies and standards in that area.”
One of the most important new legal standards is the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). “In short, it’s a law that provides for consumer rights in the handling of their personal information by compa-
nies that collect and utilize such data,” Patti explains. “It sets out certain obligations for those who hold the data with regard to how it is to be protected and affords certain rights to consumers if they wish to find out about their data or have the business delete it altogether.”
Several other states and the federal government are already looking into adoption of similar laws, Patti says.
“CCPA follows enactment of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the similar European version of the framework,” Patti notes. And because Live Nation does substantial business in both the United States and Europe, the company as a whole has been prepared for many years to comply with a law like the CCPA.
“We are still, of course, devoting serious attention to the law and tracking its evolution,” Patti says. “Government officials in California have noted their expectation to see tweaks made to the law in the coming months and years, and we need to make sure that we keep up with all those changes as they happen.”
The evolution of consumer privacy laws is not the only change on Patti’s mind. Between his fourteen-year tenure at Live Nation and his three-plus years at its predecessor, Clear Channel Entertainment, Patti has been in the industry long enough to notice a few key trends.
Richard Patti is proud of his company—and with good reason. Live Nation has been recognized by Forbes as one of the Best Employers for Diversity in 2020, named by People as one of the Top 50 US Companies That Care, and certified as a Great Place to Work for the past four years.
“As a member of the LGBTQ community, I am heartened to see such a welcoming environment,” Patti emphasizes. “It has made all the difference in attracting and retaining the best possible talent to serve the interests of the artists, the fans, and the music business itself.”
Over the past decade, Patti says, the US has caught on even more to live music festivals, as opposed to single-artist concerts. Historically, Europeans have enjoyed live music more through the festival platform. “Festivals offer expanded ways in which fans can connect with multiple artists in a single setting,” he says. “There are some festivals that have always been popular to varying degrees in the United States, but we have been seeing a huge rise in their popularity in more recent years.”
Music festivals are a crucial component of the Live Nation concerts business as well as the industry as a whole, and Patti believes that they will only increase in popularity. But this means that companies like Live Nation will be tasked with providing security—physical and cyber—on a larger scale than ever have before.
To Patti, that responsibility goes hand in hand with an appreciation for the profound meaning that music festivals and concerts bring to the world.
“There’s just something about being a part of a crowd and sharing your love for the artist along with thousands of other fans who feel as you do,” he remarks. “Evermore, we need experiences that help us escape from the troubles of life. And I don’t think you can find an experience that generates more passion or more excitement than a live performance by your favorite artist.”
“I don’t think you can find an experience that generates more passion or more excitement than a live performance by your favorite artist.”Greenberg Traurig LLP: “Richard Patti is an inspiration to both his internal and external counsel. We are incredibly proud to see him recognized for his legal accomplishments and contributions to Live Nation.”
Yvonne Winkler von Mohrenfels oversees a great deal of the commercial legal world at Ashland, but her adaptation to a new country provided its own share of challenges
By Billy YostYVONNE WINKLER VON MOHRENFELS’S DECISION to pursue law while growing up in Germany may be the only part of her story that has come without geographical challenges. In fact, her initial motivation was about as close as could be. Her father is a law professor who enlisted her help in typing out briefs or opinions on her typewriter. “You could say I drank the Kool-Aid from the very beginning,” Winkler von Mohrenfels says. “I found the international private law cases he worked on to be absolutely fascinating.”
Though a short stint in banking occupied her college years, Winkler von Mohrenfels ultimately followed her father into the legal sphere, albeit one whose international focus would take on a world of different meaning for the assistant general counsel at Ashland, a global specialty materials company with offices in Bridgewater, New Jersey. The attorney has crossed borders time and time again for law, love, and the ever-widening purview of her role.
Nothing about her eventual transition to practicing as a US-based attorney has come without a challenge. Learning the law in both Germany and France eventually gave way to the young lawyer’s decision to brush up on her English, a requirement for success as a corporate counsel in her home country. She chose to study briefly in Toronto, however, not the US.
“There was a stereotype at the time that all Americans speak with chewing gum in their mouths and you can’t understand what they are saying,” Winkler von Mohrenfels remembers. “I clearly did not have a lot of real-life exposure to the US, only stereotypes.”
It was while living in Toronto that Winkler von Mohrenfels met her future husband. She and some friends from the Toronto Tall Club drove to Pittsburgh for a party weekend organized by a local chapter of Tall Club International. Their relationship complicated what Winkler von Mohrenfels had assumed would be a
Eurocentric law practice for thenext few decades. Her husband moved to Germany for seven years, and after marrying, the couple moved to the United States.
Winkler von Mohrenfels took on adapting to more US-centric interactions and laws with the same assertiveness and transparency she says is reflective of the German mind-set. In preparing for the New York bar, the AGC says that she intentionally chose law classes during her LLM studies that were most different from German law because she knew she would encounter them on the exam: constitutional, family, and criminal law.
For lawyers who may be looking to follow in her footsteps, Winkler von Mohrenfels advocates wholeheartedly for the bar exam prep company mentor she worked with who helped her refine her essay skills— another significant difference from German legal education. She passed what is widely considered to be one of the country’s toughest bar exams on her first attempt.
Navigating the legal differences in the US came easier than the small cultural differences that can mean the difference between an interaction being read as “respectful” or “potentially rude.” The AGC says the “please and thank you” niceties so common in American interaction were a new phenomenon for her.
“I clearly needed to learn how to speak differently with peers, colleagues, clients, and employees all around,” Winkler von Mohrenfels says. “Americans communicate very differently from Germans. My personality has always been assertive and open; I always speak my mind. When you combine that with the German attitude that certainly leans more this way, there are going to be issues you need to address.”
These differences proved particularly challenging for Winkler von Mohrenfels to navigate when she became a manager. She found that leading and interacting with a team as a manager constituted a different skill set and role from providing legal advice as a lawyer.
“In Germany, it’s your job to do a good job,” the lawyer says, chuckling. “I learned very quickly that that wasn’t going to work here.” One major steppingstone Winkler von Mohrenfels says she benefited from
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greatly was a German American culture workshop offered by her US employer at the time that provided potential pitfalls to look for instead of having to correct missteps after the fact.
At Ashland, Winkler von Mohrenfels says she’s had the good fortune to work with supportive managers who have provided important feedback. Though not a “natural” at managing people, she has strived to adopt a management style modeled on that of her own manager, Ashland’s general counsel, and other positive role models. “I hope the people I work with today would say that I’m a much better listener and less ‘pushy’ in my assertiveness than I was earlier in my career,” she says.
Adapting her communication style has not come at the cost of making the lawyer feel like someone she’s not. “At some point, I had to make peace with the fact that you can only change, and should only change, so much,” the lawyer says. “It’s not just cultural differences; sometimes it’s just Yvonne being Yvonne. I always speak my mind, hopefully respectfully, and if there’s a question that no one else dares to ask, I usually ask it.”
Fifteen years into corporate practice in the US, Winkler von Mohrenfels has successfully navigated a new culture, new laws, a transition into people management, and a fairness complex she says can often be at odds with the hardball style of corporate America. But in all things, she sees the glass as half-full. “Ashland has given me the opportunity to have a career I’m not sure I could have had anywhere else,” she says. And now, leading the global commercial legal team, she gets to keep an eye on her home, even if it’s from New Jersey.
KushCo’s Arun Kurichety connects CBD, cannabis, and hemp industry leaders along every step of the supply chain
By Billy YostKurichety, the legal leader on an executive team for KushCo Holdings, one of the largest companies operating in the high-risk, nascent industries of cannabis, CBD, and hemp. But for him, what he does isn’t “work.” It’s his passion.
The executive vice president, general counsel, and secretary says the parent company for a number of market leaders in ancillary services for cannabis, CBD, and hemp development, production, and distribution around the world has completed more transactions in a year—including, most recently, successful equity raises in excess of $35 million and a $35 million credit facility—than many companies ever see. It’s a challenging time for the only recently legal industry, but the general counsel has seen to it that KushCo is ready to weather the storm.
Kurichety was always drawn to corporate law and found his niche specializing in bankruptcy, restructuring, and distressed assets. He landed a position at one of the top firms in Chicago, where he built a career working closely with top corporate clients and dashing into federal courts around the country. He eventually moved to Los Angeles at a time when increased efforts to legalize cannabis in California picked up. “I had always had a love and passion for the plant and how it can better the world, and I knew it was good timing to get involved.”
The attorney first attempted to leverage his previous experience to set up a vehicle for investment in the cannabis space, but because the capital was largely funded by friends and family, Kurichety found it to be too risky at that time. Instead, he immersed himself in the growing regulations of the field by helping various cannabis start-ups
“It’s going to be a very exciting time to see how the FDA and state regulators are going to approach this fastchanging environment.”
and investors navigate murky waters in a newly regulated industry. He worked side by side with some of the best cultivators and processors to bring their products to the legal market—and found that his legal and corporate mind-set helped make their dreams a reality. In 2018, KushCo noticed Kurichety’s reach and recruited him for their executive team.
Every Link in the Chain
KushCo’s position in the marketplace is a rare one. It’s not merely a company providing ancillary services. It has, in essence, created an entire ecosystem to connect growers, developers, and retailers so that any customer seeking to enter the industry pipeline can be connected through KushCo’s extensive network of partners and affiliates.
“The hemp grower producing the biomass needs to get that to someone who can process the biomass into crude oil or CBD distillate or isolate. Then that is sold to a company, putting it into the almost infinite variety of products you’re seeing now. And then someone is trying to get that product onto store shelves,” Kurichety details. “Along every step of that journey, we’re in the middle of connecting parties based on the ecosystem we’ve built. We can provide solutions all along the supply chain.”
The role has provided Kurichety with the opportunity to employ his capital fundraising experience at a level and speed that is rare, but one mandated by a market whose interest in the emerging cannabis industry was bullish. The growth hasn’t been without its challenges, though.
Kurichety says the media attention on vaping illnesses and deaths has provided important opportunities to educate the public and more tangible legislation governing the industry. “My perspective is that it alerted everyone to the risks in using products from underground operators, and it highlighted the importance of purchasing products in the regulated market. While the panic may seem a bit of an overreaction, I think it’s a long-term benefit in that the public is more educated about the compliance and testing requirements placed on legal operators, which is put in place for their safety,” Kurichety says.
The GC also says the red-hot spotlight on cannabis and CBD has come and gone for the moment. “I’m curious to see what’s going to happen, as prices
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have gone down a bit lately,” Kurichety explains. “That said, I’ve seen a shift in the public perception of these products and their health benefits as it becomes more mainstream. It’s going to be a very exciting time to see how the FDA and state regulators are going to approach this fast-changing environment. And we will continue to be intimately involved with the process to push much-needed, responsible changes, as we have from our inception.”
Fortunately, KushCo’s front-of-the-pack mentality meant early fundraising efforts that will keep the company pushing ahead even as capital investment gets lean on green competitors. The exponential growth at the company over the past few years hasn’t been anything but a pleasure for the GC.
Kurichety explains, “I wake up every day knowing that my work will have a positive impact on someone’s life in some way because this plant heals and provides eco-friendly solutions. It is so rewarding to combine my background in law, business, and finance with my love and passion for the plant. Yes, I may be in a position with more risk than other GCs, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
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“Arun has an instinctive ability to grasp what’s important on a variety of complex issues, communicate effectively, and get things done. We look forward to continuing our relationship with Arun and the KushCo team.”
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“I wake up every day knowing that my work will have a positive impact on someone’s life in some way because this plant heals and provides eco-friendly solutions.”
Corina Davis, Redbubble’s EVP of business development and chief legal officer, handles intellectual property issues for the world’s largest marketplace for independent artists
By Keith LoriaDavis wanted to do something meaningful. She decided becoming a lawyer was a great way to make that happen.
While earning her law degree, Davis worked at several nonprofits but realized that wasn’t the right fit for her. After graduating, she found she enjoyed IP litigation, particularly the creative aspects of copyrights and trademarks.
Davis worked for firms in New York and Los Angeles before settling in the Bay Area in 2012. Right before her move, a recruiter presented her with an opportunity at a small start-up called Redbubble. A marketplace geared toward helping artists sell their designs on high-quality merchandise, the company was looking for their first lawyer in their Bay Area office.
“They wanted someone who could help with IP because they were starting to grow, and with that growth came a host of new issues,” she explains. “Redbubble had started to get takedown notices alleging that users were putting up content that was infringing on IP rights.”
The way that Redubble works is that artists upload their original art to the online marketplace. Redbubble then connects these artists both to thirdparty manufacturers—who print their art on 140-plus products, including T-shirts, stickers, pillows, phone cases, and shower curtains—and to customers looking for products that uniquely speak to them. Content that infringes upon the IP rights of others flies in the face of the company’s commitment to independent artists creating their own art—the same commitment that birthed the idea of the marketplace.
When Davis assumed the in-house counsel role for the company in 2012, she knew she needed to tackle this problem right away.
“I felt I had come full circle because the mission here is about helping artists turn their passions into profits,” she explains. “I am impacting people’s lives, but in a different way than I had expected I would.”
Today, the Redbubble Group (which includes the Redbubble marketplace and their recently acquired sister site, TeePublic), represents a community of more than a million independent artists worldwide. Davis serves as the Group’s executive vice president of business development and chief legal officer, leading the company’s San Francisco office. Her work intersects heavily with the idea that federal laws for tech companies must evolve and continue to be reinterpreted and applied in new ways.
“I felt I had come full circle because the mission here is about helping artists turn their passions into profits. I am impacting people’s lives, but in a different way than I had expected I would.”
That way, they can react to current times instead of sticking to what has traditionally been done.
“This is an incredibly exciting field because it’s at the intersection of what’s happening in the digital age with creativity, art and design, and freedom of speech mixed together with the intellectual excitement of cutting-edge law,” Davis says.
When she joined the start-up, Davis was Redbubble’s first woman on the executive team. In addition to her work building out an effective IP policy, she advised the board on executive matters, helped with employment issues, educated others on data privacy laws, and consulted on the company’s diversity and inclusion committee.
“I immediately dove right into helping my CEO with all legal issues that arose and advised on business issues as well. I built out the legal team and a marketplace integrity team, helped the company go public on the ASX in 2016, and worked on the acquisition of TeePublic. Now we have close to three hundred employees in Australia, San Francisco, New York, and Berlin,” Davis says. “I currently oversee our legal team, marketplace integrity team, fraud team, partnerships team, artist community team, and some of our new market work.”
Davis also helped launch a partner program that enables artists to create fan art in celebration of their pop culture passions in a way that simultaneously inspires rights holders and creates unique products for consumers. Today, there are close to sixty partnerships, with many more coming in the future.
For example, the Redbubble Group has partnered with Cartoon Network and Turner Broadcasting on the show Rick and Morty. “Artists and designers on
Corina Davis EVP of Business Development and Chief Legal Officer RedbubbleRedbubble and TeePublic love this show because it’s a pop culture phenomenon whose messages resonate with a lot of people,” Davis says. The artist communities on Redbubble’s platforms created “their own adaptations” based on characters and ideas from the show.
“These new designs were up on the marketplaces soon after each episode aired, cutting out the wait time you normally see with the traditional retail model. The artists’ creativity, paired with the flexibility of our marketplace, is why fans love to come to Redbubble and TeePublic to find the products that celebrate their favorite fandoms.”
The Redbubble Group’s partner program not only gives artists the freedom to create, but also allows rights holders to see what fans of their shows are really interested in. Oftentimes, rights holders are surprised by what the artists and fans are drawn to. Rights holders have told Redbubble that the marketplace gives them a new lens through which they can see their fans, which is valuable to their planning efforts.
The legal team Davis leads tries to take an approach that goes above and beyond what the law requires to ensure that the Redbubble and TeePublic ecosystems continue thriving.
“We believe one of the most important principles of our IP policies has to do with the collaboration between parties,” Davis notes. “It’s unfortunate, but historically, IP laws have practically pitted marketplaces against rights holders. One of the best things that could happen in the world of IP is that marketplaces like Redbubble and TeePublic, which have expertise in technology and data that is complementary to the expertise of the rights holders, have the opportunity to work side by side with rights holders to fight the fraud together and prevent it from happening, rather than fighting each other.”
WHEN SHELLIE HAMMOCK JOINED FORWARD AIR IN 2013, SHE HAD more than eight years of experience in private practice as a corporate and securities attorney, representing companies in a wide range of industries. Transitioning from a law firm to in-house counsel at Forward, a transportation and logistics company that provides services across the United States and in Canada, meant she had to learn a lot of things all at once. Now deputy general counsel, Shellie recalls her early days with Forward. “When I joined Forward, I knew I would have to adjust to managing matters that were outside of my law firm wheelhouse. To provide the right level of service to my new clients, I needed to focus my attention on all legal and business matters brought to me, regardless of size or complexity.”
Hammock had extensive experience with mergers and acquisitions and securities matters when she joined Forward, but she was excited for the opportunity to contribute broadly across the organization. “I really enjoy working as an in-house counsel because it challenges me to be flexible and stretch beyond my past experience to provide on-point, timely guidance to the business team,” says Hammock. While at Forward, she’s had the opportunity to negotiate contracts, supervise litigation matters, manage the company’s real estate portfolio, oversee the customs and trade compliance group, and develop the company’s privacy compliance program.
There has been plenty of M&A work at Forward as well. During Hammock’s seven-year tenure with Forward, the company has closed thirteen acquisition deals, through which it expanded its intermodal
segment and established a new final-mile delivery service. That number is impressive enough on its own, but when Hammock was first hired, she was the only person at the company with extensive outside legal experience in M&A work—so her expertise was key to closing those deals.
Throughout her career, Hammock says, her goal has been to be impactful, and her leadership is grounded in what she refers to as “effectiveness through service.” While this sounds simple, it really requires a multifaceted approach that includes responsiveness, willingness to engage in conversations that extend beyond legal, flexibility to consider alternative solutions, business acumen, and listening. This service-first mentality means anticipating what business partners need and when they will need it—and developing the relationships that allow open and honest communication.
“Making time to build relationships with all stakeholders and taking an interest in the overall business allows me to provide
Shellie Hammock Deputy General Counselthe most value as inside counsel,” Hammock says. Learning where compromises can be made and understanding the needs of the various constituencies helps her create better and more efficient solutions for her business team. When business owners can meet and exceed their goals, the enterprise succeeds.
In Hammock’s wide-ranging negotiating experience, she’s found that she can add value to the deal if she is able to build rapport with all parties because, she says, “that rapport can fuel productive negotiations and streamline the overall process, saving the company time and money during and after the deal.”
And Hammock’s service-first approach goes beyond her professional career. “I am a beneficiary of the investment by and sacrifice of others—my parents, advisors, and mentors. I have been afforded opportunities and experiences that would not have been possible without those investments and sacrifices. So I feel a responsibility to pay it forward.” To that end, she serves on the alumni board of directors for her alma mater, Furman University, and participates in the local Furman Alumni Network (FAN) in Atlanta. Hammock also volunteers at the Atlanta Community Food Bank and serves as a team captain for the annual PurpleStride Atlanta 5K run/walk, which raises money for pancreatic cancer research.
Hammock says she looks forward to growing as a multifaceted attorney and business leader and contributing to her community. “My goal is to be effective by providing the best service that I can. Professionally, this means doing my part to help the company reach its strategic goals. Personally, it means giving others the same investments that benefited me.”
Carlton Fields:
“We have been working with Shellie since she joined Forward Air. Shellie is extremely knowledgeable, dedicated, and responsive. She has a deep understanding of her industry, which she brings to bear in order to help Forward Air achieve its business goals.”
–James Walker IV and Terresa Tarpley, ShareholdersJASON AND ADEL SANDER ARE LIVING PROOF OF THE idea that we are better together. A senior counsel at LyondellBasell Industries, a global chemical company known for its polypropylene and polyethylene technologies, Jason Sander is highly experienced in both legal matters and chemical engineering. Likewise, Adel Sander has flourished as assistant general counsel at Ascend Performance Materials, a leading producer of leading-edge chemicals, plastics, and fibers, because of her vision, determination, and singular passion for corporate legal work.
However, both Jason and Adel recognize that their individual skills and talents are only part of the secret behind their success. The couple recently gave Modern Counsel a look into how their marriage of the minds has helped lead them to personal and professional bliss.
Can each of you give an overview of what got you to where you are today? Were there any particularly valuable experiences that stand out from your respective career journeys?
Adel: I’ll let Jason go first.
By Sara DeeterJason: Thank you, my love. I started off my adventure in law as a chemical engineering major at Rutgers University. While in school, I worked over the summer for Total SA in Guangzhou, China. It was exciting work and a terrific experience, but also hot, dusty, and got me to think about alternative paths. I explored several options until I stumbled upon intellectual property law. Eager to learn more, I called all of the solo patent lawyers in the local phone book (this was the early 2000s). After finding one willing to hire me and having a good, air-conditioned experience, I settled on going to law school.
At the University of Houston, I received a fantastic education and an opportunity to become involved with the Houston Intellectual Property Law Association (HIPLA). HIPLA gave me a lot of contacts as well as a lot of experience in politics and leadership. Fast-forward about fifteen years, and I am current president-elect of the organization and will become president as of April 2020. But I’m getting ahead of myself and would be remiss not to mention a big
moment early in my career when I met my lovely wife as a second-year associate at Gardere [now Foley Gardere Wynne Sewell].
Adel: My husband is a hopeless romantic; he always says the nicest things about me. I would say that my career journey was something that I had envisioned for a long time. Ever since I can remember, this is what I wanted to do: to be an attorney. I started out as a commercial litigator at several different firms, which then morphed into commercial litigation and labor and employment practices. All the while, my goal was to ultimately move to an in-house role, and now, I am exactly where I wanted to be. On top of that, at Ascend, I work for someone who is just the greatest boss in the entire world.
Sounds like you’ve both been very fortunate, both to have found each other and to have gained some really great experience.
Jason: We really have.
And at this point in your respective career journeys, what kind of work are you each engaged in?
Adel: Ascend has experienced tremendous growth since I started. We started out in the US and have now expanded into Europe and Asia. And we are still constantly looking for new opportunities. With the corporate growth, my role has expanded proportionately.
Jason: At LyondellBasell, I handle the intellectual property issues for the company’s North American polymers and compounding divisions. I’m charged with not only the patent strategy but also the IP litigation, licensing, copyright, and trade secret issues originating out of those groups. A lot of intellectual property lawyers get boxed into IP prosecution or litigation, but I’m lucky enough to have a really broad array of intellectual property work—and to leverage my undergraduate degree.
There’s also overlap between what I do and what Adel does, and we leverage each other. She is a very experienced litigator, and it’s extremely helpful to bounce ideas off of her when dealing with litigation
Adel Sander Assistant General Counsel—Labor and Employment, Litigation & Compliance Ascend Performance Materials
Jason Sander Senior Counsel of IP & Licensing LyondellBasell Industries
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issues. She is also very well versed in employment law and in how HR works, which is helpful on a personal level for career planning.
What are some of the other advantages to working in the same industry?
Adel: We’ve got double the contacts—I found the position at Ascend, in part, because of a connection that Jason had through HIPLA— and he is always there to help me understand the science behind the business.
Jason: Together, we’ve done it all—we’ve worked at the largest companies, the largest law firms, and some smaller law firms. We’ve seen a lot, collectively, so we can use each other as a sounding board. A lot of couples do that, of course, but when your partner has a deep understanding of exactly what you’re going through, you not only have a friend to talk to but also a trusted advisor.
Adel: You’re certainly not afraid to tell me the truth. Having Jason as my life partner has truly been a gift. He is always there to cheer me on, to support me, and to push me when I need it. I really do attribute my ability to fulfill my lifelong dream of becoming an in-house counsel to Jason’s support.
How about challenges? Are there any particular difficulties that you face because you work in such similar roles?
Jason: We face the same work problems, of course—long hours, the pressure of finding reliable childcare. And being in similar industries, we both struggle a bit when the chemical industry isn’t doing so well and bonuses get a little lower.
We bridge those gaps by sharing responsibilities and trying to bring a base level of understanding and respect for those situations and each other’s career needs. When I needed to fly out to Bolivia to negotiate a
license, Adel immediately understood that it was an opportunity not to be missed and stepped up to allow me to go. And vice versa when she needed to travel to Boston for a major mediation. And we’ve both been lucky to have really understanding bosses and companies that give us the flexibility we need to live our lives—to wait for the plumber, or to attend a parent-teacher conference, or to work from home on occasion.
Adel: Yes, I really appreciate how amazing and understanding my boss is. I feel extremely lucky to have a supervisor like that.
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Alexis MacDowall has always wanted to help others. At Clarios, she helps the company figure out how to manage any risk that comes its way.
By Sara DeeterAlexis MacDowall always strives for excellence. But more than that, she always wants to be in a position where she can help others. And as vice president, deputy general counsel, and chief enterprise risk officer at Clarios, MacDowall has both the position and the support she needs to make a true difference in the world.
MacDowall’s drive to help others goes back to her childhood. “I was raised by family members who had grown up during the Great Depression, family members who had fought in World War II and seen the fallout of war,” she explains. “I grew up surrounded by people who truly embodied hard work, integrity, and compassion for others.”
Years later, after graduating from the University of Iowa College of Law, MacDowall once again “grew up” surrounded by exemplars of integrity. “I couldn’t have asked for better training than what I had at Winston & Strawn,” MacDowall says. “I had the privilege of working with some of the greatest lawyers out there, including Dan Webb.
“I could always see those brilliant, talented people acting with integrity,” she continues, “focusing on pro bono work and helping underrepresented people in the Chicago community. That really spoke to me, that these strong and powerful individuals were making that a priority.”
During MacDowall’s twenty-one years at Winston & Strawn, she modeled the kind of leadership she saw in her mentors. In addition to being a leader on the firm’s diversity committee, she shaped the firm’s maternity leave program, spearheaded a paternity leave policy, and established a parenting community initiative called Parent2
Parent. Eventually, though, MacDowall realized that she wanted to take a deep dive into the needs of a single client instead of working with ten or twenty corporate clients. Thus, when Stryker Corporation asked her to come in-house as chief legal counsel in 2011 to create and build a litigation department, MacDowall “couldn’t resist.”
“I was brought on as part of significant change for the company,” MacDowall notes. “The company was very siloed in its various divisions and didn’t have a expertise managing key high-risk areas, such a global litigation.
“If you’re not an experienced litigator, that doesn’t mean you’re not an excellent lawyer,” she says. “But leading complex litigation—driving strategy, overseeing its cost, challenging outside counsel, and understanding where things could take a left turn if not managed properly—wouldn’t necessarily be your strength or focus. You wouldn’t know to insist on a discount or where efforts should be streamlined instead of spending millions of dollars with outside
“I grew up surrounded by people who truly embodied hard work, integrity, and compassion for others.”Alexis MacDowall VP, Deputy General Counsel, and Chief Enterprise Risk Officer Clarios
law firms, for example, or to know when to drive early resolution with an assessment of protracted litigation and an uncertain outcome.”
MacDowall also notes that having a critical eye regarding credibility of witnesses, evaluating the strength of your company’s position, and ensuring that your story is effectively presented in the courtroom depends heavily on experience from being in the trenches and knowing how to communicate with different audiences. As the cost of litigation globally continues to increase, it is also critical to manage that spend with an efficient and highly skilled bench of preferred law firms with a proven track record. During her tenures in-house, MacDowall has achieved multiple millions in savings through various spend initiatives and built strong relationships with her counsel.
At Stryker, MacDowall helped centralize the company’s legal functions and optimize the company’s operations as a whole. She was then recruited to Johnson Controls to do the same. And that’s essentially what she’s been doing ever since by helping shape the
“No matter how big your company may be, everyone has limited resources. You have to identify where you can make the biggest impact based on your time and resources.”
future of Fortune 500 companies like Stryker, Johnson Controls, and now private-equity-owned Clarios.
No matter what changes she makes in a company, MacDowall says, her purpose is never to “invade others’ territory.”
“I’m here to help drive the best outcome for the company,” she says. “Time and time again, as I’ve been tasked with leading change, I’ve seen a fear of that change in others. For me, it’s about making sure I communicate so that everyone understands that I’m coming in to serve as a partner and with a goal of mutual success.”
Fortunately, MacDowall says, she has received incredible support from both the leadership and the employees working at Clarios, a leader in energy storage solutions. Clarios has a highly mature view of change management, so on top of overseeing the company’s global litigation and labor and employment matters, she has been promoted to chief enterprise risk officer.
In that role, MacDowall oversees, drives, and builds the company’s enterprise risk management (ERM) function. “It’s about understanding the company’s objectives and strategy so that you can start thinking about what things could get in the way of that and how you can go about mitigating the risk of those things happening,” she explains. “You need to work closely with the business to deeply understand the strategy so that not only can you look to mitigate risks but to seize opportunities—opportunities that many miss without this mind-set within the company.”
But there’s no need to worry about every single possible risk to the company, MacDowall says. From cyberattacks to natural disasters, environmental
hazards to geopolitical development, there are simply too many risks in the world for companies to predict the exact type of crisis that will hit.
“As we’ve seen with the coronavirus pandemic, there will always be a version of a crisis no company can completely prepare for, but with the right tools, proactive steps, and training, that discipline and leadership is what separates strong organizations. It sets them up to be resilient, learn from the experience, and be even better prepared for the next crisis.”
MacDowall recommends having an in-depth conversation with the company’s executives and key stakeholders to develop alignment on the top risks facing the company. “No matter how big your company may be, everyone has limited resources,” she says. “You have to identify where you can make the biggest impact based on your time and resources.”
When all of that is executed well, companies like Clarios can begin seeing some truly incredible results, MacDowall says.
“Study after study has shown that companies that are proactive in terms of enterprise risk management have a higher value at the end of the day—higher shareholder value and higher market capitalization yields,” MacDowall says. “ERM is all about being resilient, being nimble, and acting decisively at the right moment. If you take these steps, the market will recognize your company’s ability to weather a storm and come through the other side even stronger.”
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC):
“Alexis is incredibly adept at using her experience as a litigator to truly dig into business risks and translate that into how to help her company manage and stay in front of challenges and opportunities.”
–Peggy Hardek, Partner“ERM [enterprise risk management] is all about being resilient, being nimble, and acting decisively at the right moment.”
Nationwide Insurance’s David Keenan is a steady hand at critical moments, leading his organization with compassion through all manner of crises
By Billy Yost
David Keenan Assistant VP and Associate General Counsel
Nationwide Insurance transition a significant percentage of its workforce—comprising more than twenty-eight thousand employees—to working remotely in reponse to the COVID-19 pandemic. He and his wife also pivoted to take care of their two daughters, who were home indefinitely due to school closures. As ever, Keenan focused on leading with care, concern, and compassion.
The father of two says he tries to behave at home the same way he tries to lead his team as assistant vice president and associate general counsel at Nationwide. “I don’t handle anger very well,” Keenan says, laughing. “The slower I am to it, the better off I think everyone tends to be, so I try to lead with compassion.” That’s evident in the way Keenan speaks of his team (“possibly the career accomplishment that I’m most proud of here”), his wife (“she is the coordinator, to whom I will always defer and just try to help however I can”), and his children.
The way Keenan chooses to lead just happens to be in line with Nationwide’s recent redefining of its own mission: to protect people, businesses, and futures with extraordinary care. It’s a phrase Keenan comes back to a lot. “I want to be able to provide extraordinary care in everything that I do,” he says. “We’re challenged as individuals because ‘extraordinary care’ is so context specific. Every different group has the opportunity to define it, and that’s what we’ve done.”
Keenan’s team is responsible for supporting the entirety of Nationwide’s procurement contract needs. “We have a property and casualty business, a financial services business, innovative business lines, and a core corporate function, among others,” the AGC explains. “Where we sit, we’re doing the service agreements, vendor contracts, and data-related agreements for all of them.
It’s so much fun to see the entire organization from this vantage point.”
Keenan says the collaborative behavior on his team is absolutely vital for the sheer amount of work that they do. “We make sure we can learn from each other’s experiences to share knowledge and help everyone on the team understand how to tackle a problem,” Keenan says. “The answer may not always be the same, but it helps establish an effective framework that will help minimize duplication of effort and forum shopping within the department—and will ultimately help you build credibility not only among your team members but to the entire business.”
It’s common for the legal department to fight tooth and nail to establish credibility and trust with the business organization, but Keenan says that in his experience, it’s the exact opposite. “We sometimes have to extricate ourselves from matters because after having built so much credibility, that can bring to bear some reliance,” he explains. “Demand management is a huge component of what we do.” Keenan’s team spends a significant portion of their time building support tools and educating business counterparts as to how they can attend to matters that don’t require legal involvement. This model widens the contract team’s bandwidth for more complex and higher-risk legal work.
Having come to Nationwide in 2005, Keenan has watched technology reimagine exactly what it means to be an insurance and financial services company a couple of times over. Keenan and his team provide legal support for many of the key technology initiatives that have reinvented how Nationwide establishes, supports, and services its policy holders and product owners; stores and processes data; and expedites and improves internal con-
nectedness and transaction flow. He also appreciates his team’s good fortune to be a key resource in the planning and execution of innovative product offerings coming out of Nationwide, such as the SmartRide program, which allows Nationwide customers to drive with an onboard device that monitors their driving and provides potential discounts on their premiums based on their safe driving practices.
“Technology has impacted everything from our distribution channels to customer support to the way we work,” Keenan says. He notes that working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic wouldn’t have been possible a decade ago. Thanks to advances in technology, 98 percent of the workforce could work remotely in very short order. Nationwide’s executive leadership team, including its legal leaders, are forward-thinking, innovative, and hugely supportive of the associates helping to drive value for the organization, its customers and members, and its associates.
Keenan says the service delivery his team has worked to perfect is an example of how to optimize good people and use technology to elevate the nature of work. “When I first got here, you didn’t really feel that embracing of the lawyers and having them involved,” Keenan says. “We’ve really built an efficient way of supporting a large-volume, fast-paced in-house legal team that supports the procurement organization.” And legal is always at the table, no matter where people are working from.
Tsibouris & Associates LLC:
“Dave Keenan is smart, strategic, and works effectively with his legal team, outside counsel, and business clients. He does a great job of effectively communicating with his business clients about legal risks and creatively mitigating them. His vision empowers his team and his legal peers to succeed. He is pragmatic and a pleasure to work with. All of this has helped him earn the trust of his business clients and helped his business clients thrive in an ever-changing business environment with numerous risks.”
—Mehmet
Munur, Partner“We make sure we can learn from each other’s experiences to share knowledge and help everyone on the team understand how to tackle a problem.”
For Chief Legal Officer Jennifer Chung, who handles the AccuWeather app, IP portfolio, and data privacy policies as the fast-paced company’s general counsel, the learning never ends
By Bridgett NovakJennifer Chung recalls that when she was a student at the highly competitive Stuyvesant High School in New York City, “The entire focus was on getting into the best university.” But once she enrolled at Cornell University, she wasn’t sure what to do next.
Cornell pairs all freshmen with professors for academic and career guidance, and Chung was assigned to a chemistry professor. Based on their interactions, she decided to major in chemistry and Asian studies. As for her decision to pursue a legal career, she shadowed a litigator her junior year as part of Cornell’s alumni externship program, and “that cinched it,” she recalls. She thought that most law school students majored in English, political science, or philosophy, but the chemistry professor encouraged chemistry as her major to study something interesting and differentiate herself.
That turned out to be stellar advice. “I continued to be interested in IP work, and you need a science degree, or at least thirty-something science credits, to sit for the patent bar exam,” Chung explains.
Her first in-house position came in 2014, when she joined Time as assistant general counsel, managing the mass media corporation’s global trademark portfolio. When the legal department was wound down as part of the acquisition by Meredith, she accepted a job at AccuWeather as associate general counsel. One year later, her boss left the company, and she became general counsel and chief legal officer.
“This job is exciting and challenging. I’m dealing with different issues every day,” she says. She oversees three
lawyers, a paralegal, and two contract managers, all of whom work in the company’s headquarters in State College, Pennsylvania. She also has a chief licensing officer, who is based in Oklahoma City. “There’s lots of severe weather in the Midwest, so we need to be on the ground,” she explains.
AccuWeather has several lines of business serving more than 1.5 billion people worldwide every day. In addition to a 24/7 national weather channel, it has a robust mobile app; provides forecasts to radio and television stations, newspapers, 180,000 third-party websites, and Amazon’s Alexa; has contracts with various government agencies; and produces forecasts and historical data for businesses around the world, including more than half of the Fortune 500 companies.
The company also has an extensive IP portfolio. “For example, we have patents on how we analyze data points and on the process for distributing weather alerts and other customer notifications, and we have several trademarks, including AccuWeather and minute-by-minute forecasts with proven Superior Accuracy,” she explains.
Chung says continuous learning is an essential part of her job. One area she is currently focusing on is data privacy. “It’s a rapidly evolving field, and we have to stay on top of it,” she says. “To
“This job is exciting and challenging. I’m dealing with different issues every day.”
Blank Rome is an Am Law 100 firm with 14 offices and more than 600 attorneys and principals who provide comprehensive legal and advocacy services to clients operating in the United States and around the world.
send our app users tailored forecasts, and with the appropriate consents, we collect their location and device data. We’re constantly evaluating how we collect that data, where we keep it, how we manage it, and who we share it with.”
To ensure AccuWeather stays in compliance with relevant laws, she contracted with OneTrust, a data privacy management platform. “Their software helps us map and manage data and prepare for new technologies and regulations coming down the pike.”
She also decided to go back to school. “One of the biggest myths about the legal profession is that once you have your JD, your professional education is done. Not only am I constantly learning on the job, but financial literacy and other business skills are essential if you want to help your company accomplish its goals,” she observes. So she enrolled in a seventeen-month Global Executive MBA program at the University of Navarra’s IESE Business School in Spain.
“It’s designed to work with a full-time job, so even though I’ll be attending classes in Barcelona and New York City, I’ll still be handling all my AccuWeather responsibilities,” she says. “The coursework is fascinating, I’m learning so much about being a leader, and it’s been really inspiring to meet the other students from Europe, North and South America, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.”
As if all that wasn’t enough to juggle, Chung is also cochair of the New York City chapter of Cornell’s Alumni Admissions Ambassador Network (CAAAN). “We meet with students applying to Cornell, to put a human face on the process. I’m grateful my experiences can help someone else have an easier time.” In volunteering with CAAAN, Chung has come full circle, providing the same kind of assistance she was given at the beginning of her career.
DON’T UNDERESTIMATE FATIMA ARASH. The twentysomething lawyer has spent most of her legal career as general counsel of leading corporations, honing the negotiating skills that have led her to victory against some of the most experienced, highly regarded attorneys in her field.
General
By Sara Deeter“I always knew that I wanted to work as an in-house lawyer,” Arash says. “I wanted to work for a company where everyone was working together toward a common goal of solving complex problems, building something bigger and better.” Soon after graduating from law school in 2015, Arash secured exactly such a position: chief of research and compliance at a New York City midsize construction and development company.
Seven months later, Arash was promoted to general counsel.
“It was exciting but also a bit terrifying to be promoted so quickly,” Arash
Counsel Fatima Arash has spent her career defying expectations, and now she’s helping Diamond Properties do the same
recalls. “I had never been a GC before and didn’t really know what would be expected of me.
“Which led me to wonder, if a man were offered the same opportunity, would he question his qualifications? Women scale down or forgo opportunities because we believe that we have to be perfect at every aspect of the job to do well, but men don’t think that way. So I happily accepted the job.”
Two years later, when Diamond Properties began looking for a general counsel, Arash didn’t hold herself back. “All the other candidates were seasoned lawyers with several years of big-law experience, because that’s the traditional path. You’re expected to put in the time at a firm before going in-house,” Arash explains. “I embraced a completely different journey in-house. But I’ve always been exceptionally prepared.”
During her interview at Diamond, Arash presented a detailed map of what she would achieve in the coming months, including her plans for establishing the legal department. She got the job.
Three years later and with more than $200 million in closed transactions, Arash has no plans to slow down. “Being a GC forces you to be a generalist, to persistently keep growing, learning, and evolving— and I love that,” she says.
Diamond Properties is a commercial real estate development company with a portfolio of more than $1 billion in assets and two sister companies: RDI, a manufacturing and technology company, and Diamond Hospitality Group, a family entertainment company. In addition to running the businesses themselves, Arash says, the co-CEOs of Diamond are passionate about supporting families and making an impact on communities nationwide.
“Our goal is to continue to create our popular family entertainment centers in lower-income communities here in New York and in other states, like Detroit and Ohio. We’re always working to make sure that a family of four can afford to go out, to play, to dine, and just have a good time,” she says. “We also have the second-largest rooftop solar system in the state. Many similar companies don’t make it a business priority to be socially or environmentally conscious, but Diamond does.”
That social consciousness mirrors Arash’s own values. “Millennial lawyers view the world differently,” she remarks. “We think differently. We do business dif-
Fatima Arash General Counsel Diamond Properties
“Being a GC forces you to be a generalist, to persistently keep growing, learning, and evolving— and I love that.”
ferently—we’re transparent, we’re ambitious, we’re tech-savvy, and we’ll truly revolutionize the legal profession.
“We tend to want to work with people, and hire people, who share our values,” she continues. “When I look for outside counsel, it’s important to me that the firm is diverse, that they have women leadership, and that they are doing things to help support women in the workplace. I’ve been very fortunate that my co-CEOs make female leadership a business priority. I have strong, ambitious woman leaders who sit on our executive team, and we’re always looking for ways to promote women to the top spots across our family of companies.”
Ensuring that her priorities align with those of her outside counsel is both a smart business decision and an opportunity for Arash to leverage her influence as a general counsel to help transform corporate cultures. As a young, female general counsel, Arash has seen the need for this transformation firsthand.
“We deal with a variety of complex dispute resolution and litigation matters, and I’m a tough negotiator,” Arash says. Yet when more experienced opposing counselors first meet her, “they mistakenly believe that they can intimidate me,” she notes. “But I’ve realized that being underestimated continues to be one of the biggest competitive advantages I have. Because then we end up winning. And my CEOs love winning.
“Those experiences do help rewrite the playbook,” she says. “Today’s business environment is unforgiving of companies or employees that are slow or unable to adapt to an evolving world.”
“[Millennial lawyers] do business differently—we’re transparent, we’re ambitious, we’re tech-savvy, and we’ll truly revolutionize the legal profession.”
Gretchen Randall pursues legal excellence at Smiths Group with a broadened perspective and emphasis on mentorship
By Billy YostShe says spending time in the working world prior to law school made for neither a better nor worse path than that of her classmates, but it did give her a very different lens with which to approach her impending career.
“When I was in school, I couldn’t wait to get back into the working world,” Randall explains. “I had gotten a chance to experience more, and I think the broader your horizons are, the more peripheral vision you have. Everyone looks ahead, but different experiences really help widen that vision.”
That focus on breadth also applies to the skill set Randall has built out through both firm and in-house roles as the current general counsel at Smiths Medical, a division of Smiths Group. The attorney is helping her team stay lean by working smarter, all the while passing along the mentorship that she herself benefited from while rising through the organization.
Mentored to Mentor
Randall’s eventual arrival at Smiths wasn’t on a whim. While in private practice, she had come to the company on secondment to work in-house. She had been working at a firm but quickly remembered the team atmosphere of the corporate environment that had propelled her into law school in the first place. “When the secondment ended, I wished I did not have to leave, and that’s when I decided I was ready to go in-house.”
Randall credits great leaders for helping her better define her legal path, particularly Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Ethics and Compliance Adam Jones and Smiths Group General Counsel Mel Rowlands. “I try to pick my jobs by the bosses that I
Law school came later for Gretchen Randall than many of her fellow classmates who had made it their next step immediately after college. Randall spent eight years in marketing before deciding to apply to law school, having been continuously impressed by the in-house legal team at conglomerate company Honeywell.
will have the opportunity to work for,” Randall explains. “I gravitate to people who, even though they may not know it, I really consider my mentors. Adam was that for me when I first came here; having a chance to work for him helped shape how I grew and developed as an in-house attorney.”
The GC says that she’s intent on providing the same informal mentorship she’s benefited from at Smiths to others who are finding their way. Her own breadth of experience lends her credibility on subjects from commercial law to compliance to risk. “Everybody you come in contact with can benefit from hearing a different perspective, and I know for me that it has had an impact,” the attorney explains. “I hope it helps expand people’s sphere of thinking to just be presented with another viewpoint or way of doing things.”
In coming to Smiths, Randall says having the opportunity to take on a variety of new challenges is precisely why she’s wound up in the GC chair. “Even though it could be scary because it wasn’t something I’d done before, it’s meant so much to me that I’ve been able to take on new opportunities, which really prepared me well for this role.”
Randall says the legal team continues to focus on ways of moving faster without any additional lawyers on board. “That essentially comes down to two pieces,” the GC explains. “Technology and strategy. We’re always looking for tools that might help us consolidate and streamline our workload, from better ways to complete due diligence to how we store contracts. We have some things in the pipeline that will hopefully aid us with that.”
Gretchen Randall Divisional General Counsel Smiths Medical
“We’re looking at the playbooks and templates we can create so people can help themselves and don’t feel like they have to come to us with every single contract.”
The strategy piece, however, plays a wider consideration. “There has definitely been a call from the business to do things faster, and I am all for it,” Randall says. “But we’re not adding a production line of attorneys. There’s got to be a better process in place to make these things work with no additional people or time.”
As the medical division embarks on strategic planning for next year, the GC says her team is performing an exercise to determine where best to place their legal focus. The team is taking this approach to ensure lawyers are able to focus their time where their knowledge and experience can make the most positive impact on the business.
“We’re looking at the playbooks and templates we can create so people can help themselves and don’t feel like they have to come to us with every single contract,” Randall says. “We’re always trying to figure out how to streamline and make things work better and more efficiently with the resources that we have.” The more time the legal team has to spend on high-level strategy, the faster it will be able to enable business results.
Working lean is something the GC is quite accustomed to. The mother of two multisport children and a triathlete in her own right, Randall is used to having too much to do with no time to spare. When she’s not running a legal team, she’s just running.
“As Gretchen’s outside FDA counsel, and having been inside counsel, I know that counseling in a regulated environment is very sophisticated. Gretchen is a quick study, pragmatic, with keen insights and the organizational skills necessary to navigate difficult regulatory waters while doing the rest of the GC job. She is a pro.”
–Mark DuVal, JD, FRAPS, President and CEO
Smith Pachter:
“Gretchen’s tireless diligence and experience is the key to the success of her organization. We are proud to call her a friend and a client.”
–Armani Vadiee, PartnerFor over 35 years, the commitment of Smith Pachter McWhorter PLC is to deliver rst-class professional service promptly and e ciently.
www.smithpachter.com
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Steven Weisbrot Esq.
Partner & Chief Innovtion Officer Angeion Group 215.563.4116
steve@angeiongroup.com
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Steven has been the architect behind many of the country’s largest and most complex notice programs and regularly received judicial recognition for his work.
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Atif Khawaja Partner Kirkland & Ellis LLP 212.446.4749 atif.khawaja@kirkland.com
Atif Khawaja is a litigation partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP. He has nearly two decades of experience litigating significant commercial disputes for a variety of clients in courts and arbitral forums across the country.
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