Modern Counsel #30

Two

Chai

In doing so, we address your legal needs with a uniquely tailored approach.

Purpose is what separates a job from a career. Our third annual Purpose issue highlights ten in-house lawyers who find joy and meaning in their work. P51

Implement

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Marylauren Ilagan must think both creatively and practically to manage Mary Kay’s expansive IP portfolio

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At Markel, Jamie Carsey has built out the coverage and claims teams, ensuring that they provide expert counsel to every department at the company

Feature

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In the nearly three decades since Jonas Bruzas started at Mondelēz International as a sales representative in Lithuania, he has grown into a skillful international lawyer

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With Adobe’s full support, Allison Blais enthusiastically engages in learning by doing and dives deep into unfamiliar topics

Lead

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Stacy Raphael Stewart has reckoned with her misgivings many times on her journey from Trinidad and Tobago to Coty, developing a knack for leaping into an uncertain future

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With experience as both an educator and a litigator, Brendan Gardiner is singularly situated to foster connections between the insurance and legal teams at Archer Daniels Midland

Brianna Dickson (Ilagan), Nijole Shuberg (Bruzas), Leo Marshall (Stewart)

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Pivot

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Throughout his nonlinear career journey, Braskem’s Bilal Ezzeddine has found that being vulnerable and authentic is vital for professional growth, both as a mentor and a mentee

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David Chan’s computer science background helps him keep pace with advanced technologies at Western Digital

Evaluate

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Mary Kibble’s first mentor at Schneider Electric was committed to advancing women into senior leadership positions. Today, Kibble manages a diverse global team.

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TPG’s Brandon Vongsawad earns the trust of investors so both they and the communities they impact can see positive returns

Cover Spotlight

Philip Chueng photographed our cover star, Fred Ebrahemi of Clearlake Capital, in Santa Monica. See more of Chueng’s work at philipcheungphoto.com.

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The buzz, click, and hum of

cicadas, the barking of distant dogs, the sigh of the wind through the trees and the drumming of woodpeckers on their trunks, do not distract our toddler from her task. She has temporarily tuned out the soundtrack of her life. Low to the ground in a deep squat, she is utterly absorbed in finding a stick to add to the collection of objects clutched tight in one fist. The items she chooses and discards have her full, rapt attention. For now.

Of course, in a few minutes, she may look up and be just as entranced by the sight of some children bicycling across the street or a plane flying overhead. And in a few hours she will likely be equally captivated by the book her father and I have read her hundreds of times, patting the pages with eager hands.

For our toddler, finding meaning in her daily routines comes naturally. Still relatively new to the world—and relatively sheltered as a “COVID baby” who spent most of her first year and a half of life inside our small home—she finds wonder in the hopscotch chalk drawings on the sidewalk, the robins and cardinals and bunnies that frequent the neighborhood, the impossibly fast cars that roar by. She is lucky. As my husband jokes, it’s hard to remember when we were as excited about anything as she is about bubbles.

Be that as it may, the human search for meaning, for the why behind what we do, is a lifelong quest. And for many of us, work that is both intrinsically rewarding and that allows us to leave behind a legacy that we take pride in—whether we’re contributing our talents to building up a department, a company, or the careers of people who come up behind us—is a large part of what gives life meaning. Feeling that we’re engaged in work that matters increases our motivation and hope.

The feature section of Modern Counsel’s third annual Purpose issue showcases ten legal executives who derive fulfillment from their work. These attorneys happily immerse themselves in work of substance that aligns with their own goals and values. Tara Pellicori describes her genuine love for Subaru of America in a story that reads like a workplace fairytale, recounting how the inspiring company culture and leadership “has made me love my job more than I ever thought possible.” She and the other legal leaders in this issue are exemplars of people who are fortunate enough to have found their passions and pursued them successfully, living their purpose at work.

Hana Yoo Managing Editor

Celebrating legal leaders’ latest efforts and achievements, including transactions, expansions, negotiations, and inclusion initiatives

Driving Ambition

By Zach Baliva

KIM UDOVIC ALWAYS INTENDED TO SPECIALIZE IN IP law, but as a young associate at the firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, she encountered an unusual structure that helped her discover her true calling. Instead of formally pairing new hires with veteran lawyers, leaders at the firm gave each associate the freedom to volunteer for assignments and accept work from various partners, granting them exposure to a variety of industries, clients, and subjects.

Udovic was handling IP, class action, and commercial litigation matters as a general litigator before she accepted an invitation to help a partner in the automotive practice—and in doing so, she found a new passion. The business- and consumer-facing nature of the tech-adjacent industry appealed to Udovic, who had completed her undergraduate studies in applied science and entrepreneurial management. She also

loves cars. “I learned the importance of keeping an open mind. Although this work appeared to be outside of my normal practice area, it really united a lot of my skills and interests,” she says.

After getting deeper into the automotive industry, Udovic never looked back. Twenty years later, she’s now assistant general counsel—regulatory for Toyota Motor North America. After building relationships with many of her firm’s automotive clients, she knew Toyota was the company she wanted to work for. But since there were no open litigation positions with the famed carmaker at the time (a friend and colleague had landed the last open litigation job a few years prior), she applied to another Japanese auto maker: Honda.

That kicked off a decade of professional growth, as Udovic built subject matter expertise and gained

Kim Udovic has built Toyota’s regulatory department from the ground up and become one of the top lawyers in the complex, competitive automotive industry

more experience in automotive legal work and the automotive business. After six months in an in-house role, she realized there were more opportunities to unlock in the small legal department. “I continued what’s become a theme in my career: taking on more assignments in new and different areas that add to the foundation of what I can do,” she says. Soon Udovic was handling customs and trade work, including an ITC investigation, drafting and negotiating agreements, assisting the company with corporate governance and compliance, and resolving labor and employment matters.

Five years into her tenure, Honda’s main IP patent litigator left, and Udovic spent six months preparing for a jury trial to defend patent infringement claims— an experience that gave her the chance to interface with highly skilled outside counsel and work directly with the company’s Japanese IP experts. At around

Kim Udovic Assistant General Counsel—Regulatory Toyota Motor North America

the same time, Honda decided to create a separate IP company. As a senior lawyer, Udovic managed its IP litigation and helped the company start this new division.

In 2010, Udovic began encountering headlines about Toyota’s unintended acceleration recalls and related litigation matters. She decided to check in on her friends and former colleagues at the company and discovered there was an opening in Toyota’s legal department. Motivated by the chance to leverage her growing industry expertise to make an impact at a company she admired, Udovic moved to Toyota to handle complex litigation, IP litigation, and international trade.

Despite the significant challenges facing Toyota, Udovic says she joined a legal department filled with contagious energy and anchored by clarity of purpose. Other class action lawsuits purportedly similar to the unintended acceleration issue had been filed, and Udovic managed these cases through to a very successful outcome—obtaining summary judgment and denial of class certification regarding the braking systems in second- and third-generation Prius vehicles.

In 2015 the company announced its plan to form “One Toyota,” which would eventually unite certain North American corporate, sales, manufacturing, R&D business units, and their separate legal functions under one roof in Plano, Texas. The separate legal departments were brought into a consolidated legal function: Toyota Legal One.

In support of that effort, Udovic was tasked with building a newly unified regulatory department, which would be responsible for advising on product safety, privacy and cybersecurity, environmental, customs and trade, export controls, and related government affairs matters. She brought together existing subject matter experts handling various regulatory functions and recruited a new team member to oversee customs and trade responsibilities; she was promoted to assistant general counsel to lead the new group.

Udovic’s partners outside the firm have taken note of her work. “Kim is fearless, thoughtful, and

a hands-on leader of any team,” says Michael Mallow, partner at Shook, Hardy & Bacon. “Her patience, insight, and understanding of complex technological issues were critical to the hybrid brake class action victory and are the secret to her success leading TL1’s regulatory group.”

The move to Plano in 2017 caused more work to fall under Toyota Legal One’s purview, with new internal clients and new lines of business developing as Toyota continued to grow and transition to a mobility company. And when the move to Texas resulted in the retirement of three of her six team members, Udovic recruited new members to meet those needs and provided the necessary leadership to guide her team through the transition.

Five years later, Udovic has built a team of skilled lawyers and passionate experts that guide Toyota on regulatory changes through various administrations and technological advancements.

As she follows her career passion, Udovic makes space for her other love—animals. She trains dogs that participate in agility competitions and has qualified for national championships in three of the four sanctioning venues, including the recent AKC Nationals in March 2021. Dog agility, like Udovic’s legal work, requires focus, communication, and teamwork. “Whether I’m at work or with my dogs, I give it my all every day,” she says. “I learn as I go, I never give up, and I have fun along the way.”

We salute our friend, client and trailblazer

Kim Udovic for her insightful leadership and achievements as part of Toyota’s legal team.

ATLANTA | BOSTON | CHICAGO DENVER | HOUSTON KANSAS CITY LONDON LOS ANGELES | MIAMI | NEW YORK | ORANGE COUNTY PHILADELPHIA | SAN FRANCISCO SEATTLE TAMPA | WASHINGTON, D.C.

Mallow Partner | mmallow@shb.com

An MO of Mentorship

Carrie Benedict invests time in new attorneys while facilitating business growth at KeyBank

By Natalie Kochanov

EVERY DAY, CARRIE BENEDICT STRIVES TO ADD value to KeyBank, the Cleveland-based regional bank where she serves as associate general counsel. In fact, the possibility of contributing to—and learning about—Key’s business is part of what attracted her to the bank in the first place.

“I loved being outside counsel when I was at a law firm, but I was drawn to getting to focus on just one company as in-house counsel,” Benedict explains.

Since coming on board at Key, Benedict has executed several significant mergers and acquisitions (M&A) for the bank, in addition to tackling special projects that have pushed her outside her comfort zone. As she continues to diversify her own skill set, she makes a point of encouraging her team members to do the same. Her commitment to training and development extends far beyond her direct reports, however, as exemplified by her participation in mentorship programs both at work and outside of it.

Although her interest in mentorship now dovetails with her knowledge of the law, Benedict began her career outside the legal industry. After studying accounting at the undergraduate and master’s levels, she spent five years auditing financial statements at accounting firm Grant Thornton. During her final year at the firm, she collaborated with a team of attorneys on private placement security issuances and an initial public offering—a change of pace that pushed her toward law school.

“That year of working on securities transactions really got me thinking that maybe it was time to leave accounting,” Benedict says. She obtained her law degree from the Ohio State University, then joined law firm Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff as a corporate and securities associate.

After nearly five years at Benesch, Benedict made the jump to Key in May 2015. She assumed her current role in 2020, but not before playing a critical part in the bank’s acquisition of online

lending company Laurel Road. “Laurel Road is a student loan refinance business that focuses on doctors and other medical professionals,” she says. “I worked on that acquisition for months and months, and it’s been amazing to see what the business has grown into since we acquired it.” For instance, Benedict got to see Key launch Laurel Road for Doctors, a national digital bank catering specifically to physicians and dentists.

“I was fortunate enough to work with Carrie on Laurel Road,” says Greg Lyons, a partner at Debevoise & Plimpton. “It was a complex, transformative transaction, raising deal, regulatory, and technology issues. Carrie was really impressive, both mastering the issues and leading the effort with a collaborative, upbeat, and inclusive style.”

Another project that Benedict has watched develop over time is Key’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which the bank needed to implement quickly to provide COVID-19 relief to small businesses in accordance with the federal CARES Act. “I normally don’t do lending work at all, but I was asked to join our PPP task force to

Carrie Benedict Associate General Counsel KeyBank

help get the program up and running, and I’ve been involved ever since,” Benedict explains. “Even though that project was outside my wheelhouse at the beginning, I learned what I needed to know and ended up being able to contribute in a valuable way.”

Benedict’s willingness to dive deep into unfamiliar topics complements her passion for passing down her expertise to others, including the seven individuals on her current team. “I’ve always had a focus on training and development, from when I worked in accounting to when I worked at a law firm to here at Key,” she says. “Just because I learned something the hard way doesn’t mean that the next person needs to learn it the hard way too. If someone can learn from my experiences, then why shouldn’t they?”

As a leader within Key, Benedict readily opens up about her experiences to help junior colleagues—whether on her team or not— navigate new areas or situations. On top of fostering a collaborative atmosphere and remaining approachable, she believes strongly in putting in the time to train new attorneys right off the bat. “That investment early on pays off down the road. The people on your team will be able to perform tasks and complete projects autonomously way sooner than they otherwise would,” she says.

Benedict not only offers guidance to her colleagues on an informal basis but also serves as a formal mentor at the bank through the program MentorMe@Key. Furthermore, she has mentored two Key employees as well as one nonemployee through the Supreme Court of Ohio’s Lawyer to Lawyer Mentoring program for new attorneys. Having gone through the program herself as a mentee, she fully appreciates its informative content.

“One of my favorite sessions that I’ve done with each of my mentees through the Ohio Supreme Court program is about navigating

office politics,” Benedict says. “It’s such an interesting and important topic, but it’s not something that you learn in law school.”

Benedict is eager to extend the cycle of sharing her experiences with the next generation of attorneys, which means continuing to grow her personal expertise through her work at Key. She looks forward to building out different aspects of the bank’s business through strategic M&A deals—such as the bank’s 2021 acquisition of data analytics firm AQN Strategies—and taking on further special projects outside the scope of her team’s standard company-wide functions.

“It’s exciting to find ways to expand your skill set, so I will continue to look for new projects to help me do that while providing value to Key,” Benedict says. “Every day is an opportunity to learn something new.”

–Terrence Doyle, Partner

Calfee, Halter & Griswold LLP: “I’ve worked on many transactions with Carrie. She’s exceptional. With her experience as a CPA and M&A attorney, she can do it all. On top of everything, her sense of humor makes working together fun.”

Leading through Tumultuous Times

Matthew Furman joined Willis Towers Watson just before the first of two transformative mergers. Since then, he has created a collaborative team that he’s proud to lead.

By Lindsey Lubowitz

WHEN MATTHEW FURMAN JOINED WILLIS TOWERS

Watson as general counsel in 2015, he was looking forward to a challenge—but he had no idea how tumultuous his first few months with the company would be. Shortly after he was hired, he was thrown headfirst into a merger between Willis Group and Towers Watson that would form the current company.

In the years since, he and his team have helped the company navigate strategic challenges, such as integrating the predecessor firms, completing significant acquisitions that expanded the company’s geographic scope and product lines, and successfully resolving the largest litigation exposures in the company’s history. Most recently, he and his team have been working on a proposed combination with Aon, which, if approved by regulators, would create a company with a market capitalization of more than $80 billion.

“I knew when I joined Willis Towers Watson that it would be a dynamic company with a proud history, and I knew it was going through changes—so the

decisions that the management team made would have a significant impact on its future,” Furman says. “Little did I know how dynamic a job it would be.”

Fortunately, Furman’s previous experience had helped prepare him for the job. He began his career at Simpson Thacher, where he rose to senior associate before transitioning to an in-house role at Goldman Sachs. There, he served as vice president and associate general counsel, advising on US and international financings and securities offerings as well as Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and investor communications. After seven years with Goldman Sachs, he joined the Travelers Companies as senior vice president and group general counsel for corporate and governance. He spent another seven years there before making the move to his current role in 2015.

At Willis Towers Watson, Furman is responsible for all legal, compliance, risk, government relations, and corporate secretariat functions worldwide and also serves on the company’s senior management committee, which establishes and executes strategy for the company.

Leadership is an integral part of Furman’s role: he is in charge of more than 350 people globally and feels that his management style is pivotal in creating a productive work environment. “The most important piece of advice I would give is to surround yourself with a fantastic team of high-performing and dedicated professionals. I see my job as not to micromanage them but to provide the leadership and guidance that helps to enable their success,” Furman says.

He is proud of the culture that he and his team have managed to maintain in the face of more than a year of remote work due to the COVID19 pandemic and the uncertainty created by the potential combination with Aon. To keep spirits up, the Office of General Counsel at Willis Towers Watson has pushed three messages: first, to stay

Matthew Furman General Counsel Willis Towers Watson

“The most important piece of advice I would give is to surround yourself with a fantastic team of highperforming and dedicated professionals. I see my job as not to micromanage them but to provide the leadership and guidance that helps to enable their success.”

focused on the end goal of building a stronger company and function; second, to only aim to control what is within reach and can be controlled; and third, to look out for fellow colleagues.

Furman is very gratified by the way team members have supported one another during these times. “I’m proud of the way the team responded during the past year and the way that the culture that we had created after the prior merger came to bear,” he says. With a great team supporting him, Furman is excited to keep pushing for excellence at Willis Towers Watson.

Since he started, he has had a strong vision for the function he leads. “We aspire to be a toptier in-house professional service firm that serves internal clients with the same sort of pragmatic, problem-solving approach that the company takes with its external clients,” Furman says. “We treat each other like partners, collaborate, and have an attitude of benefiting from each other’s successes.”

Outside his work with Willis Towers Watson, Furman has served in leadership roles at charitable and other public service organizations. As at work, he is motivated by the responsibility and potential impact that comes with stewardship.

He’s been the chair of the budget and finance committee for the Jewish Theological Seminary—an organization for the Conservative Jewish movement and one of the preeminent institutions of Jewish higher education—since the fall of 2020. In addition, he was a member of the SEC’s Investor Advisory Committee for several years, chairing a subcommittee focused on market structure.

Furman also has sat on the board of the Legal Aid Society, which provides legal representation, free of charge, for a variety of different legal practice areas, in addition to advocating for progressive policy. Finally, he has served as member of the national board of directors at the Alzheimer’s Association, an organization that raises awareness for and helps fund Alzheimer’s research; he has previously served as the cochair of the New York City chapter.

Furman is passionate about the work he does for these causes. He says that his involvement in those organizations helps him feel fulfilled. Above all, he advocates for balance: finding a good work/life balance, he says, is one of the most salient pieces of advice he can give for anyone interested in a career as an in-house attorney.

Weil is proud to partner with Matthew Furman and the rest of the Willis Towers Watson Legal team and congratulates him on this well-deserved recognition.

For the Public Good

With the support of Capital One’s various community development programs and partners, Robbie Bassett uses his role to aid his local community

By Abigail Sutter

“PRO BONO” IS A COMMON LEGAL TERM AND CAN become lost in a sea of legal jargon. However, some attorneys, like Senior Counsel Robbie Bassett, take the phrase’s literal meaning—“for the public good”—to heart and integrate it into their work as a whole.

Bassett started at Capital One in 2012 doing intellectual property protection work. By 2016, he was on the successful defensive team that responded to a suit by Intellectual Ventures, where it alleged infringement on three patents. The Federal Circuit and a district court both affirmed in favor of Capital One. Throughout his time working with Capital One’s brand team, Bassett examined the use of its trademarks, restrictive covenant portfolios, and confidentiality agreements.

And Bassett is still expanding his portfolio of accomplishments. In 2020, Bassett became involved in enterprise litigation, assuming the finance giant’s mortgage portfolio and eventually their auto finance litigation work. In that same year, he also partook in a well-loved tradition of his, despite the many uncertainties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lawyerpalooza, which was streamed virtually last year, is a fundraiser that helps the Greater Richmond Bar Foundation (GRBF) connect attorneys to pro bono clients.

This isn’t the only time Bassett has involved himself in pro bono work. After joining Capital One, he quickly started pro bono work for one of the company’s partners, CancerLINC, a nonprofit based in Virginia that connects cancer patients and their families to legal and other assistance. He volunteers at events, such as life planning workshops, to provide services like preparing wills, power of attorney documents, and advanced medical directives free of charge for CancerLINC’s clients.

His goals for the future also include pro bono efforts. He specifically wants to get creative with Capital One’s virtual pro bono efforts. Basset has been able to do just that with the Maggie Walker Community Land Trust, a nonprofit in Richmond, Virginia, seeking to develop and maintain permanently affordable homeownership opportunities.

Bassett contributes by helping walk first-time buyers through land leases.

Bassett strives to be supportive of colleagues who are also engaged in pro bono efforts. Two were recently recognized for their work in Richmond: Joshua Hanbury and Emilee Hasbrouck. Hanbury launched the Richmond Eviction Diversion program in 2019, working with Housing Opportunities Made Equal and the Central West Virginia Legal Aid Society. Volunteers for the program come through the GRBF and find solutions that benefit both landlords and tenants in eviction cases. Hasbrouck cofounded the RVA Legal Collaborative, an organizational tool to help protesters connect to lawyers willing to do pro bono work.

Capital One provides many opportunities for pro bono work and is rated the number one community development lender in the nation. One of its partners, iMentor, matches many of their professionals with high school students in New York City for mentorship. They also work with the Partnership for the Future Fund, whose mission is to end poverty and to equip high school students with the tools necessary to transition to college, such as career exposure and educational opportunities.

Similarly, in 2020, the Capital One Impact Initiative was launched with an initial investment of $200 million: a five-year commitment in total, the initiative aims to support

growth in underserved communities and advance socioeconomic mobility by closing gaps in equity and opportunity. “We have the opportunity and the obligation to leverage our scale and resources and to harness the ingenuity and empathy of our associates, to be an engine for progress,” Andy Navarrete, Capital One executive vice president and head of external affairs, said in a statement.

Recently, Capital One has been aiding in the equitable distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine. They’ve partnered with four organizations in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia to address the needs of Latino and Black communities by providing information about getting vaccinated and better access to the vaccines themselves.

“In Richmond, we believe in the power of partnerships to effect change,” said Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney in a press release, “which is why I’m so encouraged to see private sector leaders like Capital One coming together with organizations like Richmond City Health District to increase vaccine access and education within our Black and Latinx communities.”

In 2019, Capital One associates volunteered more than 424,000 hours to serve people and communities in need. The work doesn’t end, but Bassett and his colleagues are committed to finding new and responsive ways to ensure that their work serves the public good.

Doll Amir & Eley LLP is proud to join in recognizing our friend and client

Robbie Bassett of Capital One

The Legal Side of Lip Gloss

Marylauren Ilagan’s small but mighty IP team is a key line of defense for Mary Kay’s wide-ranging intellectual property

By Frederick Jerant

“I REALIZED PRETTY QUICKLY THAT I did not want to be a mechanical engineer,” says Marylauren Ilagan when discussing her path to law. For someone who was deep in her studies in engineering at the time, that realization may have been a hard pill to swallow, but it was Ilagan’s first step toward becoming the intellectual property director for Mary Kay.

“I loved studying mechanical engineering,” Ilagan says of her time at Rice University. “I wanted to design machines, and my dream was to work someday for Walt Disney Imagineering.” But her internship experiences

quickly disillusioned her of that notion, as she discovered that jobs for entrylevel engineers were far from the glitz and glamour of theme park designs.

That left her with two choices: go to grad school and earn her master’s degree or change fields entirely. Oddly enough, those internships helped point Ilagan in another direction. “I was exposed to patent law for the first time during an internship,” she recalls. “It intrigued me to see how my coengineers were so proud of the patents they received that they hung plaques up in their office to show them off.” Part of patent law’s appeal was Illagan’s own

preference for “application-based learning”—not simply learning abstract concepts but the ways those concepts can affect the real world and how patent law protected those innovations.

While earning her JD from the University of New Hampshire’s Franklin Pierce School of Law in 2008, Ilagan held externships where she drafted numerous patent applications on behalf of real-world inventors and learned to prosecute them before the USPTO, including arguing against prior art rejections, defending patent validity, and other nuts-and-bolts issues. “It was a great training experience for me,” Ilagan notes, “and helped me transition into being a practicing attorney.”

After graduation, she joined Novak Druce + Quigg as a patent attorney.

“Novak Druce was a boutique firm that concentrated on intellectual property,” Ilagan says. “I spent much of my four years there drafting patent applications related to electrical arts—computer software, internet-based services, and mobile apps—and prosecuting them to issuance.”

The creative-thinking skills and emphasis on practical, solution-oriented counseling she developed during her Novak Druce tenure carried over to her current position as director of intellectual property for Mary Kay.

“Patent attorneys often must be creative when drafting a patent,” she explains. “You need to define a new invention precisely and broadly, with an eye on the future of that industry. Precision will protect the device now, but patents last for twenty years, and the terminology you use today may not be relevant in the future. Your language must also be broad enough to

prevent competitors from designing around your product. That’s why patent attorneys often serve as their own lexicographers.”

Protecting Mary Kay’s intellectual property is similar. Ilagan manages the company’s entire IP portfolio: trademarks, patents, products, copyrights, trade secrets, and even the use of Founder Mary Kay Ash’s name and image.

Ilagan’s day-to-day work focuses on clearing proposed brand names and new products and then protecting them worldwide. “We have about eight thousand trademarks, and their protections are all jurisdiction based. That is, we must register them everywhere we plan to use them, not just in the US,” she explains.

And just as a patent attorney must consider future possibilities, so must Ilagan. “We really need to anticipate where things are heading,” she says. “For example, we offer several skincare products, but if the marketplace is trending toward meshing skincare with some nutritional supplements, we need to be sure the Mary Kay brand is protected in those new categories.

“Without that coverage,” she elaborates, “someone might try to capitalize on our famous Mary Kay brand in those new categories before we do.” (And misuse of the name can be far-ranging. Ilagan tells of finding a company that was illegally selling Mary Kay-branded lumber.)

Matt Mowers, COO and head of Quinn IP Law’s international trademark and brand enforcement practice, recognizes Ilagan’s talent in aligning IP strategy with Mary Kay’s business goals.

“Marylauren encourages collaboration between Mary Kay’s legal team and its outside counsel to implement innovative strategies for

“Patent attorneys often must be creative when drafting a patent. You need to define a new invention precisely and broadly, with an eye on the future of that industry.”

procuring and enforcing Mary Kay’s IP rights,” Mowers says. “She is also a thought leader in the IP community and frequently engages legal and technical experts outside of the cosmetics industry to identify approaches that will further enhance Mary Kay’s technology and branding initiatives.”

Ilagan and her team’s biggest challenge is tracking down counterfeit and illegally sold merchandise. “Our business model centers on direct person-to-person sales,” she says. “That’s why you do not see Mary Kay products in retail stores.”

But what about Mary Kay items found on Amazon or eBay? “That can be a challenge,” Ilagan says. “With e-commerce, it’s hard to find an actual person whom you can take enforcement against. Plus, on-demand merchandising and selling online has become easier and accessible to everyone. We’ve been ramping up our online brand enforcement efforts over the last few years, especially during the pandemic.”

Ilagan’s team includes one additional attorney (a senior IP counsel) and four paralegals. Although she reports directly to the company’s deputy general counsel and vice president of intellectual property and innovation, she and her team also work closely with chief marketing and chief scientific officers on subjects as diverse as lip gloss color names and skincare product formulations.

“We work side by side with the brand team when they develop product names,” she explains. “Names need to be informative, creative, and catchy, and we help them understand the risks of potentially overlapping with another company’s existing trademark.

“It’s a similar situation with patents,” she continues. “Patents are valuable assets, but they can get expensive to maintain. Once a patent is granted, you must pay fees to maintain its validity, and oftentimes those fees increase as the patent ages. We need to be strategic in maintaining a patent and balance its projected value against those costs. Sometimes it makes better business sense to let go of those aging and dormant patents.”

Other considerations include a product’s potential life span and overall business objectives.

Marylauren Ilagan Director of Intellectual Property Mary Kay

“Reach” factors in as well: what is its degree of exposure, and is it available to all consumers? Maybe it’s a limited-edition gift with purchase or a giveaway for a charity initiative.

Because there are so many variables, Ilagan says, these discussions are never in pure black-andwhite terms. Ilagan adds that her team’s bailiwick has grown substantially over the past several years.

“Looking back to 2012, when I first joined Mary Kay, our portfolio of patents, trademarks, and other IP has significantly grown—our trademark portfolio alone has doubled since then,” she says.

“Marylauren exemplifies Mary Kay’s belief in being your own personal best and in reaching success by helping others succeed,” says Marijo Coates, Canadian outside trademark counsel for

Mary Kay for more than two decades. “The company’s philosophy of helping each other reach goals, established almost sixty years ago, is just as relevant in today’s world. Marylauren exhibits trust and confidence in her colleagues, both inside Mary Kay and her outside counsel, and has all of us working as a team in more than forty countries around the world. She is truly inspiring— and fun—to work with.”

Ilagan’s mentors taught her the importance of surrounding herself with trusted teammates, ones who can be sounding boards and who will provide reliable, honest feedback. She’s followed through on that with her own team.

“I picked people I trusted, who had varied backgrounds and experiences. Those differing perspectives can help us arrive at creative and effective solutions,” she says. “I encourage them to improve their soft skills—they’ll be better leaders themselves— and I make sure to give them work that excites them, so they’ll enjoy the work they do and take pride in it. I also stress the importance of being curious, of learning as much as you can. Curiosity hones analytical thinking and ensures we are providing sound, practical, and attractive solutions for our business teams.”

Deeth Williams Wall LLP is pleased to join in recognizing our friend and colleague Marylauren Ilagan for her ongoing contributions to Mary Kay Inc.’s success.

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Quinn IP Law takes pride in their long-standing reputation as a forward-thinking law intellectual property law firm focused on quality over billable hours. Quality, timeliness, and fixed-fee pricing are primary reasons why we are trusted by some of the world’s most prolific and innovative international companies, institutions, and universities, ranging from startups to Fortune 100 companies.

“BENCHMARK US” is more than a marketing slogan. Benchmark our abilities and achievements against our competition to understand why clients select Quinn IP Law for patent and trademark procurement and prosecution, anti-counterfeiting and brand protection, IP monetization and global IP portfolio management services.

TECHNICAL AREAS OF EXPERTISE

Automotive, Aerospace & Transportation

Chemical & Chemistry Sciences

Clean & Green Technology

Consumer Goods

Electronics & Computer Technology

Industrial, Manufacturing & Materials Science

Medical Devices

Robotics & Automation

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JunHe, founded in Beijing in 1989, is one of the first private partnership law firms in China. Since its establishment, JunHe has grown to be one of the largest and most recognized Chinese law firms. The firm has thirteen offices around the world and a team comprised of more than 930 professionals, including over 260 partners and legal counsel, as well as over 670 associates and legal translators. Especially, JunHe has a very strong IP team which helps many clients protecting their IP rights in China.

CHINA EXPERTISE, GLOBAL REACH

2021 IP Rankings: Patent & Trademark, Tier 1 ALB

The World’s Leading Trademark Professionals 2019: Prosecution and Strategy, Gold Tier WTR1000

Chambers Asia-Pacific: Intellectual Property: Litigation (PRC Firms), 2019, 2020, 2021

Chambers

China Business Law Awards

2019: Law Firms of the Year: IP China Business Law Journal

BEIJING HEAD OFFICE

20/F, China Resources Building 8 Jianguomenbei Avenue

Beijing 100005, P. R. China

+86 10 8519-1300

xuchm@junhe.com

www.junhe.com

Evolving Ambitions

By Dan Caffrey

EVERYONE KNEW JENNIFER SHARP WAS GOING TO become a lawyer one day—everyone, that is, except Sharp herself. When she was little, her family and friends viewed her precociousness as a sign that she would one day enter the legal field. But when she was sixteen years old, she vowed to do the opposite.

“My parents owned a clothing store in South Dakota, but it shut down when a mall came in,” Sharp recalls. “So my dad went to law school. I watched how hard it was for him and said, ‘That’s not something I’m interested in.’”

That all changed when, as an undergraduate journalism major, Sharp enrolled in a class on the First Amendment. She was inspired by her first exposure to a Supreme Court opinion and getting to read the work of brilliant legal minds, which planted the seed of law school in her brain. And it soon bloomed after she had a dream one night about enrolling.

“I told my now-husband about it, and he said, ‘I wondered when you were going to figure it out,’” Sharp says. “I don’t think anyone was surprised except me.”

By 2000, Sharp was working on Capitol Hill as a research assistant for US Senate Majority Leader (and fellow South Dakotan) Tom Daschle, with a focus on policy and advocacy. By 2002, she was pursuing her Juris Doctorate at George Mason University School of Law.

“Working in Washington, DC, taught me how many different uses a legal degree can have—not just arguing in front of the Supreme Court but making policy on the Hill or becoming an in-house corporate counsel,” Sharp says.

As it turns out, in-house corporate counsel is exactly what Sharp became. Today, she’s vice president and deputy general counsel at the multinational information technology company AVEVA, which provides engineering and industrial software solutions in a variety of industries, including infrastructure, life sciences, power and utilities, steel fabrication, food and beverage, and consumer packaged goods. The services themselves range from digital transformation services to procurement and engineering.

When she was young, Jennifer Sharp never imagined herself becoming a lawyer—but in her current role at AVEVA, she’s assisted with one of the biggest transactions ever completed by a UK tech company

Sharp’s role is as wide-ranging as the company itself. As one of two deputy general counsel, she handles AVEVA’s global commercial matters—a wide net that might cover contracting templates one day and escalations related to any deviations from sales policies the next. Although she’s based in Austin, Texas, many of her colleagues are in the company’s headquarters in Cambridge, England, so her mornings are usually occupied by phone calls to the UK, with the latter half of her day focused on stateside business.

Since joining the company in 2013, Sharp has been involved with several high-profile transactions. In 2018, the company merged with Schneider Electric’s industrial software business, and more recently, it acquired application software manufacturer OSIsoft. The acquisition, completed in March 2021 at $5 billion, not only marked one of the biggest deals ever done by a UK-based tech company but also made AVEVA a leader in industrial performance intelligence (PI). The software systems of both companies have been integrated so that data can flow from AVEVA’s applications into OSIsoft’s PI System.

“Essentially, the combined power of AVEVA’s software and OSIsoft’s PI empowers companies to make faster and more precise decisions, and enables them to boost their sustainability performance as a result,” Sharp says.

Germaine Gurr, a partner in White & Case’s global M&A practice, has been impressed not only by Sharp’s work on the merger but her attitude in general. “Jennifer is always willing to take on new challenges, works closely with team members across the globe to get the best results on projects, and is empathetic to the fact that everyone is juggling work, family, and often a multitude of other things,” Gurr says. “She is a pleasure to work with.”

As the legal head for the integration workstreams, Sharp says there’s been a lot of excitement and energy around synthesizing the two companies as AVEVA gradually comes out of the COVID-19 pandemic. While she stresses the importance of having something to look forward to after a challenging year, she also notes that the pandemic could have actually been more challenging if her employer hadn’t shown

Jennifer Sharp VP and Deputy General Counsel AVEVA

“Working in Washington, DC, taught me how many different uses a legal degree can have—not just arguing in front of the Supreme Court but making policy on the Hill or becoming an in-house corporate counsel.”

White & Case congratulates

such compassion and concern in regards to its employees’ well-being in 2020 and 2021.

“I was just so impressed with how AVEVA handled all of this past year,” Sharp says. She describes some of the company’s initiatives to promote mental well-being during the pandemic: management appointed a well-being officer, there were weekly cadences that functioned as check-ins, and most importantly, there was the “It’s OK to Not Be OK” campaign. As the name suggests, it promoted a culture of emotional honesty where employees could be upfront about how they were actually doing.

“We have an intranet where people can share their own stories of overcoming challenges, regardless of whether or not it’s about COVID,” Sharp says. “We just want everyone to express themselves and read about what others have done. There are messages, as well as pictures of colleagues, pets, and family.”

With the OSIsoft acquisition complete, AVEVA seems to be on the cusp of its next evolutionary stage. And with Sharp playing such an integral role, it’s safe to say that if her younger self could see her today, she’d realize that the hard work of law school was all worth it.

Jennifer Sharp on her recognition by Modern Counsel

White & Case is a global law firm with longstanding presence in the markets that matter today.

Stateside Solutions

By Natalie Kochanov

WHEN HE FIRST MOVED FROM LONDON to New York City in July 2000, Julian Weldon planned to remain in the US for only a few years. Close to twenty-one years later, he’s still here.

“New York turned out to be an even more fun and interesting, big, dirty, noisy city than London,” Weldon says. “And, unusually for a Brit, I happen to like American sport.”

Aside from the draw of New York itself, Weldon has stayed in the city all this time in great part because of his career. Today, he is general counsel and chief compliance officer at investment management firm CIFC Asset Management. Since joining in March 2015, he has helped the firm navigate major developments internally and externally by focusing on solutions and emphasizing efficiency.

Before his fateful journey across the pond, Weldon studied law at the University of East Anglia and gained solic-

itor experience at leading UK law firm Allen & Overy. He specialized in leveraged finance, which he explored from a legal perspective within the firm and from a banking perspective while seconded to the London office of American financial services titan Goldman Sachs.

When offered a transfer to Allen & Overy’s New York office, Weldon jumped at the chance. Knowing that the firm exerted less influence outside the UK, he considered the move both a challenge and an opportunity. “From a professional point of view, it felt more entrepreneurial. I wanted to see if I could build a practice despite the firm’s relative lack of profile in the US,” he explains.

That goal—not to mention meeting his now wife in 2002—sustained Weldon far beyond his initial twoto three-year US obligation to Allen & Overy. He eventually left the firm in September 2008 to go in-house at

Since arriving in the US more than twenty years ago, Julian Weldon has found career success at CIFC Asset Management—and an enduring love for New York City

middle-market investor Garrison Investment Group, where he served as general counsel for more than six years until accepting his current role at CIFC.

CIFC has undergone a number of changes over the past several years, including going private and expanding the scope and geography of its services. Throughout those changes, Weldon has overseen the firm’s legal and compliance matters, first in the US and now in the UK as well.

Given the dual nature of his role, Weldon has had a front-row seat as the firm’s assets under management have scaled. “CIFC had a very nascent structured credit business in 2015 that has grown enormously since then,” he says. “We’ve launched a number of closed-end funds and separately managed accounts to provide exposure in that space for investors.”

The structured credit business added complexity to Weldon’s work, as did the introduction of an opportunistic and distressed credit team in October 2018. “That team’s investments tend to be much higher touch than the typical broadly syndicated loans held by our collateralized loan obligations and loan funds,” he clarifies. The team’s hands-on investment strategies require greater involvement by CIFC’s legal department. Likewise, the firm’s creation of a high-yield business the same year meant growing legal and compliance oversight in parallel.

Still, no transformation that Weldon has witnessed at CIFC compares to branching out into Europe. From an initial marketer presence to a full London office of investment professionals, the firm’s team in Europe has experienced tremendous

Julian Weldon General Counsel, Chief Compliance Officer, and Head of Corporate Strategy CIFC Asset Management

“We very much view our role today as being a solutions provider. We want to offer to our clients as many solutions as possible to meet their needs.”

growth. Weldon facilitated the expansion by collaborating internally and externally to set up the necessary infrastructure and to obtain the required licenses to get operations off the ground.

Key to Weldon’s success in these and other matters is his ability to maintain efficiency and to stay up-to-date on legal and compliance issues developing outside CIFC. Fortunately, the firm’s external advisors and collaborators assist in keeping him on top of the latest news, which he disseminates across the internal team so that they can stay ahead of developments.

“I start off by thinking about which parts of the business are impacted, and then I work backward from there to design a process geared toward achieving the correct output in a timely, efficient, and scalable fashion,” Weldon says. Following these steps allows him to get new initiatives up and running in a manner that burdens the business as little as possible while also ensuring an effective final result.

Efficiency will remain a focus for Weldon moving forward, especially as CIFC continues to diversify its service offerings to optimize the management of clients’ money in real time. “The legal team needs to be able to understand and support those investment strategies as each one comes online,” he says. “The same holds true when it comes to compliance.”

As the demand for real-time investment adjustments rises, Weldon believes that CIFC will answer the call. “We very much view our role today as being a solutions provider,” he says. “We want to offer to our clients as many solutions as possible to meet their needs.”

ROPES & GRAY

congratulates

JULIAN WELDON General Counsel, Chief Compliance Officer & Head of Corporate Strategy CIFC Asset Management

on his outstanding legal career and his recognition by

MODERN COUNSEL

ropesgray.com

Labor of Love

Albert Nicholson applies his legal expertise and relationship-driven leadership style to taking on challenging initiatives at Lineage Logistics

By Natalie Kochanov

ALBERT NICHOLSON SPENT THE SUMMER AFTER his second year of law school rotating through various legal departments at oil and gas company Texaco. The internship exposed him to many areas of the law, but it was the labor and employment function that most captured his interest.

“I fell absolutely in love with labor and employment,” says Nicholson. “It sparked something in me because it combined my loves of talking to people, analyzing things, and problem-solving.”

Nicholson has practiced in the field ever since, including in his current role as vice president and assistant general counsel for North American operations at refrigerated food transportation and storage company Lineage Logistics. During his time at Lineage, Nicholson has watched his responsibilities grow in parallel to the company itself—all while applying his decades of labor and

employment experience toward each new duty that comes his way.

Following his initial introduction to labor and employment law, Nicholson committed to honing his expertise by going in-house at Texaco directly out of law school. He delved into the specifics of state and federal employment laws and began to handle employment-related lawsuits, workplace investigations, and collective bargaining agreements (CBAs). “Texaco is where I really got the foundation of my labor and employment knowledge,” he says. “It turned out to be a great place to learn.”

Over the course of subsequent roles spanning the private and public sectors alike, Nicholson substantially broadened the scope of his legal knowledge. He managed a wide array of litigation unrelated to labor and employment matters, and

he gained a more nuanced understanding of his specialization by drafting employment agreements, interacting with unions, and overseeing administrative hearings and arbitrations.

In 2005, Nicholson joined media conglomerate Freedom Communications. Although he started out in labor and employment, he soon branched out—first into litigation, transactions, mergers and acquisitions, and risk management, and later into human resources (HR). “Managing HR functions instead of just advising on them gave me a really different perspective. It was a very challenging time, but I

came out of it with a better understanding of my clients,” he says.

From Freedom, Nicholson jumped to international labor and employment law firm Ogletree Deakins. He moved to Lineage—one of the firm’s clients—just a few years later when the company decided to create an in-house role focusing on labor and employment as well as litigation. “Since that time, my role has expanded quite a bit,” Nicholson explains. “I continue to do labor and employment and litigation, but I also manage our ethics hotline and all our CBAs.”

In fact, Nicholson played a key part in getting Lineage’s ethics hotline off the ground and in implementing a standardized procedure for negotiating CBAs with the company’s fourteen collective bargaining units. He now serves as a chief CBA negotiator and administers the ethics hotline within the United States and in a number of Lineage’s international operating locations.

Furthermore, Nicholson is assisting in the establishment of Lineage’s first-ever unified compliance program. “The compliance program is about making sure that we have the proper policies in place and that people understand those policies and their obligations under them,” he says. His focus has been on compliance as it pertains to employment-related policies and to the company’s code of conduct, which he helped develop and which he rolls out to new countries as Lineage expands its global reach.

Nicholson also contributes to records management and training initiatives at Lineage. His training keeps supervisors, managers, and HR professionals up-to-date

Albert Nicholson VP and Assistant General Counsel for North American Operations Lineage Logistics

on new policies and enhances their understanding of fundamental labor and employment topics. “My role allows me to see where we have vulnerabilities within the organization and to identify areas where we could use extra training to help folks better navigate those issues,” Nicholson adds. Nicholson’s leadership style facilitates his efforts to minimize risk as he tackles key projects at Lineage. He builds strong relationships by taking the time to listen to and learn from his colleagues, then delegates responsibilities based on each team member’s strengths—and the areas where they still have room to grow. “My philosophy is that I should be there to help and to develop others,” Nicholson says. “That’s the way that I choose to lead.”

Nicholson hopes to continue developing his own knowledge as well. From participating in one of Lineage’s inaugural diversity, equity, and inclusion teams to educating himself on the employment laws of other countries, he plans to keep contributing to the company as much as he can.

“I want to continue to establish myself as an asset to Lineage and to continue to grow as a trusted advisor and leader within the company,” Nicholson affirms. Above all else, that means channeling his love of— and expertise in—labor and employment law toward making Lineage an amazing place to work.

A Clear Focus

Early on, Jamie Carsey knew she wanted to be a lawyer. Now she’s putting her passion for debate and new challenges to work at Markel.

By Keith Loria

THERE WAS LITTLE DOUBT THAT JAMIE Carsey would one day be an attorney: she worked for a pair of great trial lawyers while in high school and college and had accrued experience at three law firms before even attending law school.

“I had wanted to be a lawyer my whole life,” she says. “I never went through any phases like most kids of wanting to be a teacher, a firefighter, a policeman— for me, it’s always been about becoming a lawyer. It’s even immortalized in my sixth-grade yearbook!”

Carsey isn’t sure why she developed this passion—neither of her parents was involved in law—but she does know that she’s always liked to debate. “When I was younger, it was always about how do I get my point across and then how do I get people to agree with me—especially adults, because that was the biggest win for a child,” she says. “Law just seemed like a nice, clear career path, and the calling never left.”

Today, Carsey serves as senior director of claims for Markel Service Incorporated, a Richmond-based insurance services company. Before joining Markel, Carsey’s professional journey included more than a dozen years doing civil litigation work at Thompson Coe, where she rose to the position of partner.

“I had the opportunity early on to see a bunch of phenomenal trial lawyers, so I knew going into law school that I wanted to try cases,” she explains. “I also knew that I

wanted to be on the civil side of the docket. My focus was very clear.”

She started with the firm as a summer associate intern while at the University of Houston Law School and became full-time once she graduated.

“To this day, I still think it’s the greatest law firm in the world,” Carsey says. “I was loving my law life there, doing the trial work, and had become an equity partner. I got a call from one of my clients saying they wanted me to consider doing this in-house program.”

That client was Markel. Carsey had specialized in insurance coverage and bad-faith litigation, and she was working with the company in that capacity, helping with its insurance coverage questions and litigation involved with its policies.

“Their senior director of litigation at the time reached out to me about starting an in-house coverage counsel group,” she recalls. “A lot of insurance companies have these internal resources, but Markel had not yet developed one and needed someone to come in and start an in-house team of attorneys to assist them.”

Carsey was hired in 2017 to build out the coverage group. At first, she did contributor work. Now she’s building consensus to bring people on board for the creation of the new team. “It was a fun endeavor to cultivate the talent that I knew the team would need to be able to be a resource for the claims department,” she says.

In addition to developing the in-house counsel coverage program, she’s been instrumental in building out the claims counsel team at Markel. “That other half of my team handles the extracontractual risk against the company, so if the company gets sued for any bad-faith damages, they handle those lawsuits along with our outside counsel,” Carsey explains.

The challenge of running two teams is that they need to be a useful resource for every department and the different lines of business.

“You have to be able to have people on your team who have a broad spectrum of expertise,” she says. “My goal for my team, and this is critical for any in-house team, is for them to be both knowledgeable and approachable. It doesn’t matter if you’re the smartest person in the room if no one wants to talk to you.”

Carsey is proud of Markel’s emphasis on its employees, particularly its general initiatives to increase diversity and inclusion and to promote greater leadership—and greater representation of diverse voices— at all levels of the company. That, she says, has had a positive impact on the company and employees.

For her own part, Carsey speaks to different women’s groups. The initiative started with her reaching out to female veterans to discuss how she could help the transition from military life to civilian life. What started as résumé and interview tips

“I never went through any phases like most kids of wanting to be a teacher, a firefighter, a policeman—for me, it’s always been about becoming a lawyer.”

Jamie Carsey Senior Director of Claims Markel Service Incorporated

Tollefson Bradley Mitchell & Melendi, LLP is a law firm with o ces in Dallas, Texas. The firm was founded in 2006 and has received statewide and national recognition for its expertise in insurance coverage matters.

Our expertise in insurance coverage is diverse, spanning numerous lines, including primary and excess general liability, auto liability, trucking and transportation liability, commercial property, and first-party lines as well as professional liability (lawyers, accountants, architects, real estate, engineering), and directors and o cers liability.

turned into helping them push for higher salaries and understand that they should go for jobs they’re interested in, even if those jobs aren’t 100 percent in their wheelhouse.

“For those who are interested in the law or insurance, they are both really great places for women to establish themselves as leaders,” she notes. “It starts with picking the right firm—one which is committed to them for who they really are. Then they can start to build a leadership style and start making a difference.”

Looking ahead, Carsey hopes to continue streamlining efficiencies, supporting customers insured by Markel, and helping drive the organization into a bright future.

“What’s helped me on my path is that I’m not afraid to dive into those tricky and sticky situations,” she explains. “A lot of lawyers don’t want to be part of that confrontation, but I’m not afraid of respectful debate.”

In Carsey’s opinion, trying cases is the best thing in the world, and she jokes that there should be a vacation package where people can go and try cases somewhere new. But at Markel, the opportunity to take on new challenges and build something from the ground up is too good to pass up.

“I love the people here and always enjoy working with them,” Carsey says. “I look forward to developing something new and exciting for them.”

2811 McKinney Avenue

Suite 250 West Dallas, Texas 75204

214.665.0100

www.tbmmlaw.com

is a solution-focused leader who embraces creative efficiencies, innovative thinking, and diverse perspectives.”

–Jamie Cooper

Thompson, Coe, Cousins & Irons LLP.: The firm was truly fortunate to have Jamie as a partner and leader in our insurance practice. Her monumental success in the corporate world was expected; we are grateful to continue our partnership with her and Markel.

Martin, Disiere, Jefferson & Wisdom: “Jamie

Celebrating 70 years of trial experience.

Since 1951, Thompson, Coe, Cousins & Irons, LLP has built a rich heritage of civil litigation capabilities. With over 200 attorneys in five o ces across Texas, Louisiana, and Minnesota, Thompson Coe provides value to its clients through its depth of industry knowledge and breadth of legal experience. As a result, the firm e ciently handles the most critical matters for clients - providing exceptional and professional service. Clients choose Thompson Coe for a complete, integrated solution to their litigation needs.

APPELLATE

COMPLEX LITIGATION

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A Central Support System

With years of transactional and corporate law experience under his belt, David Shipley works to support Match Group as a securities and corporate governance attorney

By Taylor Karg

TWENTY YEARS AGO, DAVID SHIPLEY wouldn’t have guessed that he’d become a lawyer—much less that he’d eventually assist the largest global provider of online dating services with two of its most significant transactions to date.

While attending the University of Texas at Dallas, Shipley studied business administration with a concentration in management information systems. “When I graduated in 2003, I had every intention of pursuing a career within my major,” he says. “But the dot-com bubble had burst, and

the kinds of jobs I was looking for— information technology, database management, etc.—weren’t as prevalent as I thought they would be, which left me reevaluating what I wanted to do.

“A friend suggested law school, so I took a few practice LSATs, took the test, got a good score, and ultimately decided to run with it,” he adds, laughing. Shipley graduated from the University of Texas at Austin School of Law in 2007.

During school, Shipley knew that he was most interested in pursuing trans-

actional law, a practice that would set him on a path for going in-house. “I knew I wanted to work for a corporation rather than a law firm. I wanted to be a part of the business team contributing to the success of a business,” he recalls.

Although he knew transactional law was what he wanted to practice, he notes that it wasn’t until his first associate position that he began to be drawn to corporate law. “When I started at Crowe & Dunlevy, most of the people I worked with were corporate attorneys,

so I just naturally gravitated to that side of things and ended up really enjoying it,” he explains.

After a few years there, Shipley continued to hone his expertise in transactional law at various other firms—which would eventually lead him to his first in-house position.

“I gained a lot of exposure to corporate and securities law while working for several different firms,” he says. “They helped me prepare and gain the necessary knowledge in order to transition to an in-house position. I was able to interface with clients who were businesspeople rather than just lawyers, which I believe helped set me up for future success.”

In 2014, Shipley’s aspirations to practice law in-house came to fruition when he landed a position at JCPenney as senior counsel of corporate/ securities. “I was one of two attorneys and together, we were responsible for a wide breadth of duties, including managing the company’s SEC filings, public company corporate governance, and corporate financing transactions,” he says.

Shipley spent four years in-house at JCPenney before making the jump to Fluor Corp. and then to Match Group, a company that, through its portfolio companies, develops and provides online dating apps and platforms such as Tinder, Match, Hinge, PlentyOfFish, and more.

Now, as a securities and corporate governance attorney at Match Group, Shipley says his responsibilities, like those he had at JCPenney, cover a wide scope. “Our associate general counsel and I are there to be central systems of support to the company,” he says. “There’s a lot we’re responsible for, but my three primary focus areas are global subsidiary governance, our global equity compensation program, and cross-border intercompany restructurings and financings. Over time, I’ve been able to expand the scope of my role to include more of the things I dealt with while working at Penney’s, like corporate finance and governance and SEC filings and regulations.”

David Shipley Director and Senior Counsel Match Group

In addition to his day-to-day responsibilities, Shipley also assists and supports Match Group with its merger and acquisition (M&A) transactions. Since joining the company in March 2019, he’s played a role in two significant M&A transactions: the separation from parent company IAC/ InterActiveCorp, and currently, the acquisition of Hyperconnect, a social discovery company based in South Korea.

“The separation from IAC was such a transformative transaction for the company because it resulted in Match Group becoming a fully independent public company,” Shipley says. “I assisted with corporate governance actions, SEC filings, stockholder approvals and payouts, and more. There was a long list of things that needed to be done and my job was to help coordinate and support each action so that the company could consummate the separation as smoothly as possible.”

Shipley says his role in the acquisition of Hyperconnect, which is expected to close later this year, is similar to that of the IAC separation in terms of coordinating actions and providing support to leadership. Additionally, because Hyperconnect is a foreign company, he’s delving into subsidiary governance as well as the merging of both companies’ equity compensation programs.

Whether it’s a routine SEC filing or assisting the company with a prominent M&A transaction, Shipley will continue to support and provide value to Match Group. “I want to see Match Group continue to be a leader in the industry, and I am going to do my part to make it happen,” he says.

“The separation from IAC was such a transformative transaction for the company because it resulted in Match Group becoming a fully independent public company.”

Quick on the Uptake

FRESHLY MINTED ATTORNEYS OFTEN BEGIN THEIR careers in private practices or small firms, but Stephanie Finn landed in a fast-paced corporate environment immediately: she was hired at PAE right out of law school and has been there ever since.

During high school and college, Finn assisted at her aunt’s real estate business, even earning her real estate license. But after observing the office’s attorney—and seeing the benefits he brought to colleagues—she set her sights on the legal field. She earned a BA in public policy studies from Vanderbilt University, followed by a JD from the Emory University School of Law.

“When I was looking for a job, I applied at PAE, which was owned by Lockheed Martin at the time,” she says. “I was hired in 2011 as a regulatory and compliance analyst in the tax department and concentrated on ensuring the company complied with foreign and US tax and related laws. The fact that I had a law degree and had passed the bar exam gave me a leg up on the other applicants.”

By Frederick Jerant

Finn stayed in the tax department for about a year before being promoted to assistant general counsel in 2012, and then to associate general counsel in 2017. As her role at PAE has evolved, so has the company itself (often with Finn’s help). PAE is a federal government contractor that operates in approximately sixty countries and on all seven continents, providing US government operations with everything from sidewalk repairs at military bases to sophisticated intelligence solutions. Not only has it undergone a series of acquisitions since 2012 but in 2020, the company went public in a fraction of the time it usually takes to complete the process.

In addition, during that time, PAE’s legal team has expanded from a staff of three lawyers to seven, including the deputy general counsel, four associate GCs, and an assistant GC. “It’s actually still a pretty lean team,” Finn says, “considering PAE has a workforce of approximately twenty thousand around the world.”

Finn cut her teeth in M&A as the lead lawyer (together with the company’s general counsel) on a rapid series of acquisitions for PAE: Applied

As an associate general counsel at PAE, Stephanie Finn has jumped into the deep end many times over the last ten years—but learning on the fly is all in a day’s work for her

Stephanie

Technologies in 2013, A-T Solutions and the Global Security and Solutions business of US Investigations Services in 2015, FCi Federal in 2017, Macfadden & Associates in 2018, and both CENTRA Technology and Metis Solutions in late 2020. And when PAE was sold in 2016 and again in 2020, Finn was heavily engaged in both transactions.

“It was a steep learning curve at first,” she recalls. “I had taken a course in contract drafting in law school, so I had some basic knowledge about the essential elements of a complex purchase agreement. After seeing a handful in practice, I began to recognize a common skeleton and am now able to provide constructive feedback. In addition, I coordinate with other functional areas at PAE for their input to ensure we’re addressing any concerns in the agreements. For example, I have no background in environmental concerns—but someone else here does, so he reviews that information and we discuss it.”

Finn’s capacity for quick learning on the job was stretched further when PAE was purchased in February 2020 by a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), a “blank check” company that’s formed for the purpose of purchasing another business to take public. “This transaction was very complicated, since it was both parts an M&A transaction and also a going-public transaction,” Finn says. The acquisition phase is an involved process— working with internal stakeholders to gather documentation to facilitate due diligence on the company, ensuring the necessary documentation is completed and approved, negotiating the complete purchase agreement, preparing public company filings, and so on.

The typical process for a company to go public via an IPO takes about eighteen months to unfold. In PAE’s case, it took a fraction of that time. SPACs are initially funded by investors, even before the acquisition target has been identified. When the transaction closes, the target company emerges as a publicly listed company. And despite the accelerated timeframe, Finn was responsible for leading all of PAE’s related internal legal work.

“Going public created the need for in-house securities regulation expertise and manpower to support compliance and cyclical reporting—quarterly and annual reports and proxy statements, for example. PAE decided to build in-house expertise. Although the finance team leads

Courtesy of Stephanie Finn

Finn Associate General Counsel PAE

“It’s actually still a pretty lean team, considering PAE has a workforce of approximately twenty thousand around the world.”

certain filing efforts, I review every draft of every document,” she says. “My professional development has continually accelerated at PAE, and I am constantly learning more about the financials underlying the reports, so I understand them much better. Plus, I’m able to notice company-specific inconsistencies that outside counsel might not pick up on.”

COVID-19 restrictions haven’t slowed her down. Finn assigns her team many projects—and then stays out of it. “I want them to have meaningful tasks, more than administrative responsibilities. If there are questions or concerns, I’m always available, but we frequently set aside blocks of time to cover several topics in a single session, rather than have a series of one-off conversations,” she says.

Despite the seemingly endless workflow, Finn strives to simply roll with it. “My manager frequently reminds us that ‘the perfect is the enemy of the good’ and it’s become a sort of mantra,” she says. “I do the best job I can in the time allotted and then try to move on to the next fire.”

Interpersonal skills have played a key role in her success. “As a global company, PAE’s workforce is necessarily diverse, and I often work with employees and vendors in countries across the world. It’s essential to remember that they are all just people trying to get their jobs done and have a lot going on in their lives. That helps personalize the remote interactions.”

Morgan Lewis:

“Stephanie is a smart, thoughtful, and diligent lawyer. She is a critical member of the PAE team and is particularly skilled at analyzing complex legal issues in an efficient and effective manner.”

–Sean Donahue, Partner

Drawn to the Challenge

Luxottica’s Jason Groppe stands up to counterfeiters to protect the company’s luxury brands and customers

By Natalie Kochanov

JASON GROPPE APPLIED

TO LAW SCHOOL

looking for a challenge. An amateur boxer for many years, he saw parallels between the ring and the courtroom.

“I loved the competition and the adversarial aspect of boxing,” Groppe explains. “That’s also what drew me to law.”

More than a decade later, Groppe is assistant general counsel of global intellectual property (IP) enforcement and investigations for the Americas as well as chief privacy officer for North America at Luxottica. As a designer, manufacturer, and distributor of some of the world’s most recognizable eyewear brands, Luxottica faces significant challenges from counterfeiters that Groppe works dil-

igently to identify and address. In the process, he leverages his years of legal expertise—and a strong personal belief in the products that he defends.

Before joining Luxottica in 2014, Groppe built up his litigation experience at Blank Rome. He was a clerk at the law firm as an undergraduate at the University of Cincinnati and continued in this role while in law school at Northern Kentucky University, then stayed on as an associate after completing his degree. During his eleven years at Blank Rome, he developed a specialization in class action defense that paved the way for his move in-house.

“Luxottica was looking for someone with a class action defense background, and I fit the bill,” Groppe says of his recruitment to the company.

But the opportunity also happened to align with his own interests within the litigation space: case strategy and case management.

Coming on board as a defense litigation counsel, Groppe adapted quickly: he’d worked with external clients in private practice, whereas he needed to deal with internal clients at Luxottica. Fortunately, he found that much of his past experience translated well to corporate life. “There was definitely a learning curve, but a lot of the same principles apply at a law firm and in-house,” he explains. “My understanding of how litigation works proved to be super helpful.”

Although he started out handling Luxottica’s defense litigation, Groppe soon took on a wider range of responsibilities. In particular, he began overseeing the company’s brand enforcement efforts—an area that, along with privacy and internal and external investigations, ultimately became his primary focus.

From the get-go, Groppe fully appreciated the gravity of IP infringement. “A company is only as strong as its brands,” he says. “My job is to do whatever I can to protect our brands by enforcing our rights.”

To enforce those rights, Groppe must first determine where counterfeiting or other forms of infringement are occurring. “We have a very sophisticated process for identifying counterfeit products online,” he says. “From an offline perspective, it comes down to being out and about and having boots on the ground throughout the country.”

Groppe relies on a combination of surveys, employee tips, and private investigators located throughout the country to locate possible counterfeiting operations. As much as he hopes to find no evidence of such activity, he’s ready to spring into action if an investigator confirms an operation through undercover buys. At that point, Groppe decides on the most effective and impactful way to initiate enforcement, either through criminal or civil actions.

For Groppe, taking down counterfeiters is about more than winning a case. He feels strongly about protecting not only Luxottica’s brands from infringement but also consumers from unregulated—and potentially hazardous— products. That’s why he’s proud to have dismantled a major operation at a flea market in Atlanta, Georgia. Vendors at the market were selling large quantities of knockoff Ray-Ban and Oakley eyewear, but the landlord refused to intervene even when put on repeat notice by Luxottica.

“We ultimately had to file a civil litigation against them for contributory trademark infringement. The case went to trial, and the jury ruled in our favor and awarded us $1.9 million in

Jason Groppe Assistant General Counsel for Global Intellectual Property Enforcement & Investigations (Americas) and Chief Privacy Officer (North America) Luxottica

Congratulations to Jason Groppe on his accomplishments and this well-deserved recognition.

We are proud to partner with Jason and Luxottica to craft and execute an effective enforcement strategy against online infringers.

damages,” Groppe says. “That was definitely a high point in my career.”

Despite having a huge victory for the company and its consumers under his belt, Groppe remains determined to do better. “I always tell my team that it’s a matter of learning from our results each year and seeing what we can do to grow, professionally and personally. We’re trying to stay ahead of the curve by understanding where we have room for improvement,” he says. Moving forward, he hopes to continue building up IP enforcement, investigations, and privacy at Luxottica into best-in-class functions.

Whether navigating federal and state privacy laws or strategizing about IP, Groppe knows the secret to staying engaged in and fulfilled by his work: genuine admiration for Luxottica and its brands. That admiration allows him to recognize the importance of what he does, especially on the IP front, and he advises other IP attorneys to search for the same feeling if they want to find success.

www.gbc.law

“You have to believe in your brands and the company you work for, and I absolutely 100 percent do,” Groppe says. “I’m extremely protective of our brands because of how much I respect them and the passion that Luxottica has for its products, employees, and customers.”

“We have a very sophisticated process for identifying counterfeit products online. From an offline perspective, it comes down to being out and about and having boots on the ground throughout the country.”

Tara Pellicori, Subaru of America P52

Jonas Bruzas, Mondelez International P57

Chelsea Arlantico, Woda Cooper P61

Kate Kreps, American Electric Power P65

Allison Blais, Adobe P68

Kyle Stone, Concerto Renal Services P74

Shaun Bean, Panasonic Corporation of North America P78

Tim Millett, PNC P83

Jennifer Rote, TGI Fridays P86

Richa Himani, United Airlines P90

Assistant

By Billy Yost

General Counsel Tara Pellicori finds the perfect mix of culture, love, and challenging work at Subaru of America

You can hear it in her voice: Tara Pellicori loves her job. The current assistant general counsel at Subaru of America thinks she was always destined to wind up at the car company that has one of the most passionate consumer bases in the auto industry. The way she tells it, the love Subaru owners feel for their vehicles isn’t a one-sided affair; it’s a love and passion that exudes from the company itself.

“During my tenure as a corporate lawyer, I’ve worked with hundreds, if not thousands, of companies, and I have never been as inspired or impressed as I am by the culture and the leadership at Subaru,” Pellicori says. “It has made me love my job more than I ever thought possible, especially when you aggregate the corporate success together with the family values and moral compass of the organization we’re talking about.”

Pellicori came to Subaru in February 2019 after successful firm roles at Pepper Hamilton and then DLA Piper (while also teaching as an adjunct professor at her alma mater, Rutgers Law School). The attorney has known where her life was going since she was five. “I’ve always demonstrated strong negotiating skills,” Pellicori says, laughing. “Whether I was trying to cut a deal to reduce parental sentences of ‘time-out’ or advocate for my little sisters when they needed counsel, it’s been part of my nature.”

But the short-lived life cycle of firm work left the successful attorney craving something more. She

found that her favorite part of her job was the strategic counseling she was providing to general counsel and other corporate executives. “I always wanted to know what decision they wound up making after I gave them advice and why,” Pellicori explains. “I didn’t want to only help them with a portion of the information they needed to make an informed decision.” Pellicori wanted to experience the entire spectrum of solving a problem—and she’d get her chance at Subaru.

The move has been an ideal one for a lawyer who has always gravitated toward helping those in need. Even as a child, Pellicori was leading the charge to sponsor families who needed help paying for holiday gifts and meals and donating stuffed animals to hospitals. The working mom continues to engage in this spirit of charity both in her personal life and through opportunities at Subaru. She also often includes her three young children in hopes of imparting generational goodwill. “I needed to be somewhere that aligned with my core values,” Pellicori says.

Subaru operates in a highly regulated industry, with a business model that includes international supply chain considerations and a national distribution network. Attracting top talent for Subaru is a must, and Pellicori is no exception. The former DLA Piper alum has brought her multidisciplinary experience and the application of her primary legal and business competencies to Subaru.

Outside Office Hours

Tara Pellicori’s dedication to making her world a better place far exceeds what she does in her day job. Along with consulting for her self-founded company, LauncHer, which focuses on supporting minority- and women-owned businesses, Pellicori continues to teach the legal entrepreneurship clinic at Rutgers–Camden. She's also an avid volunteer (since law school) and member of the National Leadership Circle for the nonprofit Street Law. The lawyer volunteers primarily in juvenile detention centers, educating youth on legal topics and empowering kids caught up in the legal system to get on a better track.

“Tara is a tireless advocate for Subaru,” says Andy Bertron, partner at Nelson Mullins. “Subaru has seen tremendous growth, and with it, a host of new challenges for in-house counsel. Tara meets those challenges and does it with class.”

During her interview with Modern Counsel , the Legal Intelligencer Lawyer on the Fast Trackrecipient could take her time and highlight the accolades she's received or explain the broad range of sophisticated experience she’s amassed. The domestic, international, and multijurisdictional matters; the complex mergers, acquisitions, and reorganizations; and the strategic alliances and joint ventures. Instead, Pellicori holds up a heart she forms with her hands.

“This is for my legal team,” she says. “They sealed the deal in my deciding to come here. It starts with our General Counsel Sheila Gallucci-Davis and our Associate General Counsel Terri Claybrook. I’ve been incredibly lucky to grow personally and professionally under their mentorship. They’re just extraordinary people and attorneys, and they’ve been at the helm of this legal department for decades. They’re amazing, they’re mentors, they’re champions, they’re family.”

That appreciation extends far beyond the legal department. Pellicori speaks of the culture of love and respect that is at the heart of every

I’ve worked with hundreds, if not thousands, of companies, and I have never been as inspired or impressed as I am by the culture and the leadership at Subaru.

interaction at Subaru. “Whether you’re interacting with your internal colleagues, our retailers, our customers, our vendors, or our community, that feeling is always there,” Pellicori says. “I see it in the way we foster an inclusive culture, the way we value volunteerism, and in our commitment to corporate responsibility.”

Over time, Subaru has developed a reputation for maintaining passionate customers and for using its wide presence to aid organizations in need. If there’s one automotive brand that comes to mind when one thinks of love, there’s a reason. There is the well-publicized Subaru Share the Love Event, which partners with more than 630 Subaru retailers nationwide to donate $250 to a charity of the purchasers’ or leasers’ choosing from mid-November

to the end of the calendar year. Over the past thirteen years, the event has donated more than $200 million to more than 1,440 national and local charity partners.

There’s also the Subaru Love Promise, which has five pillars that revolve around the environment, health, community, education, and animals. Every month, Subaru recognizes hundreds of Subaru retailers across the country who have bettered their communities through this shared promise.

Under Pellicori’s legal counsel, Subaru also partnered with the Major League Soccer’s Philadelphia Union, which was one of the AGC’s most enjoyable experiences to date. “What made the experience unique was that, while the intricate commercial terms had to be satisfied, the real heart of

Tara Pellicori Assistant General Counsel Subaru of America

the partnership discussions were rooted in the parties’ commitment to beautify and enhance the greater Philadelphia community through pillars of the Subaru Love Promise,” explains Pellicori.

Highlights include showcasing adoptable shelter dogs at Subaru Park and an on-site sustainable and organic “Garden for Good” that has already produced 25,400 servings of organic fruits and vegetables to food banks in the Chester, Pennsylvania, area.

“There are so many places where the question posed to legal counsel is, ‘What do we have—or can we gain—a right to do?’ Pellicori explains. “But here, every day, every interaction, the question is, ‘What is the right thing to do? How can we do more, and how can we be a better partner?’ The way in which our leadership has normalized the incorporation of this thought process into our culture and every day decision-making is inspiring and motivating.”

Pellicori wanted to find an organization where she could help solve problems from beginning to end. But at Subaru, she has the chance to do even more. She gets to help make the world a better place, one satisfied customer at a time—and beyond.

In his twenty-eight years working for Mondelez International, Jonas Bruzas has held more than a half-dozen positions across the globe

By Lindsey Lubowitz

Jonas Bruzas wasn’t a lawyer yet when he began his career with Mondelēz International in 1994 as a sales representative in Lithuania— back then, the company was still called Kraft Foods, and the world had just opened up after the Iron Curtain came down. Since then, he’s gone to law school—twice—and is now vice president and chief counsel of global law, IP, and operations for Mondelēz International at its global headquarters in Chicago.

“I started at the company as a sales rep, when I was still going to the law school in Lithuania,” Bruzas says. “I wanted my independence, and earning my own money was the key. It wasn’t until after I joined that I started really loving this company.”

Now, after more than twenty-five years with the company, he has nothing but positive things to say about both the culture and the type of people who work there.

“This company really encourages people to follow their passions, and the people here work hard to get where they want to be. That hard work pays off, both for the company and for our colleagues,” he says. In fact, Bruzas himself is a testament to the fact that Mondelēz International helps its employees grow and progress throughout their careers.

When Bruzas first began in the sales department, he excelled and was quickly promoted to country manager for Estonia and Latvia. But as he considered what he wanted to do with a law degree, he realized that his passion was the law rather than sales. He liked the idea of staying with the company, so he applied and was appointed to a newly opened in-house position at what was then Kraft Foods Lithuania.

“I wanted to be working in-house because I like being involved in making certain decisions that are not purely legal, and that allowed me to continue to be a part of the business team. I also like that you can see the entire life cycle of a project,” Bruzas says.

Bruzas created and worked in the Lithuanian law department of the company. Soon he was promoted to a regional role and worked out of Vienna at the regional headquarters of the company for Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. In 2005 he joined Mondelēz’s headquarters in Chicago, where he has since earned several promotions. He also spent about three years in Miami as vice president and chief counsel to the company’s Latin American operations—further expanding the long list of countries he’s worked in—and has been settled into his current position since his return from Miami in 2019.

After moving to the United States for work, Bruzas wanted to become as well versed in US common law as he is in the European civil law system, so he decided to go back to law school

Working and practicing law both in the European Union and in the US and feeling home on both sides of the Atlantic has been an experience that has formed me into who I am today: an international lawyer.

Jonas Bruzas VP and Chief Counsel of Global Law, IP & Operations Mondelez International

Nijole Shuberg

bakermckenzie.com

and earned his second legal degree from the Loyola University Chicago School of Law.

“I learned a lot in law school in Europe, but I hadn’t learned the fundamentals of the American legal system, and I couldn’t learn them without going to law school,” Bruzas says. “Simple things like legal research and legal writing in the common law system are very different from my European legal experience and how things are done in a civil law system. To know both legal systems is now invaluable for my work.”

He now feels entirely confident in US legal doctrine, but he also believes it’s important to continue to understand and consider the international lens. This also helps him maintain a close connection to his European roots while working in the United States.

“I am a proponent of an open, global business environment. I believe in the benefits of bringing cultures together at work and thrive when work crosses borders of various countries,” Bruzas says. “Working and practicing law both in the European Union and in the US and feeling home on both sides of the Atlantic has been an experience that has formed me into who I am today: an international lawyer.”

There are certain challenges that come from a career in global law, however—in a way, the sun never sets, and there is always something happening that requires his attention. He has to understand and accommodate the time differences and schedules of other countries, which has been particular challenging during the COVID-19 pandemic, when everything had to be organized from his own home. For those interested in a similar career, he’d recommend starting with smaller global projects first. Still, jumping into the deep end worked for him, and he doesn’t have any regrets.

“I am really happy. It is my dream job. This is what I always wanted to do,” Bruzas says. “There is room for growth and development and even expanding your role, like getting into new areas of law or getting into a new project. At the moment, I’m focused on continuing to learn and grow my current role.”

—Michael

to our friend and colleague Jonas Bruzas on this well-deserved recognition by Modern Counsel of his leadership and many outstanding accomplishments as Vice President & Chief Counsel, Global Law, Intellectual Property and Operations of Mondelez International.

Baker McKenzie:

“I’ve worked with Jonas Bruzas for seventeen years. Jonas brings an incredibly wide array of legal and commercial skills to every strategically important business priority he tackles—like developing ways for Mondēlez’s joint ventures to succeed, protecting its crown jewel IP assets, and helping it deal with the unique challenges of COVID.”

J. Wagner, Partner

Chelsea

By Billy Yost

Arlantico helps Woda Cooper Companies develop affordable housing to give families in need a leg up

Serving as both the vice president of development and corporate counsel for affordable housing firm Woda Cooper Companies may seem like it’d be a difficult balancing act, but for Chelsea Arlantico, multitasking was a skill she honed early in life. Arlantico competed as a figure skater from her elementary school days all the way up until she left for college.

All the hard work that went into early morning practices and competitions, all the time management required of the diligent student, helped her later thrive in not just taking on a new role but learning new industries, often at the same time. “All of the life skills I learned in figure skating—and trying to balance that competitive schedule while going to school—has transferred over through law school and now into my career,” Arlantico says.

For the People

Arlantico’s passion has always landed on the side of the public good. Her first role out of law school was with the Peace Corps Office of the Inspector General. The learning curve was steep, but the attorney credits a willing and helpful team for helping her grow quickly.

“Acquiring the knowledge and developing the background at the Peace Corps gave me the confidence and push to enter Woda Cooper without hesitation,” Arlantico says. “I knew I would have to learn on the job in both real estate development work and the transactional legal work that I do.”

While Woda Cooper is a for-profit entity, its work remains very much in the interests that have motivated Arlantico’s career. “Affordable housing is extremely important to the health and well-being of families and individuals,” the VP explains. “With rising costs of living nationwide, it’s imperative we provide affordable, safe, and sanitary housing oppor-

The low-income housing tax credit program operates on a strict timeline, requiring us to quickly secure, build, and make a property fully operational.

tunities for everyone. I was really drawn to the mission of the company.”

If there are ever moments where the attorney needs extra motivation, she says a ground breaking or grand opening for any of Woda Cooper’s projects provides it in spades. The chance to hear from future or current residents speaking about the experiences they’ve had and the effect that affordable housing can and will have on their lives is fuel for even the most challenging days.

A Sixteen-State Learning Curve

Those challenges are routine for one trying to master two completely new disciplines concurrently. Woda Cooper works in sixteen different states. Arlantico covers real estate development primarily for Maryland and Virginia, but her transactional legal work knows no bounds.

“I write and review the sale and purchase contracts and leases for commercial spaces in all of the states we work in,” the VP says. “Given the number of development teams Woda Cooper has spread around the country, it’s imperative to maintain positive relationships, as it’s the only way to ensure the successful outcomes that we work toward each day.”

Arlantico has added yet another responsibility to her wide-ranging roles. She partners with Woda Cooper’s human resources team and manages a small unemployment team. The lessons she learned from the Peace Corps about working with a strong team continue to play out at her present employer. Handling unemployment cases means reaching out to employees across different departments all over the company, and to deliver on strict deadlines, it’s imperative to work in concert.

Real estate work at Woda Cooper isn’t merely about finding spaces and building. The competitive world of affordable housing requires applying for tax credits from state housing agencies for funds to help build properties. The small miracle of being awarded those funds is just the beginning.

“The low-income housing tax credit program operates on a strict timeline, requiring us to

Chelsea Arlantico VP of Development and Corporate Counsel Woda Cooper Companies

quickly secure, build, and make a property fully operational,” Arlantico explains. “Any delay in construction puts you at risk of not meeting that deadline.”

New Challenges, New Projects

The COVID-19 pandemic put Woda Cooper’s strict deadline adherence to the absolute test. With state and federal agencies navigating the pandemic at inopportune times and constantly having to monitor and ensure construction teams were both safe and fully authorized to work, the ever-changing pandemic regulations that were different in every county, let alone state, mandated precision from Woda Cooper’s three-person in-house legal team and real estate development professionals.

Arlantico’s latest project is of a structure new for Woda Cooper’s Virginia development team entirely— and one that is on the rise within the affordable housing development community. A large-scale, hybrid-funded project has meant running two deals like one, effectively.

“We’re on the front end of figuring out how to get both projects permitted and approved together, all while working with various funding sources. This has been a great learning experience for everyone involved, and I am thankful for the team we have working on this project,” the lawyer says. Construction is slated to begin later this year.

Over the course of Arlantico’s career, she has exhibited the courage to knowingly take on a role that required significant growth, developed the flexibility to roll with the punches, and learned firsthand the truly great work one can do for the community while at a pro-profit institution. Arlantico’s life may have started on ice, but she’s now helping provide stable ground for families of all kinds.

Reno & Cavanaugh, PLLC: “Chelsea is an excellent addition to the Woda Cooper Companies team. She is task oriented and committed to getting the job done in an efficient and effective manner.”

—Efrem Levy, Member

“It is an honor to be an integral part of the legal network for the stellar Woda Cooper Companies as led by attorney Chelsea Arlantico. We compliment Chelsea on this well-deserved recognition.”

–Keith J. Pappas, Attorney at Law (PA and WV), Morgantown, West Virginia

By Keith Loria

Because films and TV so often feature unrealistic courtroom scenes, lots of people have misguided notions about what it’s like to be a lawyer. But Kathryn L. Kreps, who serves as senior counsel for American Electric Power, grew up with a front-row seat to the realities of the profession.

Kreps’s father was an attorney, and her parents divorced when she was five years old. During the time she spent with him, he was often working. “If he had to work on a Saturday, we would go into the office,” she says. “It was always a place where I felt comfortable.”

Then, when she was nine years old, Kreps was diagnosed with Ewing Sarcoma, a bone cancer, and underwent a year and a half of therapy and radiation. She lost her hair and had to stay home from school often.

Because of her low blood count and cycles of chemotherapy and radiation, her illness led to her spending more time at home and accompanying her father to work, where he often conducted depositions.

“I remember sitting on this hardwood chair outside the room for hours and hearing the deposition in the background,” she says. “I noticed the cadence and the deliberateness of the questions—depositions are very plodding, and it was comforting. Sometimes when people grow up and they don’t have lawyers in their life, they look at courtroom dramas on TV and think of the excitement that comes with that. For me, it was a very deliberate and comforting process.”

So Kreps knew what she was in for when she eventually embarked on her own legal career. After graduating Order of the Coif from the Moritz College of Law at the Ohio State University, she started working at the firm of Porter, Wright, Morris & Arthur. She left to clerk for Judge Terence P. Kemp and Judge James L. Graham of the United States District Court in the Southern District of Ohio, then shared her expertise with the Ohio Attorney General’s Office.

Kreps returned to Porter, Wright, Morris & Arthur in 2015, then took a position at Worley Law before joining American Electric Power in November of 2016. The job appealed to her because she wanted to focus on one client.

“I love being a part of a team that’s always striving to do the best that we can for the company and the

Kathryn L. Kreps has been preparing for her role at American Electric Power since childhood

people of the company,” she says. “I get a chance to understand the business from the inside out. You get calls from every single business unit, all levels of management, talking about employment issues from the executive level to entry level. You get to know so many people throughout the business, and they come to rely on you for advice— and I really enjoy that.”

Kreps’s colleagues outside the company also appreciate her attention to detail. “We’ve been honored to work with AEP’s Kate Kreps on a variety of issues,” say Elizabeth Waller, principal and chair, cybersecurity and data privacy, and Patice Holland, principal, labor and employment, at Woods Rogers. “She demonstrates thoughtfulness for matters at hand and keeps an eye on the larger strategy for what the outcome means for one of the largest US electric companies serving more than five million customers across eleven states.”

Kreps is in charge of employment and labor law, manages litigation related to employment issues, and is responsible for immigration and privacy issues. Because she interacts with all departments of the company to advance its mission, her job requires flexibility and adaptability.

“Not every person is the same; not every client is the same,” she explains. “AEP is one client but every person I advise needs different counsel. I try to give every individual I advise the best service that is unique to them and the needs of their business unit. Not everybody comes from the same background or has the same perspective. As a professional, you have to work hard to involve yourself in the business and understand the pressures and expectations that they are up

I love being a part of a team that’s always striving to do the best that we can for the company and the people of the company. I get a chance to understand the business from the inside out.

Kathryn L. Kreps Senior Counsel American Electric Power

against so that you can give them the best advice for them based on their specific needs.”

That huge variety of personalities has helped her get involved and understand the business units better. “Not every solution is the same, so you have to know the person and advise them on what the best path is for them,” she says.

One aspect of Kreps’s job that she is especially passionate about is the work she does to encourage diversity at the company. She is a key member of the legal department’s TIDE team, which stands for Team for Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity.

“We have people working on diversity not only in the recruiting process, but also on retaining a diverse workforce once they get here,” she explains. “I personally am on the culture subcommittee, where we’re going to be focusing on discussions and ideas around diversity and inclusion. We’ll have speakers come in and share how diversity is one of the true measures of success for the company.” It’s just one of the many ways that Kreps is contributing to the success of AEP—and she looks forward to serving the company and the people she works with for years to come.

Law school gave Allison Blais a keen love for learning, and at Adobe, she’s found an employer that encourages her intellectual curiosity

By Natalie Kochanov

Allison Blais Director and Associate General Counsel, Corporate Securities & M&A Adobe

Although Allison Blais had always been a good student, going to law school gave her an entirely new perspective on education. “It was this transformative experience for me,” she says. “Something clicked, and I started to love learning.”

Blais has continued to seek out learning opportunities ever since. Fortunately, she has found the perfect home for her intellectual curiosity at Adobe, a software company that encourages ongoing development at all career stages. As director and associate general counsel of corporate securities and mergers and acquisitions (M&A), Blais brings her unique experience and thirst for knowledge to bear in the company’s dynamic legal organization. Furthermore, she seeks to spark the same enthusiasm in junior colleagues that her own mentors have nurtured in her throughout her professional journey.

After discovering her deep interest in learning as a first-year law student at Quinnipiac University School of Law, Blais decided to pursue a joint MBA and JD. “I realized that I had these gaps because I knew nothing about business. I wanted to have a baseline and to get my brain working that way,” she explains.

Blais spent her first few years out of law school in business litigation before accepting a regulatory analyst role at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) in 2010. At FINRA, she homed in on the intersection of business and law as an area

of focus and gained valuable leadership experience by participating in targeted programs, including one at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. “It was this intensive, in-the-classroom program with tests and reading and homework,” she says. “It reminded me how much I enjoy the traditional learning environment.”

The Wharton program also introduced Blais to numerous business owners, one of whom offered her a chief risk officer role out west. “I had been on the regulatory side for five years, and I was ready to help build something,” she says. “So I took the risk and moved to Utah.”

A year and a half later, Blais applied for a competitive M&A role at Adobe. “I decided to own my position as the nontraditional candidate, and I ended up getting the job,” she says. She then immediately went into what she described as “sponge mode” to get up to speed on her new M&A and corporate securities duties. “I was hungry to learn,” she says. “And the encouragement that I received to take the time to learn was absolutely invaluable.”

With Adobe’s endorsement, Blais committed to learning by doing and to digging deep into unfamiliar topics. “I kept a running list by my computer—and I still do this today—of things that I wanted to learn about,” she says. In addition to reading as much as she could, she never hesitated to reach out to a team member or outside counsel for guidance.

Today, Blais and her team oversee all of Adobe’s securities filings, draft the company’s proxy statement each year, and provide support to both the executive compensation committee and the board. “The securities calendar controls a lot of what we do,” Blais explains. “It’s pretty predictable, until an M&A deal gets thrown in on top. And then it’s about juggling and making it work.”

As a lifelong learner, Blais enjoys her role’s combination of predictable and unpredictable elements. Even the more predictable aspects, such as regularly communicating with shareholders, can evolve in parallel to changing priorities and industry developments.

Blais is currently taking her learning to the next level by obtaining a master’s degree from the Harvard University Extension School. Since Adobe provides reimbursement for education and professional development costs, Blais feels completely supported in advancing her knowledge of finance through the program. “This is an area where I want to go deeper. I am going to be a better negotiator and a better advisor if I understand the full picture,” she says.

As an extension of that attitude, Blais does her part to foster growth in members of her own team and colleagues across the company, including through a mentoring program organized by the Adobe and Women group.

I never want to stop learning. I don’t want to know just enough to be dangerous. I want to know enough to add value.

Ranked

Honoring a Great Partner, Allison Blais

“I learned the importance of having mentors very early on in my life,” she says. “Many people think of mentorship as this formal junior-senior relationship, but peer relationships and junior relationships have so much value in them too.”

bakermckenzie.com

PERKINS COIE is privileged to partner with Allison Blais and her team in providing exceptional legal counsel to Adobe.

Thank you, Allison, for your trust, commitment, and partnership.

PerkinsCoie.com

Blais plans to keep offering her services as a formal and informal mentor moving forward, just as she plans to keep engaging with peer and junior colleagues to generate fresh ideas. “I want to bring that creativity to projects and figure out how we can continue to move the needle,” she says, whether that means streamlining routine processes or modernizing Adobe’s proxy statement to reflect shareholder needs.

Of course, Blais will always carve out time to check learning objectives off her personal list— efforts that will benefit Adobe as much as herself. “I never want to stop learning,” she says. “I don’t want to know just enough to be dangerous. I want to know enough to add value.”

Perkins Coie, LLP:

“Allison Blais is a pragmatic, action-oriented legal advisor and thoughtful mentor to her team. She is an excellent partner— valuing legal advice yet always striving for solutions—and expects the same of her outside advisors.”

—Andrew Moore, Partner

DIRECTOR AND ASSOCIATE GENERAL COUNSEL, ADOBE

Allison Blais, Director and Associate General Counsel, Corporate Securities and M&A, on this well- deserved

recognition.

Baker McKenzie congratulates

Congratulates Allison Blais of Adobe on her leadership, accomplishments and recognition by Modern Counsel.

We are proud to partner with Allison and her team.

Concerto Renal Services was set to expand its dialysis services to seven new states when COVID-19 hit. Kyle Stone explains how they overcame the obstacle to provide patients with a new model of care delivery.

By Dan Caffrey

Pandemic or no pandemic, dialysis is always an essential, life-sustaining treatment. But it can also be enormously complicated, especially if a patient lives in a nursing home.

Even when laying out the logistical process in the simplest of terms, Kyle Stone—executive vice president and general counsel of Concerto Renal Services—concedes that the description is still lengthy.

“For patients at nursing homes who need dialysis, they’re going to have to be shipped to an outpatient clinic three times a week,” he says. “There will be a Medi-Car or an ambulance to pick them up. They’ll have to wait in the front lobby of their nursing facility, which could take anywhere from one minute to forty-five minutes. If they’re a certain kind of patient who requires assistance or has behavioral or psychological impairments, the nursing home will have to send a full-time employee to accompany them. Once they’re at the nearest dialysis clinic, they’ll wait in the lobby until their chair is ready. They’ll be hooked to the dialysis machine. It will take anywhere from three and a half to four hours. When they’re done, they’ll wait again until they can be shipped back to their home. It’s an exhausting and demoralizing existence.” In other words, the patient loses the whole day.

Concerto seeks to change that by providing home dialysis in a dedicated space within the patient’s facility. For patients living in a nursing home, they receive treatment on-site from Concerto’s on-site dialysis staff, then go about the rest of their day without burdensome wait times and risky transportation.

“They essentially get their lives back,” Stone says.

Like many in-house counsel, the nature of Stone’s work shifts on a day-to-day basis, but given the very specific care and service

that Concerto provides, there’s a significant focus on interacting with regulators around the country.

“When we go to a new state, it’s incumbent upon us to educate regulators, as well as senior officials of that state’s health department, so that they understand the services we bring and how it all coincides with the federal legal framework,” Stone says. “For states that have a specific licensure requirement—about half of them—they’re going to be reviewing all aspects of our business and operations before we even start treating patients. So every state is like a new adventure.”

Before Stone was hired in 2018, Concerto was only servicing nursing homes in Illinois, with designs on expanding. Since coming aboard, he’s helped lay the regulatory and legal groundwork for branching out into seven other states. Whenever he and his legal team are looking to bring Concerto’s dialysis care to a new market, they map out what needs to be done at least nine months in advance of when they aim to be fully operational.

I'm not always going to be able to slay the dragon. But knowing it's there and being able to prepare will allow us to be on much better footing.

“At the end of the day, it’s my job to understand what’s around the corner and how we’re going to deal with it,” Stone says. “I’m not always going to be able to slay the dragon. But knowing it’s there and being able to prepare will allow us to be on much better footing.”

Needless to say, the dragon around the corner in March 2020 was unique, ferocious, and unforeseeable.

At that point, Concerto had planted flags in two of their seven additional states via acquisition. But the remaining five were set to happen organically. Wisconsin was first on the docket;

clinical operations had begun and everything was in place from a regulatory standpoint. The only remaining item was the unannounced state survey, which Concerto knew was to take place by early April.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic turned the entire world on its head. By March 20, a federal memorandum had suspended all states from conducting initial certification surveys.

“That was obviously frustrating for us,” Stone says. “We were in the last two weeks of our survey window.”

Most painful of all was that Concerto provides exactly the kind of service that would benefit nursing homes in a global pandemic—a time when skilled nursing facilities everywhere were becoming hotbeds for the coronavirus, thus preventing residents and staff from going in or out. The high stakes weren’t lost on Stone, which led to him researching one last option that he was admittedly hesitant to use for certification: an accreditation organization (AO).

“AOs in this context are essentially nonprofit, nongovernmental entities that have been given authority by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to survey organizations such as our own,” Stone says. “The difference is, you have to pay them; it’s expensive and certainly not a cost we had factored in.”

But Stone had no other options. If he wanted to continue Concerto’s expansion in the age of COVID—a time when the company’s services were sorely needed—he would have to pull the trigger and go with an AO. So he did.

To his relief, the strategy not only paid off but turned out to have several benefits for Concerto.

“For one, they promise to come within thirty days, rather than the usual ninety,” Stone says, comparing AOs to the usual state surveyors. “The value of the extra sixty days or so would easily exceed the cost of paying for the accreditation services. Two, we have the same organizations’ surveyors every time, which promotes consistency and understanding. While the AO’s standards are even higher

Kyle Stone

EVP and General Counsel Concerto Renal Services

than that of the states’, we always know what to expect. COVID was a tragedy for our industry, but in some respects, it gave us the keys to getting to newer markets much faster.”

In the year plus since that initial inspection in Wisconsin, Concerto has worked with the same AO in every subsequent new state. All seven states have now been certified, with the pursuit of certification in two new states— Indiana and Missouri—taking place in the coming months, and then a slew of additional states later in 2021.

To illustrate the scope and impact of the work conducted by Concerto in a relatively short period of time, Stone shares a recent WhatsApp message from the company’s CEO, Shimon “Shimmy” Meystel, saying that in March the company dialyzed 1,031 different patients. “To think that over 1,000 people directly benefitted from what we do in a single month is incredible,” Meystel wrote.

“It serves as a reminder that doing good and doing well are complementary,” Stone says.

Running healthcare facilities means caring for a lot of moving parts, ensuring that patients, sta , clients, and property are all protected.

Worthy Insurance creates coverage plans crafted specifically to fit your healthcare needs, making sure that your healthcare facility runs e ciently and professionally.

Kitch, Drutchas, Wagner, Valitutti & Sherbrook:

“Kyle is a visionary, and his ability to focus on the big picture has been critical to the growth of Concerto. His clear communication with retained counsel promotes efficient dispute resolution.”

—Mario Cusumano,

Principal

Shaun Bean pulls from unlikely inspirations in baseball and journalism to help keep Panasonic on the cutting edge of technology

By Donald Liebenson

“

Just slightly ahead of our time.” Readers of a certain age will remember Panasonic’s iconic tagline from just over fifty years ago. The spirit of innovation, expertise, and technological competition in those five words is what brought Shaun Bean to the venerable company in 2017.

Bean is the assistant general counsel of litigation at Panasonic. The opportunity to join the company, he says, “aligned perfectly” with his desire to be “a zealous advocate,” embrace the business’s ongoing digital transformation, and convey a message to his former employer, an international law firm, that he was ready for bigger things.

“You can’t wait for life to develop,” he says. “You have to take the bull by the horns and make a move.”

Bean grew up in Queens in a small apartment with his parents, younger sister, and younger brother. He cites his parents as role models and inspirations. His father was a letter carrier, and the Post Office courier’s

motto centered on dedication personified him, Bean says. “His example instilled in me the importance of consistency.”

His mother was a law librarian. “Whenever I had a research assignment, she would take me to the library,” he says. “Once I finished the assignment, I played with the microfilm and microfiche for hours and hours. I would pick a random day and see how the Mets did.”

The franchise is “deeply embedded” in Bean’s life. The family lived less than ten minutes from the former Shea Stadium. His mother was a fan of the team since its debut in 1962. Bean identifies with the “very humble beginnings” of the team. “Growing up in Flushing, you have a little chip on your shoulder,” he says. “I look at the Mets as a major underdog who shocked the world in 1969 and 1986 (when they won the World Series). And that’s what I’m trying to do.”

As Panasonic’s assistant general counsel, Bean primarily leads litigation, handles product safety matters, and oversees the

Shaun Bean Assistant General Counsel—Litigation Panasonic Corporation of North America

legal operations team. He came to the company after a decade spent in private practice at three different firms. “I saw fertile ground to make a mark,” he says of his transition in-house.

In addition to admiring the company’s history, work ethic, and commitment to giving back to the community, Bean contends that he was eager to be a part of Panasonic’s mandate to remake itself into a full-solution company, where the model is focused more on service, software, and analytics, in addition to its consumer products.

“Now it’s more about being the technology behind the technology,” Bean says. “If you get into a car, it might have a Panasonic infotainment system powering your vehicle’s cool tech, but you would not necessarily see the company’s name.”

A key cutting-edge partnership is with Tesla. Panasonic provides the company with the battery cells for its electric vehicles. “It’s a fascinating dynamic between a more than century-old Japanese company and what was a Silicon Valley start-up,” he says.

Though Panasonic has been around more than a hundred years, Bean notes that its former slogan is just as relevant today. “Some of our emerging technologies are more than just slightly ahead of their time,” he explains.

“We’re partnering with various departments of transportation around the country, basically connecting vehicles

Kevin Leonard

and intelligent roadways that should change the way people drive and think about safety on the road. We also have in-flight entertainment systems that will make you forget you’re sitting in the middle seat.”

Bean came to the law by way of journalism. He worked for the Boston Herald during and after college. He did man-on-the-street interviews on the Boston Red Sox beat and covered Boston University hockey before transferring to the business and finance section of the paper.

“The skill set for journalism is very similar to what you need to be an effective attorney,” he says. “There is so much research and writing that goes into a story. You have to sift through and distill a mound of information—90 percent of which won’t make it into what you’re writing, but it’s still helpful background.”

He took personal inspiration from writing the profiles as well as the newspaper’s professional announce-

ments feature. He’d read about someone being elevated to partner and thought, “I like covering these individuals, but let’s take a whack at making the news myself.”

This he did in 2020, when New Jersey business journal NJBIZ awarded Bean its In-House Legal Star Award. And in July 2020, he was named Volunteer of the Month by Volunteer Lawyers for Justice (VLJ). “My very first day at Panasonic, a member of the legal department invited me to participate in a VLJ veterans legal wellness clinic,” Bean says. “I jumped on it because both of my grandfathers were WWII vets.

“When I was in law school, I helped one of my grandfathers with his paperwork because he was not getting all the veteran benefits to which he was entitled,” he continues. “It was a simple solution, but one that he would not have arrived at if not for someone with legal training giving him guidance. We

Global Trusted Legal and Business Advisers

McGuireWoods knows only a collaboration of bright minds and different viewpoints can create the innovative solutions our clients need in today’s marketplace.

We congratulate Shaun Bean for his leadership, insight and support as General Counsel of Panasonic. We value the partnership that has been built and the trust Shaun has placed with our firm.

We’re partnering with various departments of transportation around the country, basically connecting vehicles and intelligent roadways that should change the way people drive and think about safety on the road.

We Value What You Value

sit down with veterans every three or four months and talk to them about their legal issues. They are so appreciative, and the feeling is mutual. I am so appreciative of what they’ve done for the country.”

Bean says that the legal department and his team are playing a pivotal role in Panasonic’s evolution. “If you ask the average Joe on the street what’s powering Panasonic nowadays,” he says with a laugh, “I don’t think anyone would say the legal department, but my colleagues and I are working behind the scenes, trying to change the traditional mindset business has had, where legal is considered the ‘department of no.’ We are working to get to ‘yes.’”

Boies Schiller Flexner LLP:

“Shaun is one of the smartest attorneys I know, being able to quickly adapt and solve problems. Shaun is definitely destined for greatness. It is always a pleasure to work with him.”

—Mark C. Mao, Partner

Chamberlain Hrdlicka:

“Shaun is an engaged and proactive partner, always offering suggestions that add tremendous value to the work we do for Panasonic. He has the unique ability to anticipate next steps and plan ahead, allowing him to be pragmatic yet fearless.”

–Seth Price, Shareholder, Construction Litigation practice

Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP:

“Shaun is a savvy and smart in-house counsel who consistently treats outside counsel with the utmost respect and professionalism. He also adds tremendous value and knows how to cut to the heart of the matter.”

– David Yohai, Litigation Partner and Former Cohead of Commercial Litigation

Weil is proud to partner with Shaun Bean and the rest of the Panasonic legal team and congratulates him on this well-deserved recognition.

Tim Millett’s path to PNC was far from direct, but he couldn’t be happier about his journey or where he’s ended up

By Lindsey Lubowitz

Tim Millett loves his life: his family, his city, and especially his job as deputy general counsel for employment at PNC. He chose Pittsburgh as the place he wanted to raise his family before accepting a job at PNC’s headquarters there, and he’s now called both home for more than twenty years.

While the better part of his career has been spent at PNC, Millett believes the path that led him to his current role is equally important. He credits much of his success with the company to previous roles that inspired his love for labor and employment law.

Millett knew during law school that he was most interested in pursuing labor and employment law, because it allowed him to focus on working directly with people. “One of the best things about being an employment lawyer is that, although you do a lot of litigation, you also get the opportunity to interface with and advise clients at an early stage of your career,” Millett says.

While attending Brigham Young University Law School, Millett accepted a job with the law firm Seyfarth Shaw in

Los Angeles—but then an opportunity was presented to him that he couldn’t turn down. During his third year in law school, a federal judge offered Millett a clerkship position, and the firm agreed to let him delay his start date so that he could take it.

He spent the next year as a clerk in Las Vegas. “It was probably the most intense and interesting job experience of my life,” Millett reflects.

He did eventually return to his original path, working in labor and employment law for Seyfarth Shaw, then Kindel & Anderson, another private firm in Los Angeles. Then came a job offer to work with the US Senate, an opportunity that Millet sees as a defining moment of his career.

“Four years into my private practice experience, I accepted a position as employment counsel with the Senate,” the deputy GC says. “In the wake of the Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill hearings, Congress was now subject to labor and employment laws that the rest of the country had lived under for many years.” He was up for the challenge.

In this role, Millett provided legal defense to Senate offices and helped them get up to speed on labor and employment laws that they hadn’t had to follow before. He moved to Washington, DC, where he ended up working for the public sector for nearly seven years.

“It wasn’t a partisan job; it was like being in a law firm in that you had a large number of sophisticated and great

Tim Millett Deputy General Counsel for Employment

clients, but on both sides of the political aisle,” Millett says.

Millett describes his time in DC as very exciting—it may have helped that he met the woman who’d become his wife there—but he always knew that it wouldn’t be permanent. After he married and started a family, he thought Pittsburgh would be a better fit.

Millett spent nearly sixteen years as senior counsel for employment at PNC before being promoted to deputy general counsel five years ago. He’s responsible for the bank’s labor and employment law compliance, but his role entails much more than that.

“Navigating compliance with a myriad of employment laws is just the floor; the ceiling is doing so in a way

that truly maximizes employee and company performance,” Millett says. Working directly with PNC’s human resources and business managers gives him the opportunity to improve people’s lives and careers, and he has made it his mission to do so.

Millett also appreciates PNC’s commitment to giving back to the community and recently served as chair of its pro bono committee. “We have a very robust program where a large number of our attorneys get involved in pro bono,” he says. “And it’s not specifically focused on one particular cause or organization. We allow our attorneys to bring all kinds of service opportunities to the table so they can make a difference in areas they’re passionate about.”

One of Millett’s favorite organizations to give back to is Guardian Angels Medical Service Dogs, a nonprofit that trains and pairs medical service dogs with disabled veterans and first responders. Millett has helped PNC sponsor and manage fundraising activities for Guardian Angels as well as a clinic that provides insight into laws surrounding service animals.

As for his routine at work, Millett says, it’s impossible to know what each day will bring—and that’s what he loves about it. He spends most of his time on the phone or in one-on-one conversations, talking through strategic issues and dealing with any employee problems that arise.

“The great thing about employment law is that it’s a reflection of the human experience,” he says. “People are wonderful, but they’re also incredibly complex and unpredictable. You never know what your schedule or day is going to be like—and that’s both good and a real challenge.”

Seyfarth is proud to partner with Tim, PNC’s Deputy General Counsel, and salutes him upon his recognition by Modern Counsel. We look forward to supporting Tim and his colleagues in 2021 and beyond.

www.seyfarth.com

The great thing about employment law is that it’s a reflection of the human experience. People are wonderful, but they’re also incredibly complex and unpredictable.

Jennifer Rote credits much of her success to three influential women in her life. At TGI Fridays, she strives to show that same leadership to her legal team.

By Dan Caffrey

Sometimes it takes someone on the outside looking in to show us our own potential. Just ask Jennifer Rote of TGI Fridays.

As senior vice president and general counsel of the iconic restaurant chain, she strives to create a workplace environment where agency and acknowledgement play a vital role in inspiring employees to be the best versions of themselves. As Rote explains, this is essential given the lean size of her legal team and the immense scope of their work— more than 160 corporate-owned stores with more than a thousand licenses and permits to maintain.

“If you come to me with a question, my question back is, ‘What do you think we should do?’” Rote says. “Nine out of ten times, they know. But they need someone to give them the thumbs-up. I try to be that person. It’s important that, as a leader, I’m always trusting and supporting them.”

Rote explains that there are seemingly minor, everyday gestures that can go a long way toward empowering an employee. For instance, if TGI Fridays’ CEO Ray Blanchette comes to Rote with a question and she sends one of her paralegals to find an answer, she makes sure to give them credit when reporting back. Likewise, if she hears one of her team members get praised during a call with TGI Fridays’ executive leadership, she always relays that message to them afterward.

“It’s important that employees hear that their names were said by executive leadership,

even in those small group settings,” Rote says. “Recognition alone can be inspiring.”

Rote has experienced the power of recognition and having someone who believes in you firsthand at TGI Fridays. When she first arrived at the company in 2004, she was an attorney focused on real estate matters and would never have believed she could ascend to the position she’s in today. Then she met Leslie Sharman.

“Leslie was the company’s general counsel when I started,” Rote says. “She was also the first strong female boss I’d ever had. At that point, most of our leadership was male, and she was just this really smart and tough presence. She made it clear that there was no difference between her and any of the guys. It was informative for me to see her dynamic with them.”

While Sharman taught Rote how crucial it was to speak up and assert herself in the

It’s important that employees hear that their names were said by executive leadership. Recognition alone can be inspiring.

Jennifer Rote SVP and General Counsel

Fridays

workplace, it was a second mentor who eventually inspired her to pursue a GC role.

“Kathryn Kotel was my boss from 2009 to 2017,” Rote says. “She’s the mentor who looks at you and says ‘This is what I think you can do, but this is what I know you can do.’”

At the time, Rote had convinced herself that she was satisfied with where she was. She wasn’t even sure if she had the necessary experience or could handle the workload of being general counsel. But Kotel encouraged her to take on new areas of the law and eventually pursue the position.

“She said, ‘I see something in you that I don’t think you see in yourself,’” Rote remembers. “She knew that would help me develop into becoming general counsel, and when she retired, that’s where I ended up.”

There’s one last strong female mentor whom Rote credits with helping her to get to where she is today—someone who was actually her first role model.

“It’s mom,” Rote says. “As a kid, she always worked full-time, but I didn’t really know what she did. I knew that she went to an office every day, and when she came home, she was there. She didn’t talk about work. She didn’t vent about work. She attended every sports event that my brother, sister, and I had, which was a lot.”

Rote later found out that, like her own future self, her mother held an integral role at a restaurant company in the Dallas area— she was the chief financial officer for the homestyle cooking chain Grandy’s. Today, Rote credits her with proving that a successful work/life balance is possible, even at the executive level. She’s made it a point to make

If you come to me with a question, my question back is, ‘What do you think we should do?’ Nine out of ten times, they know.

TGI

plenty of time for her own family, whether it’s traveling with her husband or attending her son’s football games at Northwestern Oklahoma State University.

Rote has emphasized the importance of work/life balance to her legal team as well, especially while dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic this past year.

“We talk a lot on our team about everyone’s mental and physical health,” Rote says. “It’s all about checking in and asking people how they’re doing. ‘How’s your workload? Can we take anything off your plate?’”

Even in nonpandemic times, a healthy work/life balance is essential, as are the other lessons Rote has learned from the mentors in her life. And at TGI Fridays, the inspiring leaders who helped her get to where she is today have also allowed her to become a leader who’s now focused on empowering others.

Jackson Lewis P.C.:

“Jennifer is not only strategic, smart, and practical but also creative and has a good sense of humor—everything you could ask for when working with an in-house counsel.”

—Jeffrey Brecher, Principal

By Natalie Kochanov

Richa Himani grew up in India watching women in her family defy the traditional gender roles that many members of Indian society still adhered to. Her mother, in particular, instilled in Himani a fearlessness and a persistence that she continues to embody.

“My mother is my greatest champion,” Himani says. “She has been an inspiration to me, and I owe so much of who I am today to her.”

Himani has climbed high in her career: she currently serves as managing director and assistant general counsel of commercial transactions at United Airlines, a leader in the airline industry. Beyond her professional achievements, Himani also makes a concerted effort to lift up others in her community—even as the scope of her work at United has expanded.

Himani moved from India to the United States at age sixteen with her mother and brother. The family settled in Houston, where Himani has spent most of

her life. After considering careers in journalism and accounting, Himani turned to law—a choice motivated by her grandfather’s legal work back in India. “I had seen him helping people in his practice, albeit in a totally different field than what I do today,” she explains.

At first, Himani specialized in tax policy matters, but she quickly transitioned to real estate law. From 2003 to 2008, she practiced at Texas real estate firm Roberts Markel Weinberg Butler Hailey PC. Although she made partner at the firm and received tremendous opportunities there, she decided to shift directions around the time of her first pregnancy. “I realized that I could go work for a company that I really admired,” she says. “That company was Continental Airlines, and I’ve never looked back.”

Himani joined Continental in 2008 as a corporate real estate attorney supporting the company’s airport and commercial office space lease negotiations.

Richa Himani merges legal leadership with community service, both at United Airlines and in her local Houston community

Only two years into her tenure, however, everything changed. Continental was merging with United, and Himani had a significant role to play.

“I was tasked with coleading the due diligence efforts for the merger,” Himani explains. “There was enormous pressure to move at a fast pace yet perform in-depth due diligence. It was one of the most challenging projects of my career—and one of the most rewarding.”

Her contributions to the merger, culminating in a presentation of the due diligence findings to Continental’s executive team, took Himani’s confidence to new heights. She has since risen from senior attorney to her current role, which encompasses public finance and commercial transactions, and leading lawyers on her team who handle sales, procurement, loyalty and marketing, cargo, catering, and technical operations for the airline—all on top of corporate real estate, her initial area of focus. “Some of these areas are still new to me,” she admits. “But I look at it as an opportunity to learn.”

The airline industry has also seen significant changes over the years. “Passengers no longer simply expect airlines to take them safely and efficiently from Point A to Point B. They also expect us to help them stay connected,” Himani says. She adds that United has remained at the forefront of implementing new technologies to enhance both the company’s operations and the customer experience.

Beyond increasing in-flight connectivity and entertainment options, United believes in a future of sustainable aviation and emphasizes diversity, equity, and inclusion at all levels of the business. “We’re committed to creating a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture and creating an inclusive experience for the customers we serve, with dignity and respect at the forefront of everything we do,” Himani says. “I am extremely proud of the work we are doing on this front; it’s wonderful to see.”

Richa Himani Managing Director and Associate General Counsel of Commercial Transactions United Airlines

SIDLEY CONGRATULATES RICHA HIMANI

MANAGING DIRECTOR AND ASSISTANT GENERAL COUNSEL AT UNITED AIRLINES

on her recognition by Modern Counsel.

We are grateful to have partnered with Richa and her team on many important matters and we thank her for sharing her talents with the firm.

For her part, Himani has demonstrated a commitment to investing in underserved communities that echoes both the values of United and the ones she learned in her own upbringing. Through her leadership of pro bono activities at the company’s Houston office, she has fought to protect groups ranging from women in need to local veterans. In addition, she spotlights influential diverse women as a women’s leadership series committee member for the Texas branch of Asia Society, an education-centric nonprofit. Himani is passionate about helping other immigrants make a life in the United States. “I’m fortunate to be able to use my legal skills to provide assistance to those who can’t afford representation during the immigration journey,” she says. The fact that she is giving back to Houston, the diverse city where she herself found success, makes her community impact all the more meaningful to her.

As she continues to build a stronger Houston and a stronger United, Himani continues to look to the women in her family for inspiration. “I’ve had many female role models, who have not only been influential in my career but also in driving my commitment to the community,” she says. “They taught me that barriers are erected to test our grit.”

Whether trailblazing professionals or community organizers, those women showed Himani long ago how to transform challenges into opportunities. She doesn’t plan to forget that lesson anytime soon.

I’ve had many female role models, who have not only been influential in my career but also in driving my commitment to the community. They taught me that barriers are erected to test our grit.

Lead

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

Leading with Transparency

At Clearlake Capital, Fred Ebrahemi is working to evolve the private equity firm’s digital tools in the name of security, transparency, and diversity, equity, and inclusion

By Dan Caffrey

Portraits by Philip Cheung

Fred Ebrahemi Partner, COO, and General Counsel

Clearlake Capital

CLEARLAKE CAPITAL IS LOCATED IN downtown Santa Monica, so close to the beach that you can look down on the Pacific Coast’s white sand and crystal blue water from the office windows. For Fred Ebrahemi, a partner at the private equity firm as well as chief operating officer and general counsel, the view is a far cry from what he saw in his first jobs.

“I spent [enough] time staring at blank walls as a junior associate to be able to really appreciate this,” he says with a laugh.

In his youth, Ebrahemi spent years working at restaurants owned by his parents, who immigrated to the United States from Iran. His first job was, in his words, assistant to the dishwasher. “I would start loading the dish racks before putting them in because the machine was too hot for a kid to handle,” Ebrahemi says. “I earned a few bucks a shift and worked my way up to waiter.”

Technically speaking, Ebrahemi’s legal career started around this time as well—albeit in a very unconventional manner. Because his parents were running a family-owned business, they had to deal with various landlords regarding lease renewals, tenant improvements, vendor disputes, HR issues, and other matters that usually come with running a family business. If his father couldn’t make sense of, say, an eighty-page commercial agreement, he would have the younger Ebrahemi read it and offer advice.

“I didn’t really understand any of it at the time,” Ebrahemi says. “But my dad didn’t hire lawyers. No one in our family did. So I was doing a lot of pro bono work as a teenager, years before I received my JD.”

Obviously, Ebrahemi has moved up in the legal profession since then. He had a traditional start as an associate at Hughes Hubbard & Reed in New York after graduation, then migrated west to Morrison Foerster in Palo Alto following the digital gold rush that was the dot-com boom. He gained start-up operational experience as

investors, counterparties, and regulatory agencies prompted Ebrahemi and his colleagues to reexamine Clearlake’s legacy document management system for data collection, storage, access, and reporting. As a result, they now have implemented several systems that can run multiple data queries across their portfolio in real time, with AI capabilities embedded in their document management system.

“The solutions we’ve integrated allow for access-level controls down to the subfolder level, with the added ability to pull data across the portfolio revenue data from

president and general counsel of NINJA Mobile before embarking on a six-year stint as senior vice president and general counsel at the global M&A&O firm Platinum Equity. But his most ambitious position yet is undoubtedly his current one at Clearlake: a company with more than ten funds, thirty-plus portfolio companies across the globe, and more than $35 billion in assets under management, making it one of the largest private equity firms in the world.

Because Ebrahemi’s job is twofold, his duties are as expansive as one would expect. One of his highest priorities over the past four years has been evolving the digital tools used by the firm’s operations teams. For instance, the perpetually dynamic reporting and disclosure requirements to

nearly every country our portfolio companies operate in,” Ebrahemi says.

Of course, it isn’t just about examining data internally: the GC and his team also focus on safely and securely sharing information with the appropriate third parties.

“For example, if we're working with our M&A counsel on a transaction, we might want to take just a segment of the portfolio company data files and share that,” Ebrahemi says. “We also have complimentary solutions where on a post-M&A basis we can use solutions for NetDocuments and Diligent Entities (both Clearlake portfolio companies) to share legal files and D&O corporate governance information with both external counsel and our portfolio companies. Effectively, we can centralize

“If you look around the firm, we're over 65 percent diverse. If you limit just to historically defined minorities alone, we're about 50 percent.”

and keep control of who’s accessing our data and have an audit trail for changes made. Ultimately, that means we need to have our own policies and standard operating procedures in place for how employees are setting up the different shared file folders and what our protocol is for sharing it.”

Ebrahemi’s dedication hasn’t gone unnoticed by his colleagues outside of Clearlake. “Fred’s unwavering commitment to excellence is inspiring,” says Nicole Washington, investment funds partner at Kirkland & Ellis. “A thoughtful strategist, he thinks ahead and around corners with creative and practical judgment. He is always a pleasure to work with—technically brilliant and exceptionally hard-working. On top of it all, Fred is an exemplary leader who cares about his team, Clearlake, and the larger community.”

Marco Masotti, partner and global cohead of the private funds group at Paul, Weiss, agrees. “Fred is a wonderful, thoughtful client who I feel truly proud to partner with,” he says. “Fred’s passion, deep industry experience, and

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creative approach to problem-solving are apparent in everything he does. It’s been exciting to see what he has already accomplished at Clearlake, and I know there are more great things to come under his leadership.”

Some parts of Ebrahemi’s job aren’t rooted in digital tools and financial performance at all, but social impact. Although the term environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) has been circulating for more than fifteen years in the world of investment, it’s becoming a bigger cornerstone for many firms as issues such as the climate crisis and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) become more widely discussed and prioritized around the world.

“We’re especially interested in how our portfolio companies are doing on DEI,” Ebrahemi says. “How much of what Clearlake is mandating from the top is getting done on a real basis? We're using data and analytical tools in many different ways on this front— to organize the legal process, report to our investors, and encourage certain behavior in the portfolio companies. If you know you have to report up and out, you're going to pay a lot more attention to what you're doing. We're going to be able to see how well our portfolio companies are doing against their peers. Are they leaders in DEI or are they still playing catchup? We want transparency for us at the board and operating level as well as for our investors.”

Clearlake isn’t just holding their portfolio companies to these standards because it’s on trend—they’ve been holding themselves to the same standards since the company’s inception. Its founders, José E. Feliciano and Behdad Eghbali, are Puerto

“We're especially interested in how our portfolio companies are doing on DEI. How much of what Clearlake is mandating from the top is getting done on a real basis?”

Rican and Iranian, respectively, and have always sought to attract diverse talent. It’s part of why Ebrahemi was drawn to Clearlake in the first place; it was one of the first places where he saw extremely talented executives who were making an impact in the alternative asset space, both financially and socially.

“The credit goes to our founders,” he says. "If you look around the firm, we're over 65 percent diverse. If you limit just to historically defined minorities alone, we're about 50 percent.”

One area Ebrahemi says Clearlake can improve in is hiring women at the senior executive and board level. That’s why the firm turned to their portfolio to partner with the modern governance company Diligence Corporation on Modern Leadership—an initiative designed to get more women and minorities on the boards of public and private companies. One of the most notable aspects of Modern Leadership is its network. With nearly seven hundred thousand board directors and leaders across

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Paul, Weiss attorneys bring diverse perspectives and innovative ideas to every matter. We work collaboratively with the world’s leading companies, as well as individuals and organizations in need of pro bono assistance. Together, we navigate complex legal and business challenges.

sixteen thousand organizations, executives are collaborating to build a database of diverse talent that will be searchable for free with the Diligent app. Leaders within the network are also contributing individually.

“You’ll see that our founders (with charitable arms) are giving money to empower minority-owned and operated businesses,” Ebrahemi says. “A lot of what they’re doing at the firm level, they’re doing at a personal level as well.”

For Clearlake, Modern Leadership is just one of many tools to foster a diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment at the office. It’s a way to ensure that employees from all sorts of different backgrounds get to gaze out those windows at the picturesque scenery below.

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Simpson Thacher:

“At Simpson Thacher, we have had the pleasure of working closely with Fred Ebrahemi for many years. He is a fantastic lawyer who has a great sense of each transaction and really helps drive the deal forward.”

–Tom Wuchenich, Partner

As an immigrant and woman of color, Stacy Raphael Stewart has had to overcome significant challenges in her career. At Coty, she works to provide opportunities for other people like her.

By Billy Yost

Mind the Gap

STACY RAPHAEL STEWART’S COLLEGE ADMISsion story is an unusual one. A native of Trinidad and Tobago, she migrated to the United States during her first years of high school—which is a bit unusual in itself, since she’d tested out of middle school completely through firm advocacy by her parents and was a freshman at age twelve.

Stewart returned to Trinidad during high school but wanted to get back to the US for her college education, so she attended a college fair to look at options. The director of international affairs from South Carolina State University took one look at her transcripts, awards, and SAT scores and made her a proposal: if she agreed to sit at the SCSU booth for the day and talk to other prospec-

tive students, she would earn herself a full ride to the historically Black college.

Also, she had to bring the recruiter a Snickers bar. Stewart took the deal.

Getting into college was the easy part, though. Stewart would have to learn to navigate a country that made her feel like an outsider, even while attending historically Black colleges like South Carolina State and, later, Howard University.

“There were so many cultural leanings and understandings I just wasn’t privy to,” Stewart explains. “No matter how much I could excel academically, I never really became culturally clued in from the change from Trinidad to the US. I could do the work, but how could I relate to the

pop culture, sports, movies, and music conversations that are such an ingrained part of the culture here?”

Stewart is now associate general counsel and intellectual property attorney for the beauty company Coty, managing IP matters for well-known brands like CoverGirl, Sally Hansen, Adidas, Kylie Jenner Beauty, and Kim Kardashian Beauty, among others. But despite excelling in school and her early career, for many years she was left feeling like a fish out of water.

During one of her first stints as an attorney, Stewart met lifelong friends and got her first real law experience. But she also had one of the worst encounters of her career with a senior associate and future partner.

“I was made to feel like I had no right to be in my position,” Stewart remembers. “Even though I was a person who had done so much to get to this current moment, I was belittled and spoken down to like I didn’t deserve this opportunity.”

The experience caused Stewart to leave what she believed at the time was her dream job. She spent a little over a year on her own before being hired at the firm Cantor Colburn. The difference between this job and her previous position was night and day, and she says that Pete Hagerty, managing partner at the Atlanta office, made an immediate impact.

“This amazing man would ask me questions about who I was and where I came from,” Stewart says. “We had a discussion about my ambition and what coming to the US meant to me. He supported me and continues to support me. Up to that point, I thought my law career was over.”

The year on her own and her new job caused Stewart to recalibrate the way she looked at her life experiences. She had endeavored to become a lawyer no one could turn down. She read everything related to IP that she could get her hands on, including entire court cases—complaints, motions, and all.

“When I came to Cantor Colburn, they asked how a newly minted lawyer already knew so much,” Stewart says, laughing. “It was because

Raphael Stewart Associate General Counsel – Trademarks, Consumer Beauty & Brand Protection, North America Coty

Stacy

Cantor Colbur n congratulates S TAC Y S T EWA RT on her leadership and contributions to the legal profession

in that gap period, I decided to use my time to stretch myself as much as I possibly could.”

Despite her extensive knowledge, though, Stewart has struggled with self-doubt at times, especially when she has to speak publicly and is hyperaware of her accent. “I have to say to myself, ‘You are capable, you are capable, you are capable.’ And this is something that happens a lot for people of color,” she says.

Stewart’s doubts and fears have helped shape her philosophy on life: she likens moving forward into an uncertain future to stepping off a train car. “In Europe, they say ‘mind the gap’ when you step off [the train]. There are those spaces that you just have to leap over. It can be terrifying, but just prepare yourself the best you possibly can and go for it.”

At Coty, Stewart has endeavored to help her company take a more active role in providing opportunities for people like her. “We would love to see more female leadership on our board, women and men of color in leadership positions, and my voice has been supported here,” Stewart says. She speaks highly of Coty General Counsel Kristin Blazewicz and the bond they have formed.

She now hopes that more law leaders will recognize the value that diversity brings. “I can’t stress enough what it means to have a leader who’s willing to talk about the elephant in the room. Most often, that is race and cultural differences,” she says. “If you feel that your voice is heard and that you have a safe space to offer up what may seem like crazy ideas—and I think my crazy ideas are my superpower—then you create this richness that leads to the best possible outcomes.”

“There are those spaces that you just have to leap over. It can be terrifying, but just prepare yourself the best you possibly can and go for it.”

Perseverance and Adaptability

Janelle Carter Anderson’s career has evolved over the years as she’s explored a wide variety of legal roles. Her flexibility and drive, combined with considerable experience, have led her to the Heico Companies.

By Frederick Jerant

SOME PEOPLE CHOOSE A LAW CAREER because of a mentor’s influence or family tradition. For Janelle Carter Anderson, vice president and general counsel for the Applied Solutions Group of the Heico Companies, television was her inspiration. "Growing up, I used to watch a lot of law and crime dramas with dramatic courtroom scenes. The lawyers got involved in all aspects of the case, solved the mystery, and became a dramatic hero,” Anderson recalls. “As a child, that was the initial draw.”

Over time, she came to see the law as a tool to attain justice or solve problems. By the time Anderson entered law school, she was drawn to civil rights law, taking her cues from both Marian Wright Edelman, who founded the Children’s Defense Fund, and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. She earned her JD from Georgetown University. “It was a wonderful choice for

me,” she says. “Georgetown is a large law school that offered a broad array of extracurriculars and classes—many of which were taught by legal practitioners in the nation’s capital. I had the ability to explore the areas of law that resonated with me as an individual beyond the foundational legal education.”

Anderson began her career as a law clerk to US District Court Judge Julian A. Cook Jr., followed by three years with the firm Winston & Strawn. “My practice at Winston was a great learning experience for me,” she says. “I was involved in nearly every type of commercial litigation, from claims of patent infringement to breach of contract to tax disputes and white-collar crime.”

She then joined class action law firm Mehri & Skalet. “We worked on the plaintiff’s side in class actions, particularly in the areas of civil rights and consumer rights protection,” she says.

After focusing on litigation for the first seven years of her legal career, Anderson wanted to broaden her expertise and took an opportunity to go in-house at Chicago State University. There, she was one of two attorneys for the university and enjoyed a broad range of responsibilities expanding beyond litigation.

It was in that role where Anderson found that her best fit is in-house. “I really enjoy being part of the business and working collaboratively with cross-functional teams to solve problems and mitigate risks,” she says. After a few years at the university, she moved on to a role as counsel to two business units of Adtalem Global Education, formerly known as DeVry Education Group, and was later promoted to chief litigation and employment counsel.

Interestingly, her first experience with the Heico Companies began in July

2019, more than a year before she was permanently hired. She served as interim general counsel for the company’s Ancra (now Applied Solutions) Group for a few months while the GC was on medical leave, then moved on to law firm Husch Blackwell when he returned. “When the Applied Solutions Group’s GC left the company in 2020, I was offered the position and accepted,” she says.

Starting a new gig during a pandemic can be tough, but Anderson’s previous interim job with the company eased her transition. “I had the benefit of my prior experience and had already begun building relationships with my key business partners,” she recalls. Those partners are spread across nineteen companies in the Applied Solutions Group and across four verticals, which provide solutions in cargo, electronic/thermal applications, metal, and recycling. (The Heico Companies maintains three other groups, each with a dedicated president and general counsel.)

Still, the effects of the pandemic did not make Anderson’s transition into her role easy. “I joined the company in October and immediately jumped in to manage a number of challenges,” she says. Product demand took off, there were supply chain issues, and, overall, COVID had a serious impact on the employee base. “I found that I could make an immediate impact simply by getting stuff done for my business partners,” she says.

Anderson’s duties include providing strategic counsel to those companies, including counsel on contract drafting and negotiations, intellectual property, acquisitions, operations, compliance, labor and employment, and litigation. Juggling all those needs isn’t always easy, but Anderson sets out to first understand the business goal, and then works collaboratively with her business partners to reach creative solutions.

She also cultivates efficiency and proactively mitigates risk by educating her business partners. “In every legal matter there is an opportunity to help my internal clients better understand how to manage risk.”

She doesn’t do it all alone. “I have a fantastic set of colleagues with whom I can gut-check many of the legal issues that arise,” she says. And because the operating companies in the Applied Solutions Group are active in countries across North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and the Asia-Pacific region, Anderson often seeks outside counsel to advise on the law of those

Anderson VP and General Counsel, Applied Solutions Group The Heico Companies

Courtesy of the Heico Companies

Janelle Carter

jurisdictions. The Heico Companies’ long-standing relationship with a few law firms has been an asset when complex matters arise involving corporate, intellectual property, employment, and litigation.

Anderson is passionate about mentoring young attorneys and law students. “I’ve been intentional about this for the past few years,” she says. “I help them work their way through situations, encourage them in their relationship building, and simply act as a sounding board for ideas and concerns. I’ve had many mentors, friends, and supporters do that for me throughout my career.”

Her approach to career success involves both perseverance and adaptability. “Take on new challenges and embrace opportunities for growth, whether within or outside of your current role or organization,” she advises. “You’ll build out your skill set, find where your strengths and interests truly are, and in some cases, go in a different direction than you’d first intended. But once you’ve determined your goal, pursue it relentlessly and take advantage of opportunities as they arise.”

From National to International Law

Stefan Mallen has made the jump to a global law practice at Emerson Electric and enjoys learning the intricacies of litigation in other countries

By Donald Liebenson

STEFAN MALLEN ENJOYS TRAVELING INTERNAtionally and learning about different countries, so it’s only natural that he ended up in a global law practice. Mallen is the associate general counsel for litigation and arbitration at Emerson Electric; he manages cases within the global company’s worldwide litigation portfolio, which includes product liability, commercial disputes, and intellectual property. He manages trials, appeals, mediations, arbitrations, and also works with company and expert witnesses. He is also involved with several litigation defense organizations, including the Product Liability Advisory Council (PLAC) and the US Chamber Litigation Center.

While Mallen enjoys traveling—his father once owned a travel agency—he always knew he wanted to pursue a career outside the travel industry. The law beckoned, he says.

“I took school seriously and I learned from a young age about the importance of organization, prioritization, and responsiveness,” he says. “While at the University of Michigan, I covered football, basketball, and hockey for the student television

station, which enabled me to develop my public speaking skills.”

The odds of actually getting into sports broadcasting seemed low, he says, and while he enjoyed his undergraduate business classes, he didn’t believe a life on Wall Street would be fulfilling. “I just felt there was something more.”

His interest in the law was piqued by portrayals of its practitioners in the movies and on TV. He cites the classic courtroom drama A Few Good Men as one of his favorites: that iconic confrontation between Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson made a strong impression. “I’ve had nothing happen to me in the courtroom to rival, ‘I want the truth!’” he says with a laugh. “But every now and then you get that good nugget you’re looking for, and that’s very rewarding.”

During law school, Mallen worked as a summer associate at Bryan Cave, an international law firm based in St. Louis with more than 1,400 attorneys, then returned to the firm as a product liability litigator after he graduated. “I had a national practice and litigated cases from coast to coast,” he says.

Stefan Mallen Associate General Counsel for Litigation & Arbitration Emerson Electric

Initially, his goals were modest. “I wanted to make it through the first year and learn as much as I could about the practice of law,” he says. He did much more than that: Mallen spent sixteen years with the law firm, which is now Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, and made partner. “I had no plans to leave, but the opportunity to join Emerson’s litigation group was too good to pass up,” he says. “The ability to lead cases and make critical decisions was very appealing to me.”

Mallen credits Bryan Cave for his “excellent training and experience” in all facets of litigation, with an emphasis on preparing high-stakes cases for trial. “I was part of numerous trial teams and had an opportunity to practice with some of the top trial lawyers and defense experts in the country,” he says.

Emerson is also based in St. Louis (Mallen himself is a native of Chesterfield, a St. Louis suburb). “Emerson has always had a stellar reputation, particularly in the St. Louis community,” Mallen says. “If I was going to leave Bryan Cave and go in-house, it would have to be with a well-established and highly successful company.”

At Emerson, Mallen went from having a national practice to a global one, managing cases in Canada, Europe, Asia, and South America. “I really enjoy learning about laws and legal practices that are unique to certain areas,” he says. “While there are similarities to US litigation, there are also many differences. For example, most jurisdictions outside the US do not have depositions or jury trials. The evidence process is more limited in terms of what you can discover from the other side.”

One unique difference, Mallen says, is in Russia, where if you face a lawsuit, you often just submit papers that set forth your defense and have a hearing. “Just like

that, the judge will decide,” Mallen says. And in certain parts of Canada, the burden of proof is on the defendant to disprove the plaintiff’s case.

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At Husch Blackwell, client relationships are our highest priority. We take pride in our longstanding relationship with Stefan Mallen, Associate General Counsel, and are pleased to partner with him to deliver legal insight and business leadership to

focus. client Emerson Electric.

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In addition to his litigation work, Mallen is helping open doors for the next generation of lawyers by serving as the leader of Emerson’s legal summer internship program. “Emerson is very committed to diversity,” he says. “The goal is to give the interns an opportunity to learn what life is like as an in-house attorney and to gain experience in our different practice areas. In respect to litigation, it is important to have many different voices and opinions heard.”

The newest chapter in Mallen’s career is his coauthorship (with California-based lawyer Thomas Case) of the latest edition of Designing an Effective Products Liability Program . Published by Thomas Reuters, this book is aimed at helping manufacturers, distributors, attorneys, managers, and engineers design and manufacture safe products, while complying with the law and avoiding liability.

From litigation and mentorship to working on his first book, Mallen considers himself “very fortunate” to have such an interesting and diverse workload. “No two days here are the same,” he says. “It’s challenging but fun.”

“The opportunity to join Emerson’s litigation group was too good to pass up. The ability to lead cases and make critical decisions was very appealing to me.”

By the Book

Brendan Gardiner applies his experience as both an educator and an attorney to tackle his dual role at Archer Daniels Midland

By Natalie Kochanov

WHEN COMPARING TEACHING TO practicing law, some people might see only differences. Brendan Gardiner, however, chooses to focus on the similarities between his former field and his current one.

“What struck me when I started law school were the parallels between teaching and the law,” Gardiner explains. “Both are built on the same foundational elements: an intellectual curiosity to learn something new, a desire to deconstruct complex issues, and an ability to communicate those issues in a clear and engaging way.”

Gardiner readily translated his teaching experience to his work as an attorney when he shifted career directions more than two decades ago. Today, as chief litigation and regulatory counsel and director of insurance at multinational nutritional and agricultural processing corporation Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), he continues to rely on that same skill set—along with the extensive legal expertise that he has since acquired—to lead a global team while balancing the two sides of his role.

Gardiner first learned the value of education from his parents, hardworking Irish immigrants. “As was common among young men who grew up in his circumstances, my father’s formal education ended before high school,” he says. “Despite this, he was one of the smartest people I’ve known. I learned early to value a formal education, but not to view it as a proxy for intelligence.”

With his parents’ support, he left his home state of Massachusetts to attend the University of Notre Dame. After graduating, he spent time teaching and coaching at two different high schools while contemplating law school. “Teaching, as most people know, is challenging,” he says of the experience. “But there’s nothing better than inspiring a young person and watching them find their passion.”

With two years of teaching under his belt, Gardiner returned to Notre Dame to study law. He served as a judicial clerk his first year out of law school before joining Chicago law firm Sidley Austin in 2001. At the firm, he focused on securities and

Courtesy of Archer Daniels Midland

Brendan Gardiner Chief Litigation & Regulatory Counsel and Director of Insurance Archer Daniels Midland

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Renowned for our experience in complex litigation and arbitration, our clients rely on us to anticipate their needs and outperform their expectations. Kirkland & Ellis believes the best litigation results—whether achieved in court or across the bargaining table—occur when the lawyers are fully prepared to try the case through verdict. Our focus on trial readiness drives successful and more cost-efficient results for clients, as critical issues are identified early and then used to maximum advantage in the litigation and negotiation processes.

We represent clients in trial and appellate courts at the federal and state level, before administrative tribunals, and in arbitrations and other dispute resolution proceedings. We also represent clients in connection with proceedings involving government agencies, such as the US Department of Justice, the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the US Federal Trade Commission, the US Department of Labor, the Internal Revenue Service, and all fifty state Offices of Attorneys General.

We have tried cases successfully to verdict or judgment in virtually every business segment and substantive area, including antitrust and competition, class action, mass tort and toxic tort, consumer fraud, ERISA/benefits, insurance coverage, international arbitration, product liability, and securities and shareholder litigation.

commercial litigation as well as internal investigations—a practice that gave him deeper insight into how corporations function.

Gardiner left Sidley after several years to go in-house at global manufacturing company Caterpillar Inc. In addition to handling a wide variety of legal issues for the company and its US subsidiaries, he led a legal team in Europe for three years. “Both personally and professionally, the experience of living and working overseas was probably the most rewarding of my career,” he says.

In late 2016, a chief litigation and regulatory counsel opening at ADM attracted Gardiner’s attention. He recognized an opportunity to play a significant part in the general counsel’s ongoing efforts to reimagine the company’s legal department.

Upon landing the role, Gardiner consolidated and standardized ADM’s dispute management processes and curated a panel of outside counsel firms. Furthermore, he strengthened the relationships between litigators and colleagues in other legal and business areas to increase the team’s understanding of internal client needs.

“My initial focus coming in was to build a litigation program commensurate with the scope and sophistication of ADM’s business,” says Gardiner. “After about eight months, my role expanded when I was asked to assume responsibility for ADM’s insurance and risk management group. It placed me outside my comfort zone, but it’s been a great learning opportunity.”

Winston & Strawn applauds Brendan Gardiner for his vision, leadership, and commitment to ADM.

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“My approach to leadership draws on two fundamentals that I learned as a teacher. One is that every classroom needs a leader, and two is that being the teacher doesn't automatically make you the leader.”

An Attitude of Gratitude

By Lindsey Lubowitz

ROBIN DUNSON HAS ALWAYS BEEN fascinated by business—in fact, becoming a lawyer wasn’t a part of her original plan. But she discovered the many possibilities that a law career can offer, and as the assistant vice president and associate general counsel of Cox Enterprises, she’s found a position that combines her passion for both business and law.

As an accounting major at Bradley University, Dunson was interested in pursuing in a career in banking and spent a few summers interning with Northern Trust Bank in Chicago. At one point during her internship, she was given the opportunity to work with the bank’s legal department—and it changed the trajectory of her career.

“It was like a light bulb went off. I knew lawyers litigated criminal and civil cases in court. However, I did not know much about business transactional law,” Dunson says. From there, she took a business law class and

decided that a career in corporate law was the right path for her.

After she completed her degree at Bradley, Dunson moved onto Harvard Law School, where she graduated with a position at a corporate law firm in Atlanta. Next, her interest in the emerging telecommunications space led her to an in-house role with AT&T in New Jersey, where she quickly found a new passion.

“I was first exposed to being a marketing lawyer when I was hired at AT&T to provide legal support to their residential consumer business unit,” she says. “I worked with AT&T’s marketing teams when there was a lot of competition between the local and long-distance telephone companies, and that is when I really started learning the telecommunications business.”

After working at AT&T for five years and SBC/Ameritech for three years, Dunson made the switch to Cox Communications, a

At Cox Enterprises, Robin Dunson has found a position that not only combines all her passions but also offers opportunities for growth

privately owned subsidiary of Cox Enterprises that offers cable television, telecommunications services, and home automation. At Cox Communications, she worked as legal counsel for the marketing and residential sales divisions, building off the skills she acquired at AT&T.

Then, after nearly eighteen years with Cox Communications, Dunson was given an opportunity to move up to Cox Enterprises—one that she couldn’t turn down. “I knew that at Cox Enterprises, I would be in a better position to enable the company to achieve its strategic goals by collaborating throughout the enterprise with Cox Communications and Cox Automotive and supporting Cox Enterprises’ new growth areas,” Dunson says.

Dunson has now been with Cox Enterprises for nearly three years and knows that the move was the right one for her. She’s grateful for the opportunities she’s had at the company, and appreciates the breadth of her responsibilities— no two days are exactly the same. In fact, despite specializing primarily in the telecommunications space, she now handles Cox’s new e-sports legal matters, real estate, sustainability initiatives, and aviation, just to name a few. She has also recently had the chance to work on the sponsorship deal for the NFL Raiders’ move to Las Vegas, one of Cox Communications’ largest markets.

Dunson’s work with Cox Enterprises has allowed her to keep growing and learning about various aspects of both business and law; part of that process is ensuring that the business teams at Cox are keeping legal protocol in mind. As an in-house attorney, it is her responsibility to educate her business colleagues about the potential legal risks involved in their business

Robin Dunson AVP and Associate General Counsel Cox Enterprises

deals and purchases that are hidden in contract language—not always an easy task.

“Most people want to do the right thing. The pressure of getting things done fast oftentimes collides with the time it takes to negotiate the allocation of risk in contracts. It is important to constantly educate your business clients on the value of doing this work on the front end when you have the most leverage,” Dunson says. “To be a good legal partner, it is equally important to find creative solutions to roadblocks on getting a deal done that produces the most benefit for the company.”

Despite these challenges, she’s grateful not only for her role at Cox Enterprises but also for the company’s culture. Cox is a very employee-focused company that seeks to provide a “best-in-class” employee experience, Dunson says, which allows her to feel fully supported on a day-to-day basis.

Atlanta’s Sheley, Hall & Williams is a boutique real estate law firm offering specialized expertise and representation to clients in all areas of commercial real estate, including leasing, development, acquisitions, dispositions, joint ventures and real estate finance.

Sheley, Hall & Williams represents institutional portfolio owners, private equity real estate funds, development companies, corporate owners and real estate investors, including opportunistic buyers, throughout the United States.

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David L. Lester, Partner 404-880-1392

www.sheleyhall.com

Dunson is a single mother, and she says she knows that not all companies in corporate America are as committed to their employees and work/life balance as Cox. “Cox afforded me the opportunity to have a successful, satisfying career and still be a good, hands-on parent. I was able to attend my son’s sports games and be active in the PTA. I never felt that my career suffered because of my personal life.”

Both as an in-house attorney and as a single mother, Dunson has learned a lot over the course of her career, and she has some advice for those pursuing a similar path.

“Pursue your goals. Be open and honest,” Dunson says. “Sometimes single mothers are concerned about sharing some of our personal challenges. Remember, everyone has challenges; that’s part of life. People are a lot more supportive than we give them credit for, and it is important to help people relate to what your life journey is like—no matter what your journey may be.”

“Cox afforded me the opportunity to have a successful, satisfying career and still be a good, hands-on parent. . . . I never felt that my career suffered because of my personal life.”

Committed to a Cause

Lisa Davis George wants to do her part to make the legal industry better. At Discover Financial Services, she works to be part of the solution by mentoring and empowering diverse counsel.

By Abigail Sutter

LISA DAVIS GEORGE HAS A DISTINCT MEMORY OF A moment during her senior year of high school when a group of boys was making comments about how girls were only suited to be secretaries. George, who grew up in the Deep South, was no stranger to conservative attitudes about women’s roles in the workplace—and while the comments were nothing new, they still stung.

“I knew then that I wanted a serious career and felt very determined to prove them wrong,” she says. “I think that has carried over in terms of being determined to succeed in a profession that does not necessarily make it easy for women to do so.”

George’s determination has carried her through to a successful in-house career, first as executive counsel at GE Capital Corporation and currently as director and senior counsel at Discover Financial Services, where she covers key antitrust matters, financial services, and other consumer-related litigation. It’s a role that requires her to look at the big picture, seek out opportunities for early warning, and ensure that risk mitigation strategies align with Discover’s brand while serving as a collaborative business partner.

But George’s work encompasses much more than her day-to-day role. She’s committed to making the

“In juggling work and family, women in particular feel like they need to look and be perfect on all fronts. But I think we do a disservice to the women coming behind us by pretending like it was easy, because it's not.”

legal industry a better place for others, and the collaborative and team-oriented environment at Discover gives her the perfect opportunity to put this passion into action. “I feel like the work that I do on the diversity, equity, and inclusion front is valued as highly as my legal work at Discover, because these are principles that are among Discover’s core values,” she says.

While George notes that there is incredible potential for a rewarding

career in the legal industry, she is troubled by the challenges she sees for many attorneys. “When you look at the legal profession, you see that it can be a very unhappy one,” she explains. “I think this can be attributed to a system that’s broken in a number of ways.” She cites the legal industry’s highly competitive, client service–focused business model, historic failure to support diversity and inclusion, focus on billable hours versus team and client contributions,

and credit and compensation structures as factors that all contribute to this problem. “When I look at these issues, I want to think about how I, as a corporate client, can help be a part of the solution versus part of the problem,” she says.

Lisa Davis George Director and Senior Counsel Discover Financial Services

George has fully committed herself to being part of the solution and participates in a number of mentoring groups and initiatives supporting diversity and inclusion. She assists with the law department’s commitment to achieving Mansfield compliance, leads the Associate Mentoring Program for Law, which supports the advancement and retention of diverse talent in outside law firms, and serves on the Talent & Development Committee for Discover’s Professional Women Impacting Results (PWIR), which supports women professionals at Discover.

George is committed to empowering young attorneys to reach their full potential by providing opportunities to build experience and relationships as well as receive development feedback on the client side.

When George first began her career, she was mentored by a law firm partner who took the development of junior attorneys seriously. “I was given significant responsibility early on with his support, and I think future opportunities came my way as a result of that early mentorship and skill building,” she recalls. She now takes every opportunity to be a mentor herself and meaningfully connect with attorneys working on her matters.

“The law department’s associate mentoring program supports diversity and inclusion beyond metrics and scorecards, which really don’t put a face to numbers,” she explains. “On

the client side, we want to use our ability to open the door wide to diverse talent in partnership with our outside law firms; those firms can help associates be prepared to meet the opportunity presented. Part of the basis for the program is that we want to help teach mentees what a client truly values, because their value to a client increases their value to their law firm. In return, we deepen our bench of outside legal talent, derive the benefit of diverse perspectives, and have engaged and dedicated teams built around inclusiveness.”

George emphasizes to junior attorneys the importance of relationships and stresses how these connections need to be a two-way street. She advises those she mentors to look beyond the immediate potential business opportunity and think about two things when trying to cultivate meaningful, long-term client relationships: what they can learn and what they themselves can give.

Another thing George emphasizes to those she mentors is the

importance of finding a work/ life balance. In an industry that often leaves little room for other priorities, George knows the pressure of trying to commit to both career and family. “In juggling work and family, women in particular feel like they need to look and be perfect on all fronts,” she says. “But I think we do a disservice to the women coming behind us by pretending like it was easy, because it's not. However, just because something is hard does not mean it is not worth doing.”

Burr & Forman LLP:

“Lisa is smart, responsive, and a true pleasure to worth with as a client. The Associate Mentoring Program she helped spearhead at Discover has provided our diverse associates with critical advice to further their careers.”

–David Elliott, Partner

Holland & Knight:

“Lisa George is a delight to work with. She takes an innovative and strategic approach to litigating cases, and has been dedicated to jump-starting and developing the associate mentor program.”

–Abraham Colman, Partner

Coming Full Circle

From working at her father’s insurance company to establishing and leading Jabil’s litigation function, Shannon Eichberg’s career has built to this moment

By Natalie Kochanov

SHANNON EICHBERG GREW UP IN close proximity to the legal industry: her father worked at an insurance company and had considered going to law school. Even though her father never did obtain his JD, Eichberg took note of the career path.

“It was always in the back of my mind that law had been something my dad was interested in doing, but his life didn’t work out in that way,” says Eichberg.

Eichberg’s own early exposure to insurance defense litigation through her father’s work shaped her first fifteen years as an attorney. Today, as global chief litigation counsel at manufacturing solutions company Jabil, Eichberg

is the one doing the shaping. After overcoming the initial challenges of going in-house, she played an instrumental part in building out the company’s litigation function from scratch. With the function now in place, she’s ready to make the most of her first-ofits-kind role at the company by leading future growth and development in the legal department.

Eichberg started helping out in her father’s workplace while she was an undergrad at South Carolina’s Columbia College and a law student at Stetson University. After completing her law degree, she leveraged that experience to secure a series of roles as an insurance defense attorney. During her fifteen

years at Florida law firms, she honed her litigation skills on cases running the gamut from life insurance policy payouts to commercial disputes.

As time went on, Eichberg began to consider a move in-house. Knowing that she didn’t want to work inside an insurance company, she interviewed at Jabil with an open mind. “The role was very different from anything that I had ever thought about doing,” she admits.

The job, which Eichberg landed in 2015, also proved very different from her law firm positions. She faced the challenge of not only going in-house for the first time, but also doing so at a company operating in a field entirely new to her. “A lot of what I did before definitely translates,” she says. “But the corporate side of things is a bit daunting when you’ve never done it. I had to figure out how to morph my knowledge and experience into something that would value-add in this environment.”

At first, Eichberg primarily negotiated contracts at Jabil. However, when a new general counsel at the company recognized her substantial litigation experience, she branched out into litigation matters as well. Support from the

general counsel and other members of the legal team contributed to the establishment of a true litigation function a few years later—with Eichberg at the helm.

For Eichberg, the function’s creation was only the first step. “We had to demonstrate the litigation function’s value to the enterprise as a whole,” she explains. “So we showed what the function could do and how it could collaborate with and support all other businesses and functions.”

In addition to serving the business by explaining how negotiation-stage decisions may play out down the line, Eichberg turned to hard data to make a case for the function’s value. She used cost avoidance settlement and recovery scenarios along with other case studies and metrics to quantify her team’s accomplishments.

The prospect of growing a function without any preexisting infrastructure, while intimidating, appealed to Eichberg from the get-go. “As a lifelong learner who enjoys pivoting and remaining agile, I found it fun and exciting to develop something that’s never existed before within this organization,”

“As a lifelong learner who enjoys pivoting and remaining agile, I found it fun and exciting to develop something that’s never existed before within this organization.”

she says. She views the opportunity as an entrepreneurial moment as well—a manifestation of the culture that Jabil fosters among employees.

As a member of the company’s legal leadership team, Eichberg is in the ideal position to continue building on her success to date. That means, first and foremost, expanding the litigation team to support Jabil’s needs as a sophisticated company. “There’s still a lot of work to do, but we’ve come leaps and bounds further than I could have imagined.”

In fact, in 2021 the Tampa Bay Business Journal named Eichberg one of its Top Corporate Counsel honorees. The leadership award is for outstanding in-house counsel, attorneys, and general counsel. Eichberg’s colleagues outside the company also praise her accomplishments and leadership skills. “Shannon’s top-notch litigation skills make her realistic and fair with her outside counsel,” says David Elkins, partner and practice group leader for intellectual property and technology practice, and Sarah Rathke, partner of Squire Patton Boggs. “She is exceptionally conscious of mentoring younger lawyers, both within Jabil and at her outside law firms.”

A key focus for Eichberg moving forward will be outlining a clear relationship with outside counsel. There is the question of how much and what types of work to handle internally rather than outsourcing, and in what situations it might make sense to adjust the division of labor. To ensure smooth future collaborations, Eichberg has

Kristiana Oureilidis

Shannon Eichberg

Global Chief Litigation Counsel Jabil

“We had to demonstrate the litigation function’s value to the enterprise as a whole, so we showed what the function could do and how it could collaborate with and support all other functions.”

organized an outside counsel panel to introduce Jabil and the company’s mode of operating to external attorneys.

While she’s come a long way since joining Jabil, Eichberg still runs into new challenges on a regular basis. Fortunately, her gut instincts tend to point her in the right direction. It helps, of course, that her current role plays to her strengths. She draws on components of each skill set that she has accumulated over the years and even sees a connection to her days at her father’s insurance company—a corporate setting much like the one that she now calls home.

“All the elements of my background and career came together for me to be where I am,” Eichberg says. “I feel that it’s what I was designed to do, and that’s because I was exposed to those elements. The pieces of my life fell together exactly how they were supposed to.”

We are honored and humbled that Shannon Eichberg and Jabil regard us among their trusted advisors – and Shannon has our kudos on her well deserved profile!

Stepping Up

By Zach Baliva

“EVEN WHEN YOU HAVE GREAT SKILLS and experience, you’re never fully prepared to step into your first general counsel role,” Nathan Vitan says. “You just have to dig in and be willing to learn as you go.”

For Vitan, stepping up to the general counsel role happened rather suddenly. He had been at Public Storage for three years when his predecessor, Lily Hughes, left the California-based company in 2019. The company then tapped Vitan, a veteran lawyer who started with Public Storage as vice president and chief counsel of litigation and operations, to take on the top legal role at the organization.

Public Storage is the world’s largest owner, operator, and developer of self-storage facilities; the real estate investment trust (REIT) has more than 2,600 properties in 39 states and generated approximately $2.7 billion in revenues in 2020.

Although the timing of Vitan’s promotion was a bit unexpected, he was ready for the challenge. “I was fortunate to have Lily as a mentor because she was intentional about giving me opportunities to develop beyond what I was originally hired for,” he says.

Although Vitan was hired to manage high-stakes litigation, he started handling other critical matters for the

company, including privacy, information security, and marketing. He also started providing corporate governance and securities support to PS Business Parks, an affiliate of Public Storage.

These opportunities gave Vitan the diverse experience the general counsel of a large public company needs and helped him step into his new role. Still, he says, the first few months were like “drinking from a fire hose.” Every day, he found himself dealing with a new issue as his legal team navigated everything from litigation to risk management to business strategy.

“The general counsel is a true multidisciplinary role that requires full

While it’s impossible to fully prepare to become GC, Public Storage’s Nathan Vitan says good mentors and his focus on continuous learning and development helped him get there

visibility into the whole enterprise,” Vitan says. “There is no other legal position where it all comes together in the same way.”

Strong relationships—both internal and external—have helped him manage the transition well. “I have trusted advisors and mentors within our organization and outside. Counselors need their own counselors,” Vitan says. Internally, he’s focused on taking the time to cultivate good relationships with subject matter experts who have detailed knowledge about the company, its clients, and its competitors.

Vitan’s dedication hasn’t gone unnoticed by his colleagues outside the company. “I have had the opportunity to work with Nathan on many different types of cases involving a breadth of challenges,” says Christopher Nevis, vice chair of the general liability practice group at Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith. “Nathan is highly skilled at identifying issues, making sure the right people are involved, and working with outside counsel to develop a sound strategy to achieve the best results.”

Today, Vitan leads a small but mighty team of seven attorneys and six paralegals. The lean structure means everyone stays busy, and although managing the volume of work within the department can be a challenge, Vitan sees it as an opportunity. As a leader, he tries to give everyone on his team the same chance he had to develop new skills.

One of Vitan’s litigators reinvented herself as a privacy expert; he now turns to her when Public Storage faces key privacy issues. “It is gratifying for me as a leader to see my team develop and grow into new areas,” he says. “It’s good for them as individuals, it’s good for the team, and it’s good for the company.”

Like the rest of the company, Vitan’s legal team is a diverse group of professionals, comprising a majority of women and people of color. He is proud to work for a company with a workforce that is 69 percent female and 52 percent people of color. The company's management is also 39 percent female. Vitan maintains a commitment to diversity by hiring the best candidates from a broad pool.

Nathaniel A. Vitan SVP, Chief Legal Officer, and Corporate Secretary Public Storage

Expertise Spotlight

Lewis Brisbois' General Liability Practice is comprised of more than six hundred attorneys nationwide who have successfully represented defendants in significant exposure cases in numerous general liability areas. The group has provided a defense for myriad property and personal injury claims, for both businesses and individuals who may be insured or self-insured. While the attorneys within the firm are equipped to handle a wide variety of matters, we excel in the litigation and trial of catastrophic injury, wrongful death, and complex litigation cases. The partners and senior associates in this group are seasoned and well-respected trial attorneys who have broad trial experience. Our attorneys have been cited by the National Law Journal for obtaining one of the "Top Ten Defense Verdicts of the Year" and have received other prominent recognitions. We regularly defend all manner of businesses and organizations, both public and private, in a wide variety of premises liability actions and successfully defend bars and other hospitality organizations against claims resulting from the injury or death from the sale of alcohol to intoxicated patrons or minors. We also represent a range of commercial transportation entities, including bus companies, trucking companies, emergency vehicles, and auto liability insurers.

As technology takes center stage and changes the way consumers and businesses interact in the pandemic and postpandemic world, Vitan and his team are ensuring Public Storage has the right safeguards in place to protect privacy. In early 2020, the company brought a new contactless online rental platform to its 2,600 properties within less than a month.

More than half of Public Storage’s new customers now select eRental accounts. Customers also can use an app to open doors, gates, and elevators. They can also manage accounts and make changes without visiting a Public Storage location. To Vitan, these changes underscore the need for his team to be agile and open to developing and expanding its expertise into new areas.

Vitan is currently helping his team deal with lingering uncertainty as the nation and world recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. “We just have to make sure we don’t lose sight of the human element,” he says. “We have business imperatives, but we know everyone also has personal concerns.”

Public Storage established a fund to help property managers and other employees with testing, extended leave, childcare, and other needs. In his own department, Vitan is careful to check in with each employee and avoid the dreaded virtual-meeting fatigue.

In May, Public Storage held an investor day to give an update on the company’s long-term strategy and growth initiatives. “We’re ready to move forward and come together again as we execute against our plans to step into the future,” Vitan says. “There are always challenges to face in every year, but this is an exciting time to be a general counsel at a company like Public Storage.”

toReadyTake Chances

Alex Mihai was flourishing as a partner at a private firm when he decided to go in-house at Realty One Group. Now, he’s helping the fastgrowing brand disrupt the real estate industry.

By Zach Baliva

EVEN BY HIS OWN EXTREMELY HIGH STANdards, Alex Mihai was an early success. Before his thirty-fifth birthday, he had already made partner at the prestigious California firm Lynberg & Watkins. He had argued high-profile cases alongside his mentor Shel Harrell, winning seven cases on behalf of law enforcement officers. Most rising lawyers would have focused on growing the firm’s client base and continuing on the path to senior partner. Instead, Mihai accepted an invitation to go in-house to create and run a legal department at a fast-growing lifestyle real estate brand.

Mihai’s journey began behind the Iron Curtain. He was born in Bucharest, Romania, to parents who immigrated to the United States four years later. His family settled in

California. There, Mihai adjusted to elementary school and learned English, often taking care of himself while his hard-working parents took blue-collar jobs to make ends meet. “Like most immigrants, they would outwork anyone around them, and they expected me to make the most of our family’s new opportunity,” Mihai recalls.

Enrolling in college was a foregone conclusion. Mihai studied political science at UC Irvine and enrolled in classes where he studied criminal justice and constitutional law. Suddenly, his worldview started to expand. “I grew up in a house where everything was black and white, but my professors were discussing the gray areas of the law,” he says. Mihai’s background helped him see all sides of legal and cultural issues. He participated in debate clubs

and Model United Nations simulations, developing a reputation for his strong ability to argue both sides of any topic.

Upon graduation, Mihai, who had learned Spanish and French (in addition to English and his native Romanian), considered pursuing a job with the US Department of State. However, many of his friends and peers were studying for the LSAT exam, and the naturally competitive Mihai decided to try the law school admission test. “For me, the LSAT and bar exams were games I wanted to win,” he recalls, adding that he took countless practice exams until he had mastered the process. Mihai passed the LSAT and enrolled at Whittier Law School.

Mihai quickly landed a job as a law clerk at Lynberg & Watkins and was later placed on the firm’s team to represent municipal law enforcement agencies, including that of Orange County. The position put him in close contact with Shel Harrell, whom Mihai credits as an important professional mentor. Under Harrell’s tutelage, Mihai argued

motions, cross-examined witnesses, and wrote appellate briefs. Mihai, who had become an associate, was determined to surpass the total billable hours per month required to make partner. That number was 170; Mihai’s total approached 200.

That’s when two Los Angeles Lakers games changed the course of his life and career. The first was with his firm. Mihai invited Kuba Jewgieniew, a friend from his recreational soccer league. Jewgieniew, CEO of Realty One Group, returned the favor by inviting Mihai to a game with the staff of Realty One. Immediately, Mihai noticed a contrast.

“Even great law firms have a very formal and stuffy culture that kind of takes the fun out of a pro basketball game,” he explains. “The Realty One people were laughing and having fun. They weren’t talking about work.”

Mihai and Jewgieniew developed a friendship, and when Jewgieniew presented his need for a general counsel, Mihai was intrigued. Ten years after its inception, Realty One was disrupting the real estate franchising model by offering savvy tech tools and 100 percent commissions. With eye-popping revenues and staggering growth, the potential seemed limitless.

“Nothing beats the feeling a trial lawyer gets when the foreperson reads a verdict in favor of his client, but the highs for a general counsel come when you close important business deals that carry the company forward.”

Alex Mihai General Counsel Realty One Group

Although he had just made partner and was handling an important case that took three years to prepare, in 2015 Mihai agreed to leave Lynberg & Watkins to become Realty One’s first general counsel.

Today, Mihai still pursues important legal wins, but those wins look different in-house. “Nothing beats the feeling a trial lawyer gets when the foreperson reads a verdict in favor of his client, but the highs for a general counsel come when you close important business deals that carry the company forward,” he says. In just a few short years, Mihai has created a joint venture with CNG Financial to form an internal mortgage provider known as Epiq Lending. He’s also helped Realty One in the sale of seven California offices and drafted contracts to open hundreds of franchises across the nation. Lastly, he’s developed a key partnership with Bremer Whyte Brown & O’Meara to guide all litigation matters. These efforts have Realty One on a path to continue its meteoric rise. In 2015, the organization had ten thousand real estate agents. It closed 2021 with nearly twenty thousand. The company, which bills itself as an “UNBrokerage,” sold roughly one hundred franchises in 2021 and is surpassing competitors to become one of the industry’s fastest-growing franchisors. Now, Realty One has its sights set on international expansion; Mihai and his team are working on deals to take the brand to Europe, South America, Asia, and beyond. More than five years into his tenure with the company, Mihai is as ambitious as ever and looking forward to the next five years.

Alex Mihai

BWB&O congratulates our colleague, client and friend on his recognition in Modern Counsel

Evolution, Not Revolution

By Lucy Cavanagh

MICHAEL PATRICK SPENT MOST OF HIS childhood going back and forth between the US and the UK, with family on both sides of the Atlantic. While Patrick went to college and law school in the UK, he’d eventually choose the US as his permanent home.

After completing his studies in the UK, Patrick worked in London for Farrer & Co, a British law firm headquartered in that city. The firm was founded in 1701 and throughout its three-hundred-year history has worked with many high-profile clients, including the British Royal family—in fact, it continues to act for the current monarch, Queen Elizabeth II.

During his time at the firm, Patrick started his career working for the British media: specifically for clients such as the Economist and Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers in the UK, the Sun and News of the World . “The work was really at the cutting

edge of the developing laws of privacy and data protection in the UK,” Patrick says. Over time, however, Patrick and the firm switched their focus away from acting for the media toward acting for the firm’s high-profile individuals and organizations, which range from public companies to individuals and businesspeople, to defend their reputations both online and with the traditional media.

“In the meantime, I still had my green card and I'd always had one eye on coming to work in the States,” Patrick says. “I did my New York bar exams in 2008, and I was admitted while my career continued to progress in London—I ultimately became a partner at Farrer & Co but was always interested in going in-house to work for a public company, whether in the States or the UK.”

Prior to becoming a partner at Farrer & Co, Patrick had taken a sabbatical in the States. He worked for UniFirst Corporation,

At UniFirst, Michael Patrick is starting to build the company’s in-house legal department from the ground up—a process that requires some patience

a uniform rental company based in Wilmington, Massachusetts, that manufactures, sells, and rents uniforms and protective clothing to customers throughout North America and Europe. During his time working at UniFirst, Patrick worked closely with Steven Sintros, the then-CFO who is now the CEO of the company. “I've known Steve for a number of years and had enjoyed working with him previously. When he became CEO a few years back, he decided that he wanted to build out a corporate legal function; we got into a conversation about it and he thought I would be a good person for that,” Patrick reflects.

Patrick has been dedicating himself to that endeavor ever since. English-qualified lawyers can be admitted to practice in two states—New York and California—and Patrick didn’t find the switch to US law particularly difficult. “In reality, the biggest transition has been going from being a partner in a law firm, surrounded by other lawyers, to working in-house at a company which hadn’t previously had an in-house legal department,” he explains.

For decades, UniFirst had been primarily relying on outside counsel for their legal needs, so Patrick is now tasked with building the in-house legal depart-

ment from the ground up. To add to the challenge, UniFirst is made up of more than 250 locations all over the United States, Canada, and Europe that have traditionally operated fairly autonomously. Patrick has had to design a strategy that encourages the various locations to direct their legal needs through the new department without overwhelming him and his team.

“When I first started, I remember my CEO saying, ‘Be careful about stretching yourself too thin, because you will suddenly find that you are bombarded with everything from minor queries to big issues,’” Patrick says. “It’s a matter of putting some structure around it. It’s still a work in progress, but we are starting to help people understand where they need legal review, where they perhaps should be using external law firms, or where they should be seeking in-house support.”

The legal department at UniFirst is still growing. They still use outside counsel and have strong relationships with their corporate counsel in Boston, Goodwin Procter, as well as other firms across the United States and Canada. “Our team at Goodwin really enjoys working with Mike,” says Scott Chase, partner at Goodwin Procter. “He has done a great job leading the internal legal function at UniFirst and is

Courtesy of UniFirst

Michael Patrick VP of Legal Affairs

UniFirst

sharp and thoughtful about a wide range of issues. In addition, Mike values our advice and embraces our team at Goodwin as a true partner of UniFirst’s business.”

Patrick is particularly proud of the system the company has put in place to allow the company’s locations to access external counsel regionally with better visibility and reporting for the corporate team. “We now work with five firms of attorneys across the United States, instead of the two hundred firms when I first started,” Patrick explains. “The five firms we have chosen are knowledgeable about our business and the issues that are important to us.”

Throughout the process, Patrick has learned to be patient, since building out the legal function for a company of the size and magnitude of a public company such as UniFirst can’t happen overnight. “Our team will definitely have to grow in size over time. But certainly in these early days, we’re looking around and saying, ‘Where can we have the most impact?’ We can’t get bogged down in the minutiae. We try to position ourselves in those bigger conversations,” says Patrick. “It's just evolution, not revolution.”

Goodwin salutes Mike Patrick on his recognition by Modern Counsel. Your friends at Goodwin are honored to partner with you and the

Evolution and Tradition

By Lindsey Lubowitz

UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD (UPR) HAS BEEN AN integral part of the United States economy since its start in 1862, and Senior Legal Counsel Torry Garland is well versed in the legal pressures that come from working at such an iconic organization.

Union Pacific was founded by Abraham Lincoln with the idea of expanding the nation’s railroad system to the West Coast. Now, based in Omaha, Nebraska, the company’s railroads span twenty-three states and more than thirty-two thousand miles, meaning that UPR is prepared to ship nearly any type of freight.

Garland is responsible for managing the company’s asbestos and toxic litigation inventory, as well as much of the strategy behind American Disabilities Act (ADA) litigation cases. One of his favorite aspects of his role is the diversity of his caseload. “I love the dichotomy,” explains the attorney, who has been with UPR for more than fifteen years. “You could be facing an issue

involving a 19th-century decision one day, and on the next my colleagues here at Union Pacific, who work on environmental issues, are working on a cutting-edge issue involving locomotive diesel emissions.”

After earning an undergraduate degree in political science, Garland found a position as a legislative assistant for a congressman who was running for reelection. The congressman ultimately lost, but Garland still learned from the experience: he realized that while he did not want to commit to the political route, he was still interested in government. Just a different branch.

“I became interested in what was going on at the Justice Department, and I thought that was a career I'd like to have,” Garland says. “It wasn’t that I was laser focused on being a lawyer from the time I was in high school; it was really a progression and being exposed to a lot of lawyers during my first time out in the workforce.”

As senior legal counsel for Union Pacific Railroad, Torry Garland is responsible for ensuring the success and progress of one of the nation’s most established companies

Garland then decided to go to law school, and after he graduated, he began working at a law firm in Omaha. There, he was on track to making partner—but something did not feel quite right. “I was just concerned that I hadn’t tried enough cases,” he recalls.

A friend of his, who worked for Union Pacific at the time, then informed him of a litigation role at Union Pacific’s office in St. Louis, and Garland decided to apply. He got the job and began on the journey that would lead him to his current role as senior legal counsel. “I did not have the desire to be in-house counsel, initially—that

wasn't what I was always looking for,” Garland admits. “The opportunity to try cases is what drove me to Union Pacific. That, and working for an iconic American company that’s over 150 years old.”

Since his start with Union Pacific, Garland has held many different titles, which have naturally come hand in hand with many different responsibilities. When he first started in the St. Louis office, he was primarily responsible for handling matters related to the Federal Employee Liability Act. He also took on some traditional employment law discrimination litigation.

Then he moved to the company’s Denver office, where he continued to work as a trial lawyer. While in Colorado, Garland also took on a more significant role as the primary legal counsel for the North Platte Service Unit. North Platte, Nebraska, is home to the world’s largest classification railroad, Garland explains, and he became responsible for all legal matters in that area.

Garland was then asked to move to Union Pacific’s headquarters in Omaha, where his legal career had originally taken off, to take on a role as director of the national ADA litigation team. But by then, Garland and his family had put down roots in Denver, so he decided to commute to his office a few days a week rather than move back to Omaha full-time.

Throughout these different roles, Garland’s leadership style has also evolved. “As a lead trial attorney, you want to control and micromanage every aspect of the case and every aspect of the trial presentation. And that’s not different from any other profession

“The opportunity to try cases is what drove me to Union Pacific. That, and working for an iconic American company that’s over 150 years old.”

Torry Garland Senior Legal Counsel Union Pacific Railroad

Cozen O’Connor is proud to work alongside Torry Garland, Senior Legal Counsel, Union Pacific Railroad. We congratulate Torry for his professional accomplishments and celebrate his leadership and innovation within the legal profession.

Laura L. Reinhart Counsel

(412) 620-6510

lreinhart@cozen.com

775 attorneys 30 offices cozen.com

when you’re young,” Garland reflects. Today, however, he takes a more hands-off approach. “As I got more confident in my own skills, I started to let others take a more active role in directing and leading whatever effort we were involved in. And then I not only began trusting people but began desiring to see people develop and grow into their careers.”

According to Garland, Union Pacific as a whole is also committed to employee development and has worked to both hire diverse staff members and foster an inclusive working environment. The company is rooted in history, says the senior counsel, but is determined to keep evolving.

Constangy, Brooks, Smith & Prophete LLP:

“Torry is a first-rate trial lawyer and a wonderful strategist. He understands the full anatomy of case from start to finish at an elite level. But most importantly, he is a wonderful team leader and teammate. He is a rare multiple tool legal talent!”

–Don Prophete, Partner

© 2021 Cozen O’Connor

Cozen O’Connor congratulates Torry Garland for his professional accomplishments and leadership within the legal profession. With a shared belief that inclusiveness leads to better decision-making and business outcomes, Cozen O’Connor stands ready to support the current and future needs of Union Pacific Railroad.

We are proud of our collaboration with Torry Garland and Union Pacific Railroad who trust us to provide employment law counsel.

Pivot

Showcasing prominent in-house attorneys who capably adapt to changes in their companies, industries, and personal and professional lives to carve out new paths through imagination and reinvention

Her Way

Robin Kaver hasn’t followed a traditional path: she went to law school in her thirties, then took the bar exam eighteen years after graduating. But throughout her journey, she’s figured out how to make things work.

By Zach Baliva

IT WAS A REGULAR DAY AT THE OFFICE WHEN ROBIN Kaver got the results she had been waiting for. After waiting anxiously for the page to load, she asked a colleague to verify the news. He read her name on the bar examination pass list and screamed in celebration.

Kaver’s colleague was shocked because he didn’t know she had finally taken the bar exam—it had been eighteen years since she graduated from law school, and in the meantime, she had become a successful writers’ agent and contracts manager.

In fact, Kaver’s entire story is one of taking a nontraditional path. She’s pushed forward by intellectual curiosity, unmatched persistence, and an impressive capacity for meeting challenges head-on. Having studied Romance languages at New York University, she was pursuing a master’s degree in social work when she took an internship that involved advocating for inmates in alternative sentencing. A supervisor

noticed how unflinching Kaver was in difficult circumstances and began to give her the most difficult cases, involving sex offenders and the criminally insane.

When a judge encountered Kaver, she was so impressed by Kaver’s performance that she suggested that Kaver apply to law school. Kaver declined, pointing out that she had three young children at home. But the judge persisted, and Kaver, who was in her thirties at the time, ended up enrolling in Brooklyn Law School’s part-time day program.

Four years later, having graduated, Kaver intended to take the bar exam, but a series of serious family issues delayed her plans. In the meantime, she took an opportunity to work for the director of the AntiDefamation League, writing grants and lobbying on the Hate Crimes Bill. “I found other things that used my law degree and my logical mind,” she explains. “But the further I got into other things, the further I got from the bar.” She even coproduced a Holocaust documentary written by David Saperstein (Cocoon) and narrated by Hector Elizando.

After several years at the Anti-Defamation League, Kaver started working for a well-established boutique dramatic agency whose owner was looking for someone—preferably with a legal education—who could draft contracts for a job that didn’t yet exist. The agency represented playwrights for some of Broadway’s biggest shows and wanted to pump up its film and TV department. Kaver was asked to lead the way. She had a credit as a documentary film producer, after all.

“I basically talked myself into a job,” Kaver says with a laugh. “I had no idea how to do it, but I knew I could figure it out.” And she did: the Robert Freedman Dramatic Agency’s slush pile of new screenwriters and television writers grew, along with some well-known crossover clients, with Kaver responsible for negotiating and drafting clients’ contracts.

Robin Kaver Deputy General Counsel, North America NielsenIQ

Pavia & Harcourt congratulates Robin Kaver on her recognition by Modern

Although Kaver’s career was progressing, she still longed to realize her original goal of passing the bar exam and working as a lawyer. In 2010, she was working for a market research company as a senior contracts manager when her son confronted her. He slid his outdated bar exam review books across the kitchen table and made her promise to take the test.

After Kaver passed, though, her status at work remained: her bosses wanted her to stay in the same position at the same pay rate. She decided something had to change.

Kaver continued to demonstrate her transferable skills and is now deputy general counsel of North America for NielsenIQ (the standalone company resulting from the split and subsequent sale of Nielsen’s Global Connect business). She is the lead counsel for negotiations and transactional matters related to all US retailers (including military exchanges), the G13, and other manufacturers in the NielsenIQ portfolio. She also provides general legal advice and counsel to senior business leadership and client-facing business unit members.

Pavia & Harcourt is an internationally recognized business law firm offering a full range of legal services to companies and individuals. The Firm concentrates in commercial and corporate law, litigation and arbitration, banking, media and entertainment, real estate, intellectual property and estate planning and administration.

As luck would have it, a recruiter called Kaver for a job at Nielsen, the famed market research company started in 1923. She passed two rounds of interviews, and when she stepped into her final meeting with the chief legal officer, Kaver decided to make a preemptive strike before she removed her coat. “Yes, I took the bar late,” she said. “But my résumé will show you all the things I can do and the life skills I have that no other candidate can draw upon. I’m not afraid of anything.” She got the job.

Initially, Nielsen hired Kaver to work on one specific segmentation business unit in what was to be at least a three-month-long, supervised transition. After just a few weeks, she was taking on orphaned areas that needed dedicated attention. “If you’re willing to take on new challenges and never say, ‘I can’t do it,’ that’s when you’ll get the best experiences,” she says. Soon, Kaver was lead counsel for multiple business units, including Nielsen Entertainment.

Having settled in at Nielsen, Kaver is now finding ways to inspire young students and aspiring lawyers. She’s teaching a clinical seminar class at Brooklyn Law School and threw out the existing syllabus to make it her own. Instead of relying solely on reading and writing assignments, she brings in privacy attorneys, outside lawyers, and other speakers who help present the full interdisciplinary nature of law.

“I tell my students that life after law school might not work out exactly as they plan, and that’s OK,” she says. “If you create your own path and refuse to give up, you’ll go far.”

Jenner & Block LLP:

“Robin is a brilliant, strategic, and hard-working lawyer who knows her industry inside out. It’s a pleasure to work with her because she works particularly closely with her outside counsel. It’s a true partnership.”

–Alison I. Stein, Partner and a Cochair of the firm’s Content, Media, and Entertainment Practice

Counsel

PAVIA & HARCOURT LLP

A

Bilal Ezzeddine’s journey to Braskem came with its share of twists and turns, but he’s found his place and now gives back through mentorship and community partnerships

By Maggie Lynch

Nonlinear Path to Success

BILAL EZZEDDINE’S ROUTE HASN’T BEEN DIRECT. Today, he’s legal counsel and director of external affairs at Braskem, but his journey began in Detroit, with stops along the way in Bahrain, the American Civil Liberties Union, and a job selling men’s suits at Nordstrom after taking and passing the bar.

When Ezzeddine was eleven years old, he got a job as a golf caddy to earn extra money—and in some ways, that experience shaped the rest of his life. He was a Black kid from a working-class family and describes his experiences at the mostly white country

club where he worked as a cultural education of sorts. Ezzeddine talked to the people he caddied for and listened to their conversations about their businesses or medical practices. These experiences planted seeds in his mind for future plans. “I don’t think it was a coincidence that I was looking for other educational outlets a couple years after starting to caddy,” he says.

Ezzeddine attended public schools up until high school, but through hard work, talent, and a little serendipity, he got a prestigious Skillman Scholarship for a prep school in the Detroit suburb of Birmingham.

“That kind of set my life on a certain trajectory,” Ezzeddine says. “It gave me this mindset that anything is possible— because what were the chances that I would get that opportunity? From that point on there was a certain mindset that I had: you do the best you can and assume that things will fall into place. And I carried that with me through college and law school.”

He was already set on going to college, but at his prep school, he gained exposure to a range of professions through coaches, parents, and teachers. His golf coaches—one a doctor and the other a lawyer—mentored and guided him through the process. Another physician—the father of a friend and basketball teammate—arranged for him to do paid summer work in the oncology department of one of Detroit’s main hospital systems.

Through their examples, Ezzeddine first pursued premed, but he eventually found his passion in law. He graduated from law school during the tumultuous recession following the 2008 financial crisis, passed the bar on the first try, and got a fellowship. He’s always had a passion for style, which he employed while selling suits at Nordstrom—a job where he also gained relevant experience and even legal clients.

“It set me up to have a customer service mindset toward practicing law,” he says. “That kind of familiarity with the client is more crucial than it is in private practice. When you go in-house, the clients are the businesspeople. That experience at Nordstrom primed me for being an in-house lawyer.”

He finally landed in Philadelphia at Braskem, where he started as a staff attorney, and is happy to be there. “I

haven’t looked back since,” he says. “[My path] isn’t that linear, but in some ways that symbolizes my approach to life.”

Ezzeddine likes the city itself, but living there also holds a deeper meaning for him. “Being a Black male corporate attorney in the city of Philadelphia—a city with lots of social inequality—represented an opportunity for me to be a leader in my own limited way,” he says. “So the first thing I did when I got to Philadelphia was look into mentoring.”

Ezzeddine also appreciates that Braskem, a petrochemical company, is socially responsible. The company carefully considers the applications it wants to sell plastics into and was noted for its heroic efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic. Braskem sells plastics for medical-grade supplies, and personnel at two of its five plants lived in the

Bilal Ezzeddine Legal Counsel and Director of External Affairs Braskem

plants for thirty days to meet the skyrocketing demand. “That’s the kind of thing that makes me very proud to work for Braskem,” Ezzeddine says. “I can’t say I’m energetic about plastics, but I am energetic about the way [the company] does its business.”

At Braskem, Ezzeddine has taken his range of responsibilities in stride and expanded beyond the scope of legal counsel. After a few years of honing his expertise in corporate and commercial law, he says, he began to use the area of external affairs to go deep on community partnerships, school partnerships, and external diversity-related programs.

As a mentor himself, his responsibilities in external affairs bring together his interests. “When the opportunity was presented to become director of external affairs in addition to legal counsel, I jumped on it because it spoke to my interest in policy and it gave me some flexibility to have my work speak to my passions,” he says.

Braskem has also given Ezzeddine the space to be vulnerable and demonstrate that asking for help—something that’s not always accepted in the legal field—can be just what’s needed for growth in the industry. “I think the way that [vunerability] manifests itself is in how I show up; it’s being willing to ask for help, not being shy about asking for mentors, both within the company and outside of it,” he says.

Ezzeddine adds, “Being vulnerable is part of being authentic, and for me, it’s a good thing to do. It’s also given me credibility and currency professionally, because people want to work with others who are authentic. People want to mentor others who are authentic too.”

clients’

“Being a Black male corporate attorney in the city of Philadelphia—a city with lots of social inequality—represented an opportunity for me to be a leader in my own limited way.”

Success in Collaboration

William Marcum transitioned to an in-house role to have a more direct influence on business objectives. He now aids TC Energy in its mission to deliver reliable energy and have a positive impact on the surrounding communities.

By Zach Baliva

WILLIAM MARCUM HAS HAD A LIFELONG interest in traveling, which led him to join the US Navy right out of high school. The son of a coal miner, he grew up in southern West Virginia and hadn’t had the opportunity to leave the surrounding tristate area; he chose the Navy in large part to see the world. His passion for travel continued beyond his years in the military, and after his time in the service, he eventually embarked on several study abroad programs in Europe.

His first military deployment was with NATO, working with his Canadian, British, and French counterparts. “I spent a lot of time with the foreign navy overseas and just really liked the different cultures, the foods, and everything,” Marcum says.

While serving in the military, Marcum developed key skills that would aid him in his career journey. He points to the discipline and structure that were instilled in him along with a passion for learning. The internet became prevalent at sea during his time in the Navy, allowing him even more access to education. The time he spent

William Marcum Senior Legal Counsel, Litigation & Employment Law TC Energy

Chris Bailey

reading while on board sparked an interest in global politics and the subjects he’d end up studying in undergraduate and law school.

After being deployed twice in the military and graduating from law school, Marcum was ready to stay closer to home; he took a position at a midsized law firm, which gave him the opportunity to expand his knowledge base. “I got to do a lot of different things, practice a lot of different areas of law for a lot of different clients in a lot of different industries,” he explains. The scope of his work was wide and included white-collar criminal defense, healthcare law, data privacy, and cybersecurity.

Marcum then transitioned to a larger national firm, where he focused on bigger mergers and acquisitions rather than litigation. He got the opportunity to go in-house at the utility company NiSource, whose pipeline segment would eventually be acquired by TC Energy. He’s since been in two in-house roles: his first centered on managing land and projects, conducting acquisition work, and building pipelines all over the country. He now works as senior legal counsel of litigation for labor and employment law.

The in-house aspect of the role particularly appealed to Marcum. “The structure is more similar to what I was accustomed to in the military,” he says, adding that he liked the more defined goals and structured chain of command. “A lot of times in private practice, you don’t really know what your client’s

goals are. You’re focused more on the matter and trying to win a case and not really on the business objectives of the company. I think it suits me better to have the mission to complete.”

TC Energy gave Marcum the opportunity to delve deep into different parts of the business to better understand not only the company but the industry as a whole. “It’s very important to find a company that allows you to grow, develop, and explore the areas that interest you,” he says.

His responsibilities include complex litigation, reviewing large contracts for privacy language, assisting the cybersecurity team with risk assessments, and day-to-day human resources matters. Marcum’s work requires him to interact with many departments within the company and work with external counsel on litigation proceedings.

Because he’s involved in so many different aspects of the business, Marcum often finds himself advising various teams. “You don’t have the luxury of time to step back, plan, research, and think strategically,” he explains. “Someone needs legal advice, and they’ll need it ASAP. You have to really trust yourself, your knowledge, and your competency to provide the legal advice your internal clients need and help them manage risk appropriately.”

Marcum is currently focused on implementing a culture that adapts to data privacy. Because states have different laws governing

Trusted Legal and Business Advisers

McGuireWoods knows only a collaboration of bright minds and different viewpoints can create the innovative solutions our clients need in today’s marketplace.

We congratulate William Marcum for his leadership and impactful organizational growth as Senior Legal Counsel for Litigation, Labor & Employment, and Data Privacy Law at TC Energy. We value our partnership.

data, privacy, and cybersecurity, he says, people may not even realize they’re dealing with private information and can accidentally violate regulations.

Another ongoing focus for Marcum is sustainability, as TC Energy works to safely, reliably, and ethically deliver the energy that North Americans need. “We want to be stewards of the environment,” Marcum says, explaining how the company strives to work with renewables, listen to landowners, and make sure it functions as a good neighbor in the communities where it operates. The operation spans North America, requiring collaboration within the company to accomplish its mission each day.

From his leadership in the military to his senior positions in the civilian world, Marcum has learned how to facilitate the cooperation necessary to accomplish the company’s goals. “If you think people are going to do what you ask them to do just because you’re in a position of authority, then you’re only going to get short-term results,” he says. “People have to really trust you and realize you’re looking out for them, and that you wouldn’t ask them to do anything you wouldn’t want to do yourself.”

“Someone needs legal advice, and they’ll need it ASAP. You have to really trust yourself, your knowledge, and your competency to provide the legal advice your internal clients need and help them manage risk appropriately.”

Change Is His Trademark Move

By Zach Baliva

“CHANGE IS A GOOD THING,” SAYS

Travis Bachman, director and assistant chief trademark counsel at 3M. It’s a philosophy that he has applied not only to his legal work but his entire career trajectory: he’s never been afraid to make a change.

Bachman was born and raised in rural Iowa. A first-generation college student, he didn’t originally plan to become a lawyer—it was only after taking the LSAT that he decided to attend law school, where he became interested in intellectual property, especially trademarks and copyrights.

Even before he graduated, Bachman was offered a role at Foley & Larder in Milwaukee, where he would spend

two and a half years on its trademark and copyright team before seeing a job posting for a trademark associate position at Dorsey & Whitney in Minneapolis. The opportunity came at the perfect time for Bachman, who had been considering a move to the Twin Cities.

After five years at the firm, just as he was putting together his paperwork to apply for partner, he found a job opening at Carlson Companies, which owned several travel companies. The position immediately intrigued him; he’d not only be making the jump to an in-house role but would also be the first attorney in that role. “There were so many things I could bring to the table in that situation,” he says. He applied for

the position at the same time he made partner, eventually making the decision to pursue the in-house opportunity.

The skills Bachman had learned as outside counsel aided him in his new position at Carlson Companies. “You become a lot more embedded and involved in the actual decisions of the business, as opposed to being more of an order-taker and a pure advisor,” he says. He spent the next decade building the company’s trademark and domain name portfolios into significant assets with global protection to increase its value.

In 2016, Bachman accepted a role at 3M, where he became responsible for the global trademark needs of the

Travis Bachman has welcomed innovation throughout his career—a philosophy that enables him to successfully protect 3M’s trademarks in marketplaces both virtual and global

stationery and office supplies division—and its iconic brands Scotch and Post-it. He also supported the consumer healthcare division, whose brands include Ace, Nexcare, and Futuro. Over the years, he’s covered additional groups and divisions when the company needed someone to step up and fill those roles.

Bachman stays on top of his wide-ranging responsibilities by prioritizing the needs of different brands through an internal hierarchy structure. “It is difficult to ensure that everyone who needs assistance can get the assistance that they need,” he says. “But using the categories in the hierarchy—that helps inform how much attention each individual brand or product line should be getting.”

Today, he’s responsible for the global trademark needs of the entire consumer business group and leads the company’s online brand protection efforts related to online marketplaces and social media. Since he arrived at 3M, the company has gone from focusing efforts on particular countries to a more global strategy.

“There’s a lot of activity in the online space,” he explains. “I think everyone realizes, especially now with the results of the pandemic and online shopping going up significantly, that it is impossible to use manual methods to stay on top of the trademark infringement that is happening in that channel.”

This role became especially important during the pandemic, when counterfeit respirators were being sold as authentic 3M products. So far, Bachman has led his team to remove approximately 40,000 false or deceptive social media posts and ecommerce offerings. It’s the project Bachman is most proud of in his time at 3M.

Travis Bachman Director and Assistant Chief Trademark Counsel

3M

Part of his success comes from his leadership style. “On my team, I don’t ask people to do something if I don’t already know how to do it,” Bachman says. “I don’t think I can help them do their best job if I don’t even understand the technology they’re using.” He also recognizes the need to engage with less traditional vendors and constantly be looking for new options.

“There’s no one-size-fits-all solution. But there are a lot of solutions,” he says.

His advice for those interested in trademark law is simple: “Be prepared to work hard and understand that you will need to be very organized.” Bachman himself currently manages more than seven thousand active files. “Typically, trademark rights are not lost because of one big infringement,” he explains. “Trademark rights are lost if a brand owner fails to properly manage and enforce its rights over the course of thousands of interactions spread over many years.” He uses the phrase “death by a thousand cuts” to explain how the process works.

“One, two, or even a dozen small cuts will not kill a brand. But tens of thousands of cuts, not properly handled, will kill a brand,” Bachman says. “A successful trademark attorney needs to find ways to handle as many issues as possible, as efficiently as possible, using whatever tools are available—all at the lowest cost.”

“On my team, I don’t ask people to do something if I don’t already know how to do it. I don’t think I can help them do their best job if I don’t even understand the technology they’re using.”

Pirkey Barber is one of the largest firms in the United States exclusively practicing in the fields of trademark, copyright, and unfair competition law.

Congratulations to our friend Travis Bachman of 3M for this well-deserved recognition of his leadership and accomplishments.

The Fly, the Songbird, and the Hawk

Throughout his thirty-year career, Charter Communications’ Gary Wengrofsky has learned the importance of knowing when to listen and when to act as well as the value of being both a mentor and a mentee

By Dan Caffrey

GARY WENGROFSKY CURRENTLY SERVES AS senior director of intellectual property for the telecommunications/mass media giant Charter Communications. But he also knows a thing or two about being a shape-shifter.

“As a professional, you should realize that when you’re new to something, you’ve got to be a fly on a wall,” Wengrofsky says. “You’ve got to take it all in so that you can then apply your gained knowledge to the next issue that comes up, and the issue after that, and the issue after that. At some point, you stop being a fly and you start being a songbird. And with the issue after that, maybe you’re a hawk.”

Obviously, Wengrofsky hasn’t physically transmogrified into different winged animals. But the metaphor remains apt nonetheless, demonstrating his ability to listen as well as act, to be both a learner and teacher: all of which has contributed to a unique career that spans thirty years. As Wengrofsky puts it, his job at Charter Communications and his overall trajectory have been “fantastic for someone who has severe ADHD, like I do.”

Throughout Wengrofsky’s professional life, there’s been a consistent restlessness that, when

shaped by a certain kind of mentor, leads to upward mobility. For instance, after graduating from North Carolina State University in 1989 with a BA in political science, he worked as a temp for IBM. Once he had gotten his educational coordination duties down to a science, he sought out more work to do (“It helps to get bored,” he says).

He started relaying student requests to instructors, then sent new potential syllabi to the leadership at the company. His boss was pleased. While Wengrofsky concedes that he wasn’t exactly staying in his lane, he also recognizes the power of proactivity and creating your own opportunities.

“If someone asks, ‘Can you help with this?’, the answer is always ‘Yes,’” he says. “And if they don’t ask, then you say, ‘Can I help with that?’ If you prove that you can add value—doing your job and then some—then that will eventually earn you a promotion. Your bosses are not going to help you grow unless you’ve shown them that you’re growing yourself.”

Wengrofsky’s introduction to the cable industry came in 1992, when he joined American Television and Communications Corporation,

the forerunner to Time Warner Cable (TWC). There, he joined forces with the mentor who would change his career forever: regulatory group head Gary Matz. Although Wengrofsky was a franchising and regulatory paralegal under Matz, he soon took on responsibilities that went well beyond the scope of his job title.

“Gary’s retired now, but he was and is a very well-respected and wellregarded lawyer in government affairs within the cable industry,” Wengrofsky says. “He saw that I was interested in government affairs as well, so eventually he let me start doing a lot of the work myself: ‘Go ahead and draft

this franchise agreement that’s going to allow us to provide service in this town. Negotiate the deal with that village attorney. Fly down to Texas and talk to that mayor about our upcoming acquisition of their system.’ He was the first person I met who advocated for a career ladder for me as a paralegal. He provided me with opportunities to grow when there weren’t any.”

Matz’s tutelage, combined with Wengrofsky’s flexibility and persistence, led to a promotion every three years or so, with Wengrofsky eventually rising to the role of director of trademarks at TWC. Then, in 2016, everything changed when TWC and its competitor

Bright House Networks were acquired by Charter Communications—at that point, a relatively midsized cable company based in St. Louis. When describing the transaction, Wengrofsky invokes another animal metaphor.

“The fish swallowed the whale,” he says.

Prior to the acquisition, Charter Communications didn’t seem to have many large trademark issues, which quickly changed once they were in business with the more highly visible TWC. These issues intensified with the immediate rollout of a new brand, Spectrum. Fortunately, Wengrofsky had become a trademark expert not

Gary Wengrofsky Senior Director of Intellectual Property Charter Communications

just through his primary role at TWC, but also through his involvement with the International Trademark Association (INTA), a nonprofit advocacy association for trademarks and intellectual property designed to foster consumer trust, economic growth, and innovation.

Wengrofsky credits corporate parent Time Warner’s chief trademark counsel at the time, Erin Hennessy, as well as its then director of intellectual property, Daretia Austin, for connecting him with INTA, an organization he describes as essential for anyone who wants their company to have a successful, powerful, and robust trademarks program. During nonpandemic times, the group has many annual conferences, during which Wengrofsky confers with Charter’s domestic and foreign counsel to discuss any topical issues. He also loves talking to contemporaries from other organizations and learning through osmosis.

“My first INTA conference was in Chicago, and I was just happy to be there and get to hear what all of these other trademark nerds like myself were doing,” he says. “Now I’m at the point where I will listen to and speak with anyone about anything . . . I’m always going to be a fly on a wall for something. I can’t be a hawk on everything.”

The education goes both ways. Wengrofsky is currently helping develop a mentoring program through INTA and has spoken at several conferences. Due to COVID-19, two of 2020’s

Thompson Coburn is proud to partner with Gary Wengrofsky and the entire in-house team at Charter Communications

The choice of a lawyer is an important decision and should not be based solely upon advertisements.

Winston & Strawn applauds Gary Wengrofsky for his vision, leadership, and commitment to Charter Communications.

larger conferences were folded into one virtual event, where he participated on a panel presentation on leadership.

“Some of what I talk about is how not only does having a mentor aid you in your career, but how being a mentor will aid you in your career, particularly as a nonattorney,” Wengrofsky says. “Showing your level of expertise and leadership—and that you’re interested in helping others— goes a long way. I’m in it just as much as them.”

Thompson Coburn LLP:

“Gary Wengrofsky has a unique combination of IP experience, deep knowledge of the telecommunications industry, and real business acumen. We’re proud to work with Gary and celebrate this recognition of his achievements.”

–Tom Polcyn, Partner

Congratulations to Gary Wengrofsky on his recognition by Modern Counsel. Gary has a wealth of experience in everything from trademark clearance to online brand protection, and Corsearch is proud to support this dedicated IP professional.

“I’m at the point where I will listen to and speak with anyone about anything . . . I’m always going to be a fly on a wall for something. I can’t be a hawk on everything.”

Evolving the “Engineer Answer”

Nearly a decade into his career as an engineer, Stephen Tytran decided he wanted to be a lawyer. The transition required not just a JD but a fundamental shift in the way he solves problems.

By Dan Caffrey

IN HIS FIRST TWO YEARS ATTENDING EVENING LAW school, Stephen Tytran led a secret double life. By day, he was an advisory engineer for the IBM Corporation. By night, he was earning his juris doctor from the North Carolina Central University School of Law.

“I debated whether or not I should tell my employer, just because it was such a different field,” Tytran says. At that point, he had been an engineer for more than a decade. “I did tell a couple of close friends on my engineering team. If we were in one of those crunch periods where a product had to go out the door, I’d say, ‘Look, if I disappear for a little while, it’s because I’m doing this little thing called law school on the side. If you can cover for me, I promise I’ll make up the time to get the work done.’”

Tytran did ultimately come clean about law school with his engineering management, who then allowed him time during the week to get patent training from the IP team at IBM while keeping his engineering

position. Eventually, the dual position evolved into a full-time patent agent role on the IP team, enabling Tytran to support his former engineering team until graduating from NCCU as valedictorian in 2000.

Compared to the path most lawyers take, Tytran’s was an unconventional one. After his time writing and prosecuting patent applications at IBM and a large patent boutique law firm, Tytran worked at a patent assertion entity, Scenera Research, for nearly fifteen years before coming to Citrix, where he currently serves as director and senior associate general counsel of intellectual property. Given Citrix’s status as a multinational software company, the scope of Tytran’s work has grown significantly since those early days.

“When my legal career first started, I was focused on getting patents for clients—essentially writing patent applications for individuals and corporations,” Tytran says. “Now, my universe has expanded from that. I handle all types of intellectual property

matters: not just developing patent portfolios but licensing patented technology into and outside the company and defending against and asserting patent rights through litigation. I work with strategic partners to protect the respective IP on both sides of a transaction. That can include patents, but it can also include copyright, trademark, and trade secret.”

This latest role has been a welcome shift for Tytran. He remembers how, at a certain point in his career, writing patent applications no longer felt new—which is why he eventually gravitated toward a position with a different set of challenges. Citrix also offered a novel experience in that Tytran had never worked at a company that delivered SaaS (Software as a Service) products.

“You don’t buy a box with it,” he says. “We install our software on someone else’s or our own infrastructure in the cloud and deliver it as a service. The arrangement presents an entirely different perspective as to how that relationship should be legally governed.”

Tytran explains that while one doesn’t need a technical degree in a field such as engineering to be a successful lawyer at a technology company, it is critically important to have in-depth technical knowledge of your products when you’re an IP lawyer. “If you don’t have a firm understanding of what your product is and how it technically functions, it’s very difficult to draw the metes and bounds of the IP rights needed to protect that product,” he says. “For

Stephen Tytran Director and Senior Associate General Counsel of IP Citrix Systems

example, where does the boundary lie between the functionality of your proprietary software and your public-facing APIs? If you can’t draw those distinctions clearly, you’re not going to be an effective advocate.”

Grant Moss, founder and president of Adapt IP, has worked closely with Tytran on numerous IP management projects. “Stephen sees value in IP opportunities that can either be difficult to identify or challenging to manage,” Moss says. “He credits the ability to execute value-creating strategies to his background of managing IP projects from multiple vantage points.”

According to Tytran, engineering and practicing law can also overlap in the mindset required by each field. For instance, they both require him to solve complex problems. There are some notable distinctions between the two practices, though.

“Where they tend to differ is that, in engineering, you’re usually dealing with a physical law or natural law,” Tytran says. “There’s a formula out there, and that’s the answer. At least until we figure out that it’s not the answer. But

Courtesy of Citrix Systems

“If you don’t have a firm understanding of what your product is and how it technically functions, it’s very difficult to draw the metes and bounds of the IP rights needed to protect that product.”

for the most part, the solutions in engineering end up being pretty fixed and clear. With the law, that’s almost never the case. There’s almost never an answer because it’s all related to circumstance.”

During his first year in law school, Tytran developed an approach that helped him start thinking as a lawyer. When researching a case, he would come up with what he calls the “engineer answer”—i.e., a solution that was straightforward, streamlined, and driven solely by facts rather than interpretation. But then he would consider the opposite answer and consider how that could also result from those same facts and circumstances. He even applied the approach to essays in law school, writing out both arguments, then finally concluding which one made the most sense. While this mindset is more or less second nature to him now, he still puts it to good use on a daily basis at Citrix.

“You just need to be more flexible in your thoughts and approach as a lawyer than you do as an engineer,” Tytran says.

Doing It All

WHEN ANTHONY CASTIGLIONE GRADUATED from Angelo State University in 1997 with both a BS and MS in biology, it seemed clear what field he would pursue. But then, in a clear deviation from his “scientific method,” he wound up going to law school.

“I was premed and thought I might travel down the scientific road and apply to medical school or obtain a PhD, but it wasn’t until I discovered the opportunity to study environmental law that I decided to become a lawyer,” Castiglione recalls. “I thought I would be an environmental lawyer and apply my biological skill sets to the practice of law, but in my first year of school, I discovered intellectual property law and thought it was fascinating that you could protect intangible property rights.”

By Dan Caffrey

He switched gears and was hooked. He was part of the IP moot court team in law school, later instructed the team as a director, clerked for a judge, and went into private practice. Fortunately, he found that his biology degrees came in handy in his new career. “In the early days, I had such a strong technical background and applied that—leaning on my chemical background, for example, in respect to semiconductors,” Castiglione notes. “I was able to lean on the courses I took in premed when I was writing patents for catheters, heart valves, and other types of medical devices.”

Today, Castiglione serves as the executive director for intellectual property for USAA, a financial services group based in San Antonio, Texas. When he started with USAA in 2006, the company’s patent program was in its infancy. But over the last fifteen years, it’s grown to a portfolio of more than 1,400 patents. Among financial institutions, only a couple have more.

“When I got there, we had just two patents issued and a number of applications pending, and I was hired to prepare and prosecute patent applications,” he explains. “We have always been a very innovative company, but we weren’t protecting our innovations through patents as much as we were protecting other intellectual property

Anthony Castiglione has helped USAA create a portfolio of more than 1,400 patents, all while facing the unique challenges of intellectual property work at a financial services company

through trademarks and just keeping great ideas in the walls of USAA.”

Around that time, Castiglione noticed that in the financial services industry, many bigger banks and financial institutions were beginning to protect their internal innovations with patents. “We filed our first patent application in 2002 and have since amassed a patent portfolio that is now one of the largest in the financial services industry,” he says.

Castiglione is tasked with leading and managing the team that licenses and enforces intellectual property at USAA. “I’ve always worked best when I’m confronted with challenging issues and supported by a group with diverse expert opinions,” he says. Companies like USAA, he explains, have unique challenges in serving its member base. “We often invent through necessity. At one point, it was the only fully integrated financial services company, offering insurance products, banking products, life insurance products, and retirement products all under one roof.

“Because of that integrated nature, I noticed the company had a lot of ideas that had broad

applicability across business lines,” Castiglione continues. “You might get an invention that was conceived in the bank but has some applicability to both the bank and the insurance arm of USAA. What we were looking at was not necessarily business method patents but technological inventions across USAA.” The company created an applied research lab with engineers and developers, and the sky was the limit on what could be created. The lab was full of technology, including drones, 3-D printers, ATMs, and even a gas pump. Out of that was born the transformative remote deposit capture technology that’s become commonplace today.

USAA’s intellectual property unit consists of a team of registered patent and intellectual property attorneys, including an administrative and support staff of seasoned legal analysts and a litigation manager. Castiglione leads the licensing and enforcement group, and there’s also a prosecution group, an IP counseling group, and an overall leader in Charlotte Whitaker. “Our primary focus is on utilizing our portfolio to benefit the membership, to advance the mission

Anthony Castiglione Executive Director for Intellectual Property USAA

Irell

for his exceptional achievements and leadership.

and leverage [the portfolio] to continue to fulfill that mission,” Castiglione says. “It’s a small but mighty team.”

Over the course of the pandemic, employees worked remotely, and Castiglione believes the team actually worked more efficiently. “When you’re in an environment as a lawyer where you really have the time to keep your head down and focus, it’s more conducive [to efficiency],” he explains. “In the office environment, you might have different clients sticking their head in. For me, and I think some others, it’s been a much more effective work environment.”

Looking back at his nearly twenty years doing patent work, from his start at a small boutique firm in Minneapolis to his current role, Castiglione believes he’s “seen it all” when it comes to the patent world.

“I spent the first part of my career securing invention and innovation, and then I moved into leveraging the value from those innovations and inventions, licensing and in some cases selling those inventions to others,” he explains. “Then there’s the enforcement arm, and I’ve done that as well. I’ve done it all, and doing it for a company like USAA has brought a sense of true satisfaction to my career.”

& Manella proudly recognizes our friend Anthony Castiglione

“We have always been a very innovative company, but we weren’t protecting our innovations through patents as much as we were protecting other intellectual property through trademarks and just keeping great ideas in the walls of USAA.”

Exploring Intersections

David Chan uses his knowledge of technology, business, and law to successfully strategize patent protection for Western Digital

By Lucy Cavanagh

David Chan Senior Patent Counsel Western Digital

DAVID CHAN HAS BEEN AN ATTORNEY for nearly fifteen years now, but his first career was as a software engineer. “Looking back over the years, I realized that something that I naturally like to do is make connections between things that don’t seem like they have a connection to each other,” Chan says. “I find myself most interested in the intersection between technology, legal issues, and business.” Today, as senior patent counsel for Western Digital, Chan uses his skills in those areas to secure patents that cover a wide scope of needs.

Chan originally studied computer science at Harvey Mudd College, a school that emphasized placing science and engineering in the larger societal context by requiring their students to also take humanities courses. “It was a good way for me to expose myself to all of the different ways of thinking, and I ended up graduating with an English literature minor,” Chan says.

After working as a computer programmer for a few years, Chan joined a law firm to work as a patent agent. He realized that the best way to grow in that position was to get a law degree, a goal he achieved at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. He then spent a few years at the intellectual property law firm of Knobbe Martens as a patent attorney

Michele Conradi

before the chance to go in-house arose with one of their clients, Western Digital.

“I felt a connection with Western Digital when they were a client. At that time—about ten years ago—they had a relatively small legal team of about twenty people,” explains Chan. “We are about 150 to 200 now worldwide, which really gives a sense of how much the company has transformed itself in terms of growth.” Founded in 1970, Western Digital is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of hard disk drives and other data storage devices such as solid-state drives.

Working at Western Digital satisfies both of Chan’s greatest passions: it allows him to put his computer science knowledge to use while also requiring him to strategize from a legal perspective in order to acquire patents. “I feel like I have the final missing piece of understanding how technology drives change,” Chan says. “Even if you have the best technology, you still need a go-to-market plan if you want it to be adopted. Understanding how technology, business, and law worked together became my goal to help drive the patent strategy.”

The Western Digital business unit that Chan supports specializes in hard disk drive technology, which plays a key role in computers and data centers. However, Chan and his team also look beyond the traditional disk drive storage realm and

anticipate how their technology could be useful in industries completely different from their own. “If we’re looking at it from a patent standpoint and from a legal perspective, we have to consider which aspect we should protect,” Chan explains. “We have to understand the technology within the larger context of the development of other industry trends.”

Chan cites an example: Western Digital’s disk drives feature sophisticated signal processing and precision control capabilities that could be applicable to other industries, not just its direct competitors. “We take a broader view of how to extract the maximum value from our inventions and the intellectual property assets that we’re creating,” he says.

As Western Digital has grown, the scope of Chan’s responsibilities has also evolved over the years—especially as more advanced technology becomes a reality. “I’ve had the opportunity to support our research division, which has been doing a lot of interesting work on machine learning and AI,” Chan says. “I need to make sure that I’m up to speed on these future-looking technologies.”

Chan’s background in computer science also gives him an edge when it comes to the complicated technology that may impact the practice of law. “Data analytics and automation are my passions,” Chan says.

“Looking back over the years, I realized that something that I naturally like to do is make connections between things that don’t seem like they have a connection to each other.”

Patterson + Sheridan is a technology law firm specializing in the protection of client’s assets and rights. Our services include: patent preparation and prosecution, trademark and brand protection, litigation, technology licensing, portfolio and risk management, and assistance with mergers and acquisitions.

With seven o ces strategically located across the country, Patterson + Sheridan is able to provide greater service, value, and expertise locally, while maintaining a recognized national presence and international reach needed to achieve client’s business goals.

“My role here sometimes can be that of an educator. We have to be aware of what is out there, so I have to be able to explain the technology to other attorneys and show its potential.

“If you just say ‘automation,’ I think people have different preconceived notions about what that means,” he continues. “Automation doesn’t mean cars driving themselves yet, but we have already had things like cruise control for decades and continue to see new assistive driving features. We’re still very early [in the process] in terms of how these technical trends impact legal operations, but it is something to be aware of.”

Though Chan continues to specialize in patent law, over the course of ten years at Western Digital, he has dipped his toes in other areas of law to best serve his company. “As an in-house attorney I’m kind of a jack of all trades, and that has forced me to become broader in my approach. I think that connects back to my love of learning,” Chan says. “I have learned to anticipate issues to be able to add value to the discussion and drive toward a solution.”

“As an in-house attorney I’m kind of a jack of all trades, and that has forced me to become broader in my approach. I think that connects back to my love of learning.”

Evaluate

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

Be OK with Being Uncomfortable

By Donald Liebenson

JEFF BLAKE USED TO CONSIDER HIMSELF “A reluctant changer,” but if his seventeen years with Wells Fargo have reinforced one thing, it’s that “it’s OK to be uncomfortable because that’s where real growth occurs,” he says. “I have been regularly pushed to expand my practice and to learn new areas within the bank. Looking back, I’m so glad I had to do that.”

After his freshman year in college, Blake took two years away from school to serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Northeastern Brazil. It was “a humbling, life-changing experience” that gave him new perspective on how people can change and a deep love for the people of Brazil and their culture.

“Those two years have become a touchstone in my life, and I often find that the lessons learned in Brazil continue to apply to almost every aspect of my life, even thirty years after returning home.”

When he returned from Brazil and went back to school, based partially on the mentorship and example of a former church youth group leader, Blake settled on the idea of becoming a lawyer. He followed that

mentor’s path by going to the same law school and focusing on corporate work.

Before moving in-house with Wachovia Corporation, acquired by Wells Fargo in 2008, Blake began his legal career with large law firms in Chicago. He credits Jeff O’Connor, then a young partner at Kirkland & Ellis, with taking him under his wing and teaching him how to run deals and be a securitization lawyer. O’Connor was and continues to be a great mentor and friend.

One of the things that Blake most appreciated about his time at Kirkland was the emphasis that the firm placed on training its lawyers. This training included both formal and informal formats and often involved “partners dropping whatever they were doing to walk me through the analysis or research I was trying to do. That was so valuable, and I’ve tried to react the same way whenever I’m asked questions or given the opportunity to train or teach.”

The COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 presented Blake with his most recent challenge, and an opportunity to learn something new. As capital markets senior

Jeff Blake on the value of embracing the unknown, taking on new challenges, and serving his community

Jeff Blake Capital Markets Senior Company Counsel Wells Fargo

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With 1,000 lawyers in the United States, Asia, Europe and the Middle East, Hunton Andrews Kurth serves clients across a broad range of complex transactional, litigation and regulatory matters. We are known for our strength in the energy, financial services, real estate, and retail and consumer products industries, as well as our considerable experience in more than 100 distinct areas of practice, including privacy and cybersecurity, intellectual property, environmental, and mergers and acquisitions. Our full-service litigation practice is one of the largest in the country, with particular depth in key litigation markets such as Texas, California, Florida and the Mid-Atlantic.

company counsel, he is one of the senior lawyers in a small group within Wells Fargo that supports structured products and asset securitization transactions. When the pandemic hit, the Federal Reserve resurrected a program previously used after the 2008 financial crisis, the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF). The program was designed to help restore credit to millions of Americans during that financial collapse and to restore the flow of credit to consumers and small businesses.

Established on March 23, 2020, this TALF 2.0 enabled the issuance of asset-backed securities backed by specific types of consumer loans, Small Business Administration loans, and certain other assets.

“When COVID hit, the government started looking for things it could do to help support the markets and the flow of credit,” Blake says. “It brought back TALF, and I knew right away that Wells Fargo was going to have a role in the program. We needed to know how TALF 2.0 was going to work and how Wells Fargo could participate. I volunteered to be the in-house lawyer covering TALF.” It turned out to be a very involved process.

“The decision was made internally that Wells Fargo Securities would be a TALF agent,” he continues. “That entailed quite a bit of work to quickly get up to speed on all the newly released rules and requirements to be an agent so we could be up and running as quickly as possible.”

Blake provided legal support for a large crossdisciplinary group within Wells Fargo tasked with building a TALF agent program from scratch. The team built and launched the program within a matter of weeks, which was a “phenomenal outcome,” Blake notes. “New initiatives don’t typically go from concept to operational that fast.”

In addition to advising his Wells Fargo clients, Blake also prioritizes community service, including pro bono work for refugees. In 2016, he began volunteering with two organizations in Charlotte that provide pro bono legal services primarily for refugees seeking to become US citizens.

is proud to join in recognizing our friend and client

Jeff Blake of Wells Fargo Bank

©2021 Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP

Through that experience, he has “met some amazing people who have overcome incredible hardships to provide a better life for themselves and their families.” This pro bono work has made Blake appreciate even more the many opportunities provided by this country and given him a better understanding for why so many people want to come here and be a part of it.

Based in Charlotte, North Carolina, Blake and his wife raised four children who are now all “out of the house,” with two in college and two who have embarked on their own professional lives. Changes brought on during COVID-19 presented a new set of challenges and another opportunity for the senior counsel’s life to transform.

While recognizing the very real difficulties and suffering experienced by others, Blake tried to focus on the positives, including learning to work in a new and different way. Time savings and efficiencies provided by the workfrom-home environment allowed Blake to be more productive in his work, family, and community service obligations—one beneficial result of changes brought on by the pandemic.

For Blake, while it still doesn’t always come naturally, embracing the discomfort that often comes with change has led to the greatest personal and professional rewards of his life.

Asset securitization and Chapman just go together. We are an industry-leading law firm with one of the most active securitization and structured finance practices in the US, working across a wide range of traditional and esoteric asset classes. Together with our clients, we get deals done.

Chapman applauds Jeff Blake and the Wells Fargo Corporate Treasury team for their innovation in developing and implementing asset-backed securitization issuance programs.

On the same team.

Tim Durken Associate General Counsel

ASICS

Vail Fucci

Ahead of the Pack

When Tim Durken had the chance to build ASICS North America’s legal department from stem to stern, he put together a team ready to take the iconic brand across the finish line

By Zach Baliva

WHEN TIM DURKEN LACED UP HIS HIGH SCHOOL wrestling shoes, he never imagined he’d eventually work for the company that produced them. The shoes were ASICS, the iconic footwear brand whose products have been worn by Bruce Lee, Olympic athletes, and everyday runners alike. Today, as associate general counsel, Durken is helping the legendary company expand its legacy brand and navigate its ongoing shift to digital.

The company has built a reputation for innovation, but few people realize it all started with an octopus. In 1949, Kihachiro Onitsuka was creating athletic shoes for customers in Japan and needed to find a way to produce better traction. Inspiration hit during dinner: Onitsuka noticed the gripping power of the octopus’s sucker in his salad and mimicked the feature in a shoe called the Onitsuka Tiger. The company later added its patented gel cushioning technology to remove weight and introduce better cushioning and flexibility.

Durken was well aware of the company’s reputation when he joined the organization in March 2020. “I

was excited to work for ASICS because of its strong brand and commitment to innovation and science,” he says. After spending ten years at law firms and then another three years in-house at a lighting company, he wanted to leverage his growing skills and learn more about direct-to-consumer, e-commerce, and privacy.

As the first attorney in ASICS North America’s Boston office, he had broad responsibilities, including complex contracts, litigation, compliance, and data privacy. Not only was Durken the first company attorney in Boston, he was the only internal attorney other than the general counsel on its legal team. Then, in October 2020, the general counsel left the organization.

Suddenly, Durken was working with only the help of his paralegal and the support of his global colleagues. On less than two weeks’ notice, he took over management of a team of a half dozen contract attorneys and outside law firms, working on everything from litigation to real estate to privacy matters. As several litigations were heating up, Durken was facing mediations, discovery deadlines, and shifting strategies. Prior to the GC’s departure, ASICS legal had started recruiting for two open corporate counsel positions. Durken turned his attention to filling those roles. He had the opportunity to handpick the very best candidates and build the new team himself.

While legal issues are important, Durken often reminds himself that ASICS is a business. “We sell sneakers,” he says. “Our job as a department is to minimize risks and support sales and customer-focused functions.” That mindset guided his recruitment process, and Durken ultimately brought in two experienced lawyers with different backgrounds. But while their approaches vary, they share a willingness to contribute and a desire to learn.

With the new internal team in place, Durken took work back from outside contract attorneys to provide better and more timely service to the company. He gave his new colleagues autonomy and divided up responsibilities by location (ASICS has a second US office in California) and business units so each would have a primary legal contact. The move has allowed his team members to build better relationships, foster collaboration, and create efficiencies.

Durken joined the team at ASICS just as the COVID-19 pandemic began, bringing major changes to retail and professional settings. In leading a new team through uncertain times, he’s made an extra effort to promote a sense of belonging. The onboarding and rebuild of the team also benefited from Durken’s collaboration with his senior legal colleague visiting from ASICS’ Japan headquarters in 2021. Virtual social hours like occasional trivia nights and other recreational activities

Congratulations to Alan Durken!

Seyfarth is a full-service law firm rooted in serving the labor law needs of airlines and railroads. We continue that tradition today, offering all aspects of labor, employment, and benefits law services for carriers and their service providers.

www.seyfarth.com

have helped new colleagues deepen their relationships. In official online meetings, ASICS legal employees not only track and collaborate on key deliverables but also share ideas for improvement, requests for help, achievements, and appreciation for others.

Prior to moving in-house, Durken worked at both big and boutique law firms, where he focused on corporate restructuring cases in New York and Delaware. He’s relied on those experiences to guide him at ASICS. “Corporate restructuring work is underrated when it comes to preparing attorneys for in-house roles because it forces you to get comfortable coming into fast-paced environments to learn new businesses and fix problems,” he explains.

Lawyers with restructuring experience are adept at understanding what financial statements actually mean for a business and therefore know what material issues could kill a business or help it thrive. Durken leverages this experience to help him understand his current industry, see what ASICS is trying to accomplish, and prioritize legal work accordingly.

All this helps Durken keep his team focused on business as he aligns the legal strategy to allow management to meet its stated goals. “It’s a balancing act,” he says. “Legal has to understand and mitigate risk without unnecessarily blocking the business so that it cannot compete.”

With more than 900 lawyers across 17 offices, Seyfarth provides advisory, litigation, and transactional legal services to clients worldwide.

To strike the right balance, he explains trade-offs and options to all stakeholders so everyone can work together to determine the right path forward.

With his new team in place, Durken has pushed through a backlog of contracts and completed several big projects that were once stalled in the pipeline. Now he can be more proactive on important issues like brand enforcement, ASICS’ digital shift, and sustainability. The company is actively hosting virtual race events, developing new products, focusing on emerging technologies, and collaborating with artists and brands. ASICS is continuing its long history of innovation, and its legal team is in place and ready to support that work.

Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, P.C.:

“We applaud Tim’s achievement and recognition in Modern Counsel and look forward to continuing to work together.”

–Christian Keeney, Shareholder

Pasich LLP:

“Tim is smart, practical, and strategic in his approach to complex matters. It is an absolute pleasure to work with him.”

–Shaun Crosner, Partner

Squire Patton Boggs:

“Tim is the rare combination of thoughtful and practical. He helps the business people identify and resolve legal issues in a manner that enables them to achieve their commercial goals. Tim seeks to finds solutions that advance ASICS’ business and to help his internal clients make sound and informed decisions.”

–Alan Friel, Partner

Ahead in Adtech

Keri Topkins applies her legal expertise to help Criteo navigate change and outpace the competition in advertising technology

By Zach Baliva

BY NOW, IT’S HAPPENED TO EVERYONE.

You start thinking about buying a new TV. You talk about it with your friends, mention it to your spouse over dinner, and keep an eye out for a good deal. Suddenly, ads for bargain big screens and the latest 4K displays pop up on your web browser and social media apps. Is Siri listening to your private conversations? Is someone spying on you? Are you just paranoid?

The answer is: none of the above. But chances are you’re interacting with Criteo, a leading global tech ad company that impacts you every day, even though you don’t know it. Keri Topkins, senior legal director, says the privacy-respecting platform is noninvasive—and it’s her job to make sure it stays that way.

Criteo served up a staggering 1.4 trillion ads in 2019, and those ads helped more than 20,000 companies generate more than $900 billion in sales. It’s all driven by robust commerce data, next-level AI, and a suite of solutions designed to help retail clients attract customers and boost sales.

The company uses a technique known as retargeting, with which they zero in on specific consumers based on internet use. While the practice may seem invasive, Topkins says Criteo doesn’t store, share, or track any personally identifiable information. Instead, the company’s sophisticated algorithm leverages anonymous behavioral data from an advertiser’s as well as a publisher’s URL to determine how and when to display certain ads. “All our products

have deep privacy protections built in,” Topkins says. “And our job as lawyers is to provide the best experience possible without ever knowing who the user is.”

Topkins is comfortable at the intersection of law, tech, privacy, marketing, and problem-solving. She started her career as a marketing coordinator for GT Interactive, the video game company behind popular first-person shooter games like Doom , Quake, and Unreal . She was in her office on April 20, 1999—the day the Columbine High School massacre brought a new level of scrutiny to the industry.

Other positions at companies like Pixel Play (acquired by Oberon Media) exposed Topkins to massive cable deals, mobile gaming, and the early days of on-demand TV. Topkins was drafting

legal templates for the white-label computer gaming company when the first smart TVs hit the market. “I had to create an app deal for the first time because TVs suddenly had apps,” she recalls. “I remember saying, ‘This is the future,’ and I’ve had to say that a lot in my legal career.”

In 2010, Topkins answered a job posting and went to work at News Corp. just as Rupert Murdoch’s massive media and publishing company was bracing for the digital revolution. Armed with a first-generation iPad, she served as commercial counsel for the Daily, billed as the world’s first digital newspaper. Two years later, when the Daily folded and News Corp. split with Fox, Topkins managed some of the back-end commercial legal aspects of the spinoff. News Corp. became a tech hub, and advertising technology became ubiquitous. When a peer invited her to a two-day adtech conference, she accepted. They were the only two lawyers to attend.

Topkins joined Criteo as senior commercial counsel in 2017. She remembers getting to work at 7:30 a.m. By 8:30 a.m., the company’s general counsel had announced her departure. The next week, a midmarket colleague went parttime and soon after went on sabbatical (and did not return). Then her colleague in retail media went on paternity leave. Just months after she started, Topkins was responsible for the Americas region. Today, she runs the go-to-market and commercialization for the sponsored advertising technology, coordinates data partnerships, and manages advertiser and supply guidelines.

At every step of her career, Topkins has put in the work to master the technology her employers use. “You have to understand the product that you’re doing the legal work for or you won’t give the best advice or create the best work product,” she says. “My team has to know Criteo’s process inside and out.”

At Criteo, legal is more than a service; it’s a core part of the team. A three- to six-month onboarding process ensures each person on the legal team knows every piece of the company’s complex policies, processes, and data.

Keri Topkins Senior Legal Director Criteo

Since its founding in 1931, Hahn & Hessen has been committed to maintaining a practice with world-class sophistication. The firm consistently develops innovative and practical legal solutions for complex commercial transactions. Our attorneys represent leading market participants in all aspects of banking, corporate finance, securities transactions, commercial litigation and alternative dispute resolution, acquisitions, investments and real estate transactions. The firm’s history and the longstanding commitment of our many institutional and business clients are a testament to our success. As part of our debtoriented practice, Hahn & Hessen has a nationally recognized practice representing debtors, creditors’ and equity committees, financial institutions, trustees and other participants in workouts, restructurings and bankruptcy proceedings. To complement our finance focus, the firm has a thriving general corporate and litigation practice involving the representation of business entities and high-worth individuals in such diverse matters as mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, joint ventures, trust and fiduciary litigation, insurance coverage, employment-related and commercial oriented disputes. We are proud of our tradition of producing legal strategies and creative transaction structures in a cost-effective manner to meet our clients’ needs. Visit us at www.hahnhessen.com.

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Criteo started in 2005, and until recently, the French company operated with two separate retargeting and retail media teams. Retargeting relies on AI to deliver curated ads in real time, while retail media teams place sponsored ads on leading retailers. Recently, Topkins has been working with her department to help the teams provide both solutions in one holistic way.

To realize this goal, which will provide a seamless experience for users and advertisers alike, Topkins worked as part of the team for the platform transition. She is also doing the behind-the-scenes legal work to create one flat pricing model and move thousands of advertisers to Criteo’s new retail media platform.

The transition is just one of many big projects happening within Criteo legal, and Topkins is always keeping watch for the next big thing. “I keep thinking it’s something with blockchain or fintech. There hasn’t been a massive breakthrough in a while, but I think we’re on the verge,” she says. Chances are, when the future is here, Topkins will be the first to know.

Hahn & Hessen LLP:

“Congratulations to Keri Topkins for the recognition of her legal accomplishments. Keri’s business acumen, excellent judgment, and collaborative spirit make her an exceptional leader and we are proud she chooses to partner with us.”

–Janine Figueiredo, Partner

“All our products have deep privacy protections built in. And our job as lawyers is to provide the best experience possible without ever knowing who the user is.”

One Step Ahead

Simon Anolick has nearly doubled patent filings at HERE Technologies while taking a proactive approach to the future needs of the company

By Lucy Cavanagh

“A GOOD ATTORNEY WILL BE ABLE TO GET A patent on almost anything. But that doesn’t mean that you want or need that patent,” says Simon Anolick, director of intellectual property at HERE Technologies. “So when we are considering the quality of the patents that we are pursuing, we are considering the business needs of our company. Not just our current needs: we are also trying to predict what HERE is going to look like in the future and what our priorities will be as technology changes.”

Anolick earned his BS in electrical engineering at Northwestern University and then went on to attend the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. Anolick began his career in private practice, where he honed his expertise in preparation and prosecution of IP, trademark, and general IP counseling. He then moved on to Motorola, where he worked for more than sixteen years— primarily as senior counsel in the company’s patent operations department.

In 2017, Anolick joined HERE Technologies as director of legal counsel and became director

of IP in 2019. The company, based in the Netherlands, creates mapping technology and navigation systems and uses location data to improve how businesses and cities run. In the years since Anolick joined HERE, the legal department has ramped up its efforts to increase the company’s IP visibility, which has led to nearly doubling their patent filing goals.

“Between about 2014 and 2017 we were filing, on average, 130 applications. Since then our goal has increased to 225—which we now surpass, averaging at about 235 applications a year,” Anolick explains. “One of the things that we’re always concerned about is quality. We don’t want to just be filing applications. Quite often, understanding the quality of the patent application can take years, because the impact can’t be known until you actually need to use the patent.”

To ensure that they are pursuing the right kind of patents, Anolick and his team work closely with the engineers and inventor communities within HERE so that they stay attuned to market shifts, both current and future. “On the micro level, we’re always asking inventors, ‘How is this technology going to change, and are we anticipating that type of change?’” Anolick says. “And then on the macro level, we ask more senior people, ‘Where is the business headed?’ Then it’s a matter of figuring out what we want our patent portfolio to look like in relation to those factors.”

As part of the effort to focus HERE’s patent needs, Anolick and his team use an attitude that they refer to as “proactive inventing” to zero in on the most relevant areas of development. “We will actively engage with different communities and different technology groups to be able to work on patentable ideas,” Anolick explains. “We can do that with oneto-one meetings and by inviting people to contribute ideas that could create solutions to the problems the company encounters. Every opportunity we get, we invite our inventors to continue to think about solutions to the problems they face in their jobs. We also ask people to go off on their own, where they can

think in less formal ways, and come back to us later with their ideas. There are so many different ways to engage with our inventors.”

Along with an increase in filings comes an increase in cost, which is another aspect that Anolick and his team shrewdly balance. “We often work with outside counsel, and we try to be in active communication with outside counsel to be able to monitor costs,” Anolick says.

Because of the global reach of HERE technologies, several individuals on Anolick’s team are located in Mumbai and Berlin. Part of his role as director of IP is ensuring that the team members in Mumbai, who started just as the pandemic hit, feel supported and unified. “I spend time training them and working with them individually to help them with the broader skills: how to look at particular cases and how to approach certain types

Simon Anolick Director of IP HERE Technologies

of issues,” Anolick says of his leadership style.

Anolick leads his elevenperson team by allowing team members the freedom to make decisions while keeping them informed about what is going on in the business side of the company. “I try not to be a micromanager. I like to trust people to make good judgments on what they should pursue and to make good business decisions based on what’s going forward. I attempt to make sure that the team has the information to make those decisions,” he says. “I also make myself available to my team and meet with everybody weekly.”

Under Anolick’s direction, his team will continue to help the company move forward, staying one step ahead of competitors and on top of which patents to prioritize.

COHAUSZ & FLORACK:

“Simon Anolick is a very experienced, yet thoughtful legal manager. His firm grasp of patent law allows him to get to the heart of patent matters. We look forward to continuing our fruitful partnership with Simon.”

–Matthias Waters, Patent Attorney and Partner

We are proud partners of HERE‘s IP team in Europe.

Swimming with Sharks

In his thirty years with Hyundai, Tom Vanderford has never been willing to roll over and settle frivolous lawsuits. Instead, he fights back.

By Zach Baliva

Tom Vanderford Associate General Counsel and Executive Director of Litigation Hyundai

AUTOMOBILE MANUFACTURERS FACE an onslaught of lawsuits in an increasingly litigious society: plaintiffs bring cases involving alleged defects, deceptive marketing, false advertising, and product liability. Many lawsuits are brought by opportunistic lawyers dreaming of headlinegrabbing settlements and multimilliondollar verdicts. There are sharks in the water, and most busy in-house lawyers have little choice but to feed them and pay the costs to settle claims before they go to trial. Tom Vanderford has a different strategy: he jumps in the water and fights back.

Vanderford, associate general counsel and executive director of litigation, joined Hyundai thirty years ago, when the fledgling South Korean multinational sold just a few models in the United States. In 1986, when Hyundai entered the market, it sold one model—the Hyundai Excel, starting at $4,995. Although the company set a record for first-year sales (168,882 cars), it slashed costs to stay competitive. In doing so, the company sacrificed quality, and the brand’s reputation suffered.

While Vanderford was a junior attorney at Hyundai, the company’s veteran lawyers mentored him. Right away, Vanderford noticed something different: “These attorneys had been around, and they didn’t like what they were seeing in the auto industry,” he explains. “They were ready to take a stand.”

Most automakers accept high-volume litigation as the cost of doing business. Adversaries file suits, the company hires defense counsel, all parties pay their experts, long discovery periods drag on for years, the matter gets close to trial, and everyone settles on the courthouse steps. The plaintiffs make money, the outside firms make money, and the experts make money. The auto company gets stuck with a huge bill.

Vanderford’s mentors at Hyundai trained him to take a different approach. Instead of settling every case, they started sorting each case by merit. “We evaluate cases quickly and settle the ones that we should, but we’re not going to engage in this ridiculous process where everyone is just getting paid to drag everything out,” he says. “That means we have to try a lot of cases. In order for this strategy to work, you have to be willing to try tough cases in difficult jurisdictions. We might lose a few trials, but we’re going to win most of them.”

When cases are legitimate or pose serious risk, Vanderford and his team offer reasonable settlements. But when claims are baseless and outlandish or when the settlement demand is unreasonable, Hyundai’s legal team tries the case. Vanderford spent most of the 1990s trying cases all over the country, winning defense verdicts in difficult jurisdictions like the Bronx, the Mississippi Delta, downtown Miami, and

south Texas. That era earned Hyundai its reputation— attorneys who wouldn’t hesitate to bring a case against another manufacturer now think twice before filing suit against Hyundai.

This is how Vanderford has operated over his three decades with Hyundai. As a result, he and his team have saved the company incalculable amounts of time and money. Today, Hyundai’s hands-on legal department has perfected the method. Vanderford and his colleagues are deeply involved in each case. They choose the experts and jury consultants, coordinate their own research, and arrange mock trials before trying any significant case. In addition, they handle all settlement negotiations and settlements in-house.

In March 2021, Vanderford and his colleagues convinced the Mississippi Supreme Court to overturn a $10.5 million verdict

dating back to a defect case filed in 1997. Originally, Vanderford attempted to settle the case. When the plaintiffs refused, he took it to trial in the early 2000s. A jury awarded $4.5 million to the plaintiffs, but Hyundai won the right to a second trial after citing problems with disclosure of an expert’s testimony. The second trial resulted in a $10.5 million plaintiff’s verdict in 2014. Vanderford and his team appealed again after discovering the plaintiffs had hired a “consultant” to influence jurors. Seven years later, the Mississippi Supreme Court sided with Hyundai and called for a third trial in the wrongful death suit. The case, which Vanderford has been fighting for twenty-five years, is now pending in Clarksdale, Mississippi, which he calls “one of the toughest jurisdictions for corporate defendants in the country.” Vanderford is working to level the playing

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Ryan Miller

field and address plaintiff-biased judges, anticorporate bias, and juries that tend toward runaway verdicts. He is actively involved in the US Chamber of Commerce’s National Chamber Litigation Center and is on the board of directors for the Product Liability Advisory Council and the American Tort Reform Association.

Another recent win for Hyundai involved a man who claimed his rented Hyundai Accent broke down and left him stranded in the desert, allegedly leading to several health issues. After a “reasonable settlement offer” was rebuffed, Hyundai successfully obtained a defense verdict, in one of California’s first courtroom trials since the COVID-19 shutdown, by demonstrating that the vehicle was properly maintained and without defects. The plaintiff was seeking $15.4 million in damages.

Vanderford has not just shaped the company’s litigation strategy. Since early cost-cutting measures originally tarnished its reputation in the US market, Hyundai has reinvested in safety and quality, which Vanderford has played a significant role in shaping. He has traveled to South Korea more than

100 times to meet with R&D teams and safety engineers and to share information on safety issues, government regulations, and other related matters. In 2021, Hyundai Motor Group had more Insurance Institute for Highway Safety awards than any of its competitors.

Vanderford’s colleagues outside Hyundai have taken note of his dedication. “What I find impressive about Tom is not only his conviction in defending Hyundai from frivolous lawsuits and standing up for what is right but his passion for mentoring younger professionals,” says Gary Wolensky, shareholder at the firm Buchalter. “It is an absolute pleasure to work with a real professional and be his outside counsel.”

Vanderford is eager to pass along the successful litigation strategies he learned from his mentors, which has resulted in a passion for mentoring the next generation of attorneys—and he’s had plenty of opportunity to do just that within his immediate family. He and his wife Madelene—whom he first met when they sat next to each other on the first day of law school—have

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“We evaluate cases quickly and settle the ones that we should, but we’re not going to engage in this ridiculous process where everyone is just getting paid to drag everything out.”

Jennings Teague is a rm of civil litigators and trial lawyers in Oklahoma City. Jennings Teague represents domestic and international manufacturers, insurance carriers and other corporate clients in a wide-range of high-stakes, complex litigation in state and federal courts.

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three sons, all of whom are attorneys in Southern California.

As Vanderford’s sons progress in their careers, he looks forward to continuing to share the skills and expertise he’s developed over the last thirty years. He is doing all he can to mentor Hyundai’s younger attorneys, particularly during the pandemic. “I’m concerned about people working remotely at the very start of a legal career,” he says. “You learn so much more from being physically present in a courtroom or in an office, where you can ask questions and build rapport over lunch. In-person trial experience is invaluable.”

Prichard Young LLP:

“It has been a true pleasure to work with Tom Vanderford for more than twenty-five years. His insight is spot-on. As a former trial lawyer, he completely understands the unpredictable nature of litigation and is not afraid to try a case. As good a lawyer as he is, he is an even better person.”

–David M. Prichard, Partner

Nutter:

“Tom Vanderford brings outstanding judgment, tremendous experience defending automotive product liability litigation, and strategic leadership when handling complex and high-stakes litigation. Nutter is proud to be a trusted member of Hyundai’s legal team.”

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A Team Player

Bonnie Jarrett helps her IP team see how they fit into the larger picture of the NFL to give football fans the best experience possible

By Lucy Cavanagh

BONNIE JARRETT FELL IN LOVE WITH IP LAW WHILE working at Scholastic. She started working at the publishing giant in New York shortly after finishing her undergrad in communications at Boston University. At a time when Scholastic was publishing a new Harry Potter book every few years, it’s no wonder that Jarrett took a liking to intellectual property.

She got early experience working on various contracts at Scholastic but soon realized that the best way for her to advance in that world would be to get her law degree. She decided to take night classes at Fordham University with the specific intention of becoming an in-house lawyer. “I liked the idea of being a lawyer in-house because I liked helping a business achieve its goals through legal work,” Jarrett says. “I really wanted to go to law school because there was only so much I felt like I could do, and I wanted to do more.”

After law school, Jarrett realized that she could get even more of an edge if she spent some time at a law firm before going in-house. She took a position at O’Melveny & Myers in New York, where she honed her expertise in copyright

and trademark law. During her time there, she also met a few long-term friends and mentors, Dale Cendali and Claudia Ray, who went on to play an important role in the direction of her career.

Though she did not originally imagine she would leave New York, Jarrett’s personal life wound up leading her to Montana, where she became an associate at Goetz, Gallik & Baldwin (now Goetz, Baldwin & Geddes). She got some experience in general practice and general litigation, but she still had a strong appetite for IP.

After four and a half years in Montana, Cendali and Ray reached out to Jarrett and offered her an opportunity to join them at Kirkland & Ellis back in New York. “I knew there would be more long-term opportunities for me to do IP work in New York,”

Jarrett says. “Kirkland had a strong focus on trademarks and copyright for a lot of different high-profile clients and cases.”

Jarrett’s instincts proved to be right. She worked her way up to partner by 2015 and, in 2018, finally fulfilled her original intention of going in-house when Cendali recommended her to the National Football League (NFL) for a role as IP counsel. “It’s been great,” Jarrett says. “After my many years of doing IP litigation, I feel like it really suits me well to be working now with enforcement and brand protection.”

“Bonnie has it all,” says Cendali, who’s a partner at Kirkland & Ellis. “She is an expert litigator with a strategic vision that ‘sees the whole field,’ and she is a funny, kind person who is a delight to work with.”

Trademark is one of the main areas that Jarrett and her team focus on at the

Bonnie Jarrett

IP Counsel

National Football League

to have law enforcement support for our various anticounterfeiting efforts, especially for our marquee events, like the Super Bowl and Pro Bowl games, as well as the NFL Draft, which has become a large fan event over the years.”

NFL. They work on a wide range of issues, including everything from trademark clearance and prosecution for the League and its thirty-two teams to collaborating with law enforcement to prevent counterfeiting.

“The work we do with law enforcement has been fascinating to me, as somebody who came from litigating cases that are usually one company against the other,” Jarrett says. “We’re very fortunate to have law enforcement support for our various anticounterfeiting efforts, especially for our marquee events, like the Super Bowl and Pro Bowl games, as well as the NFL draft, which has become a large fan event over the years.”

Jarrett and her team are able to target counterfeiters and infringers both inperson at events and online to protect the brand and its fans. “Our goal is to efficiently disrupt these illegal businesses and get those products off the market,” Jarrett says. “It also really helps our fans, because it helps make sure that they’re not duped by these unscrupulous operators and they’re not spending their hard-earned money on low-quality, fake products.”

Another area of concern for Jarrett is the copyright infringement that occurs

We congratulate Bonnie Jarrett on this recognition.

NFL.

“We’re very fortunate

through illegal streams of the games and other events. “Providers of illegal streams may not just be showing a game without the NFL’s permission; they might also be putting malware on your computer.”

To accomplish such ambitious goals, Jarrett strategizes with her team to use a “divide and conquer” approach. She emphasizes the importance of playing to the strength of her team members, which also keeps them feeling motivated and valued.

“Figuring out what interests people and what they are good at will keep them excited about their job,” Jarrett explains. “I also think that understanding how we fit into the larger picture of the business is important. None of us play football, but we are part of the larger mission, and when you know that you’re a part of that, achieving those goals and giving our fans the best experience that we can, it feels good. You feel like you’re making a difference for people.”

A New Meaning to “In-House”

Mary Kibble has been at Schneider Electric for her entire career, but she’s never felt constrained: over the years, she’s grown and advanced, strengthening and streamlining the company’s corporate governance process along the way

By Dan Caffrey

MARY KIBBLE RECOGNIZES THAT, BACK IN 2007, IT wasn’t all that rare for a lawyer to want to go in-house at some point in their career. They just usually didn’t do it right out of law school. But that’s exactly how she ended up at Schneider Electric, the global specialist in energy management and automation.

At the time, Schneider had just acquired American Power Conversion Corporation and was seeking a corporate intern to help lighten the workload. Kibble landed the role with one year to go at Roger Williams University School of Law. She eventually got hired full-time as legal counsel, and today, she serves as the

company’s deputy general counsel of global corporate governance and M&A.

“I consider myself extremely lucky to have found the right company—one that was willing to take a chance on an attorney who didn’t have any experience at the time,” Kibble says. She specifically credits Peter Wexler, Schneider’s senior vice president and chief legal officer, who was general counsel of American Power Conversion Corporation when she was hired.

“Peter has always been dedicated to finding young professionals from different backgrounds,” Kibble says. “Luckily for me and others, even though he is

incredibly busy, he prides himself on investing in supervision and training programs, as well as developmental exposure. He’s connected the younger team with mentors who really understand the role of an in-house lawyer.”

Today, as an in-house lawyer herself, Kibble has seen her work evolve from the management of Schneider’s Secure Power entities in the US to having her own global team—and reporting directly to Wexler as a member of his global legal leadership team. Kibble’s global corporate governance team is responsible for all of the company’s legal entities, with limited exception.

“There’s been a steady trajectory to my career,” Kibble says. “Schneider’s legal department is a unique place in that it allows space for a new lawyer to grow professionally and really define a career path, progressing fairly rapidly over not too long a period of time.” Kibble also acknowledges Wexler’s dedication to the retention and development of women into senior leadership positions.

A significant portion of Kibble’s work deals with subsidiary management, which Wexler has always viewed as its own discipline rather than letting it fall by the wayside, as is common at other companies.

“Over the years, it’s been an area where we’ve built a strategy and a way forward through a more complex compliance environment for Schneider,” Kibble says. “The biggest challenge posed by governance and subsidiary management in a global market stems from regulatory complexity as well as the continual changes to regulations across so many jurisdictions.

“We’re operating in so many geographies that there’s just an inherent increased risk exposure on the

Mary Kibble

Deputy General Counsel, Global Corporate Governance and M&A Schneider Electric

governance side,” she adds. “To navigate that, you’re going to need a systematic approach to the management of your legal entity’s structure and robust corporate governance policies. You want as much consistency as possible.”

To achieve this kind of streamlining, Schneider has partnered with Citco and its global subsidiary governance services team that manages most of the company’s entities on a day-to-day basis via its singlepoint-of-contact model.

As Kibble describes it, having a one-stop shop and a trusted partner in Citco has resulted in invaluable benefits, including a comprehensive compliance calendar, accurate and up-to-date corporate records, synergistic M&A activity support, adherence to the company’s key policies, and compliance and control across an ever-expanding number of jurisdictions. Prior to Schneider’s collaboration with Citco, there was potential mismanagement given there was a different method of entity management in almost every country of operation.

“Now there’s just a general accountability to the overall process,” Kibble says.

The second vital part of her job is corporate transactional support—an area she’s become very familiar with, thanks to Wexler’s support and guidance and the tutelage of another mentor, Germaine Gurr, Schneider’s former vice president and deputy general counsel.

“Germaine was in charge of all corporate transactional work for Schneider at the time,” Kibble says. “Her role comprised everything from mergers and acquisitions to joint ventures, financing transactions, large-scale carve-outs, and internal restructurings. She shared this continual growth mindset that she has and really took the time to include me in everything, making sure I got visibility with management and key decision-makers.”

When Gurr left Schneider to go back to the law-firm world (in a sort of inverse of Kibble’s own career), Kibble stepped into her current role and became more involved with corporate transactions. Coupled with subsidiary management, her workday involves a lot of juggling due to Schneider’s multinational presence.

Gurr, now a partner at White & Case’s global M&A practice, still admires the work that Kibble is doing. “Mary Kibble is a consummate professional and the person you want on your team: focused, sharp, reliable, considerate, and accountable,” Gurr says. “Mary has always taken on tasks and new responsibilities in stride and with confidence. Her ability to think about things logically and methodically truly makes her an amazing asset.”

In addition to Citco, there’s another essential—though maybe not as obvious—component for successfully navigating such a large legal entity and

“Schneider’s legal department is a unique place in that it allows space for a new lawyer to grow professionally and really define a career path, progressing fairly rapidly over not too long a period of time.”

increasingly complex crossborder and carve-out deals: a prioritization of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). As Kibble explains, many of Schneider’s transactions have a scope that requires a truly global mindset.

She cites the company’s 2020 acquisition of Larsen & Toubro’s electrical and automation business in conjunction with the company’s JV partner Temasek as an example—one that spanned four continents and ten jurisdictions, and involved the outside counsel of both White & Case and AZB & Partners in India.

“Varied backgrounds, cultural experiences, and perspectives are key to the success of a large cross-border transaction,” Kibble says. “There’s that feeling that we’re all in this together. We’re all working toward this common goal. Schneider is committed to offering equal opportunities to everyone, everywhere, and wants their employees—no matter who they are, or where in the world they live—to feel uniquely valued and safe to contribute their best.

“The global legal department under Peter views diversity, equity, and inclusion as crucial to their overall success and imperative to drive the innovation, collaboration, and high performance necessary to execute on the most challenging and complex deals.”

Schlumberger’s Ashley Brown uses her engineering background to her advantage to protect the company’s patents

By Natalie Kochanov

A Technical Approach to Intellectual Property Law

AS A FORMER MECHANICAL ENGINEER,

Ashley Brown was exposed to intellectual property (IP) law long before she decided to pursue it. Still, when it came time to decide on a legal specialization, Brown made sure that the choice was fully her own.

“Because of my technical background, I didn’t want to get pigeonholed into patent law,” Brown says. “But

in the end, I realized that it was the area of law that most interested me.”

Since settling on IP, Brown has embraced the overlap between her engineering experience and her legal pursuits. She combines both sides of her expertise in her current role as IP enforcement counsel at energy services and technology company Schlumberger, where she supports the business by pro-

tecting its patents. Beyond serving the company itself, she gives back to the local community in Houston, Texas, with an eye toward the futures of law and engineering alike.

Brown has always looked ahead. She gravitated toward engineering not only because of her interest in math and science but also because of the demand for more women in the field. And even

as she studied mechanical engineering at Rice University and accepted a rotating equipment engineer role at Shell Deer Park oil refinery out of college, she already knew that law school was on the horizon.

With her mentors’ encouragement, Brown left Shell after two years to attend the University of Texas School of Law. She interned at a pension rights nonprofit and explored different areas of law through her coursework—until a summer associate position in the IP department of law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld hooked her on IP.

Brown returned to Akin Gump as a first-year associate and spent eight years handling patent litigation at the firm before her current role at Schlumberger opened up in 2019. By then, she was ready to move in-house. “I wanted to focus solely on one company’s

IP and IP strategies and to use my knowledge of IP law to help make business decisions,” she explains.

Today, Brown is doing exactly that. She toggles between investigating assertions against Schlumberger, looking into possible cases of IP infringement, preparing responses and agreements, and managing active litigation. Through it all, she coordinates closely with colleagues inside and outside the IP team to align legal strategies with business objectives.

“I really like being able to develop a strategy, whether it’s for how we will assert our patents against potential infringers or for how we will respond to infringement allegations,” Brown says. She also enjoys the day-to-day variety of her work, which reminds her of her time as an engineer. She must balance disparate projects and get down to the root cause of problems in much the same way at Schlumberger.

Her engineering background comes in handy in another sense as well. “It helps me understand technical documents and catch on to the different technologies in patents that come across my desk,” she says.

Since joining Schlumberger, Brown has certainly capitalized on her dual skill set. The federal circuit has decided several of her cases—including one that she saw through from start to finish—in the company’s favor. In addition, she contributed to the development of licensing templates to facilitate the application of past lessons learned to future agreements by attorneys across the IP function.

Brown’s colleagues outside the company have taken note of her expertise. “We’ve been fortunate to work closely with Ashley on all aspects of our matters, from high-level case strategy to day-to-day briefing and discovery,” says Gregg LoCascio, partner at Kirkland & Ellis. “Ashley’s litigation experience has honed her instincts and judgment and she has been a great addition to the Schlumberger legal team.”

Likewise, Brown seamlessly integrates past and future in her commitment to the Houston community that she calls home. “My parents raised me to help others and to give back to the community,” she says. As a recipient of mentorship and community support herself, she feels strongly about doing her share to lift up young people, especially female and minority students in her own fields.

Ashley Brown IP Enforcement Counsel Schlumberger

In particular, Brown remains actively involved in the Houston Bar Association (HBA). Through her HBA committee work, she participates in a program that connects local first-year law students to employment opportunities. “I help recruit employers to the program and review the candidates’ applications, and I’ve also served as a mentor to participating law students,” she explains.

Beyond providing legal mentorship, Brown plans to strengthen her ties to the National Society of Black Engineers moving forward—she’s a former member of the organization. “We need that pipeline of people pursuing technical degrees to have more IP attorneys,” she says. “I want to make an impact on as many students as I can.”

As she fosters the talent of the next generation, Brown hopes to continue building up her own expertise within Schlumberger. But no matter how her areas of practice may evolve, her passion for IP will hold steady.

“Each assertion involves its own unique technology. It’s exciting to see the different technologies out there—to be able to read the patents and learn about a new product or service or method,” Brown says. More importantly, she adds, “It fulfills that technical part of me.”

Altria Doubles Down on Noncombustible Tobacco Alternatives

One of the world’s largest tobacco producers finds ways to shift smokers to less harmful tobacco options

By Will Grant

ALTRIA, THE PARENT COMPANY OF PHILLIP MORRIS, John Middleton, US Smokeless Tobacco, and an ever-increasing slate of alternative nicotine and cannabis products, has continued to diversify and expand its portfolio. In May 2021, CEO Billy Gifford announced that Altria had acquired the remaining 20 percent of the on! brand of oral nicotine pouches for an estimated $250 million.

“When we made the initial 80 percent acquisition in 2019, the oral nicotine pouch category in the US was rapidly growing off of a small base,” Gifford said during Altria’s first-quarter 2021 earnings call on April 29. “Subsequently, on! nicotine pouch growth has exceeded our original estimates.”

White & Case congratulates

The CEO reported that in the first quarter of 2021, on! accounted for 13 percent of the total oral tobacco category, which was double its share of the market from 2020. Altria is betting on that continued growth, with on! expected to be in more stores and eclipsing the bulk of its competition by 2022.

The acquisition continues to strengthen Altria’s market cap during a time that has proven challenging even for one of the world’s largest producers of tobacco products. The company has a 35 percent stake in electronic cigarette maker Juul and rights through its sister company, Philip Morris International, to distribute IQOS, a heated tobacco system. Outside its mainstay portfolio, Altria also owns wine company Chateau Ste. Michelle and holds a nearly 10 percent stake in Anheuser-Busch.

Altria has also remained on the front lines of the burgeoning cannabis market, with a hefty stake in global cannabinoid company Cronos. The company’s noncombustible tobacco offerings through its IQOS system also continue to evolve. It plans to bring IQOS to three new markets in 2021 and expand availability of its Marlboro HeatSticks to nearly 25 percent of the US cigarette volume by the end of the year.

“We’re making progress and driving awareness and availability of on! and IQOS while investing in future innovative noncombustible products, and we continue to acquire more tobacco consumer insights to inform our strategies to actively transition smokers to our noncombustible portfolio,” Gifford said during the earnings call.

whitecase.com

Altria is aided in evolving its portfolio by Vice President and Associate General Counsel Teresa Downs. The ten-year Altria veteran has significant experience in the sales, marketing, and M&A spheres of the highly regulated tobacco industry.

Teresa Downs on her recognition by Modern Counsel

White & Case is a global law firm with longstanding presence in the markets that matter today.

Downs assumed senior counsel duties in the spring of 2011 and has been promoted several times to her current position, all the while helping Altria navigate a challenging industry. She was named a 2017 fellow on the Leadership Council for Legal Diversity and is also on the board of directors for the educational nonprofit Richmond Forum.

The sales, marketing, and M&A experience of the associate general counsel has likely been integral to Altria’s continuously diversifying portfolio. Altria’s Ten-Year Vision is a reflection of evolving preferences of its customers as well as a significant focus on helping traditional smokers turn to less harmful alternatives.

“Today, over twenty million US adult smokers seek less harmful alternatives to cigarettes,” the company’s mission states. “This is a pivotal moment. With adult smoker demand for noncombustible alternatives, innovation, and an appropriate regulatory framework, we have the opportunity to make more progress on harm reduction in the next ten years than we have in the past fifty years. In fact, our future success depends on it. Over the next ten years, we will invest in our business and our people to transform Altria and our industry.”

With one of the most iconic names in tobacco publicly acknowledging a sea change, there is no doubt that the future of noncombustible tobacco and traditional cigarette alternatives is still being written. Altria is hoping that embracing the future makes more sense than fighting it—and that the wafting winds of change may still carry a faint scent of tobacco.

Arnold & Porter:

“Teresa

Teresa Downs—Vice President & Associate General Counsel, Altria

communities.

is smart, creative, and practical in her approach to solving complex problems. She works extremely hard and has high expectations for her outside counsel, but she is also warm, friendly, and open-minded. The perfect mix!”

–Daphne O’Connor, Partner

The Future Is Bright

By Natalie Kochanov

FOR MILLIE RONNLUND, IT WAS NEVER a question of if she would become an attorney. Instead, the question was when.

“I always wanted to be a lawyer,” Ronnlund says. “For as long as I can remember, that’s what I wanted to do.”

Ronnlund charted a course early on to follow in the footsteps of her mother, who also practiced law. Even so, Ronnlund may not have anticipated ending up at Southern Nuclear, the nuclear power plant operator where she now serves as general counsel. But her unwavering commitment to the company, to its clients, and to the surrounding community leaves no doubt that Ronnlund has found her niche.

She began her foray into energy law shortly after graduating from the

University of Alabama School of Law in 2008. Ronnlund started practicing at Birmingham-based law firm Balch & Bingham, where she spent nine years building up her legal expertise. Her exposure to and exploration of different areas of energy law during that time allowed her to hone in on nuclear regulatory law as a particularly complex and compelling subset of the field. “It was an interesting time in general for nuclear,” she says. “A lot of things were happening, and I really enjoyed how layered and unique the practice was.”

Aside from a specialization in nuclear regulatory law, Ronnlund came away from her law firm experience with a deeper understanding of the service aspect of the legal industry. “I learned to put my clients first and to think through

how I was supporting them. Gaining that perspective on being a lawyer has really helped me,” she says.

Ronnlund brought that perspective with her to Southern Nuclear when she joined the company in early 2018. As general counsel, she advises departments and functions across the company, weighing in on everything from nuclear regulatory issues to compliance to employment law. “My responsibilities span pretty much all areas of the law that Southern Nuclear touches,” she explains. “I identify where we need legal support and then get the right expertise into those areas.”

As she did at Balch & Bingham, Ronnlund prioritizes her clients by learning from experienced colleagues inside and outside Southern Nuclear.

Millie Ronnlund of Southern Nuclear has built the right relationships to support the company, the energy industry, and the local community for years to come

She builds strong relationships with company leadership as well as with external parties by listening to their concerns, understanding their goals, and striving to help them achieve those goals while minimizing risk.

“The foundation of being a good legal counselor is trust,” Ronnlund explains. “Trust yields relationships where you’re in a position to advise people earlier on in the decisionmaking process. That’s where you can really add value as a counselor, but you don’t get there unless you first take the time to build that trust by doing the little things day in and day out.”

Nuclear is a clean-air source that can produce large amounts of electricity around the clock, and in Alabama, Southern Nuclear plays an important role by producing over half of the state’s carbon-free electricity. However, Ronnlund’s dedication to the community extends far beyond maintaining the power grid.

“Our entire company believes in being bigger than the bottom line,” she says. That means not only personally giving back to important causes and organizations but also fostering a culture within Southern Nuclear that encourages others to do the same. “Over time, the web of people who are doing good things builds and builds,” Ronnlund adds. “And that’s a way for us to have a real impact on the communities where we live and serve.”

Ronnlund herself is contributing to the community through her work with First Light, an emergency shelter for women with children that got its start in the basement of a

local church. “It’s such a great story of people in the community seeing a need and finding a way to satisfy it,” says Ronnlund, who has volunteered through the organization’s program for young professionals. “Everything that First Light does is so personal to and respectful of their guests.”

On top of her community endeavors, Ronnlund seeks to make a positive difference on her team at Southern Nuclear. She is proud to say that her team members have grown in their roles and in their careers over the course of her tenure. “Developing our people is a huge part of our future as a company,” she says. “When you get into more senior leadership roles, that has to become part of your focus. I love my legal work, but it’s really about the people for me.”

Ronnlund plans to keep her team—and the rest of the Southern Nuclear and Birmingham communities—front and center moving forward. She will continue to rely on her relationships to guide the company as it emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic and as the nuclear energy industry as a whole sets its sights on the future. Although she may not know exactly what that future will hold, she is more than ready to play a part in it.

“This is such a pivotal time for us. As I look to the next five, ten, twenty years for myself and the company and the industry—it’s hard to predict, but I do think that great things are happening at Southern Nuclear and at Southern Company,” Ronnlund says. “I’m really excited to support the company as it navigates those transitions.”

We are honored to have you as a client, friend and former colleague, and appreciate the opportunity to work alongside you and your team at Southern Nuclear to help navigate what’s on the horizon.

Translating Science into Law

Tenneco’s Mary Ellen Hogan uses her scientific background and work with experts to create solutions to environmental issues

By Peter Fabris

WHILE PURSUING HER UNDERGRADUATE AND master’s degrees in biology, Mary Ellen Hogan worked on a project that assessed the environmental impacts of coal strip mining in West Virginia and the Ohio River Basin. Much of the public sentiment at the time was that strip mining was evil, she recalls. From a public policy perspective, though, she learned the impact was more nuanced.

Surface coal mining operations removed coal in often ugly rings around mountains and allowed people in impoverished areas to earn a living through mining—and strip mining was safer than conventional underground mining. Overall, there were certain benefits to its impact on society that had to be taken into account when regulating industry. This led Hogan to realize that environmental law needed to understand yet reach beyond the science of pollution control. She wanted a role in translating science into law and public policy regarding the environment.

Hogan, now assistant general counsel with automotive component supplier Tenneco, was inspired by that observation and embarked on a career path to bridge the gap between science and law. During her more than thirty years practicing environmental law, Hogan has translated science for legal and business audiences while successfully navigating shifting trends in how environmental law is crafted and enforced.

“I have spent most of my career with experts on the technical side in regulatory and environmental litigation,” she says. According to Hogan, to get the best outcomes in most cases, it’s far better to work to solve environmental problems and reach agreements with regulators than fight through the courts to the end. In the early years of her career, regulators adopted a “carrot-and-stick” approach to enforcement, which she says was not always effective.

Today, companies like Tenneco have internal codes of conduct on compliance and align with their

customers who demand business partners that do right by the environment, Hogan observes. In fact, Tenneco was recently named Compliance Program of the Year by Compliance Week Standards-based organizations such as ISO (International Organization for Standardization) also have more impact on corporate environmental behavior than in the past— arguably, as much if not more impact than government regulators.

“At Tenneco, we take ISO certifications at our facilities very seriously,” she says. “I am an ISO-certified auditor so that I can assist the compliance team with certifications. That’s not something counsel generally does, but I found it critical for my work with the environment health and safety (EHS) team.” Certification includes external audits by independent parties—a process that cannot be taken lightly—requiring a cross-functional team effort.

The legacy of historical manufacturing practices before the 1980s includes many instances of environmental pollution. At Tenneco, Hogan has been involved with many instances of site mitigation efforts worldwide. These projects involve teams of technical and legal specialists working to assess the damage and create solutions that are acceptable to both regulators and the company.

For these projects, Hogan hires trusted outside counsel, who are essential to the fact-finding process. Based on more than three decades of working in a law firm setting, Hogan favors working with medium-sized firms that are flexible and cost conscious. “Having been a litigator for a large law firm, I understand how outside firms bill,” she says. As a result, Tenneco strives for fixed monthly fee arrangements for routine advice in contrast to hourly billing.

She looks to outside counsel to help devise solutions to problems like environmental remediation and workplace safety issues monitored by the Occupational Safety and Health

Founded in 1991, Weaver Consultants Group has grown to a team of approximately 325 engineers, designers, environmental scientists, surveyors, project managers, and more. Our depth of knowledge and breadth of projects allows us to work across the country and provide an e ective project design and execution. We provide personalized, pragmatic yet innovative project management and development solutions, helping our clients stay within scope while delivering on

Administration (OSHA). She has found that when a company works on a solution posed by an employee complaint and presents it to regulators, the outcome tends to be more favorable. “You want to give the agencies enough to go on so they are comfortable with what you are doing,” she says. This is preferable to waiting for the agency to impose its own solution in a vacuum.

The COVID-19 pandemic proved that point, presenting an urgent and tricky workplace safety crisis. “It was a challenge of a lifetime to figure all that out,” Hogan says. Tenneco was deemed an essential business shortly after the crisis dawned, so its manufacturing plants stayed open. Company leaders relied on Tenneco’s EHS to make the workplace safe for employees.

“The pandemic pushed the boundaries of work in this field,” Hogan says. It was the ultimate merger of science, law, and public policy.

The EHS team, which includes Hogan, quickly researched the impact of the disease, looking to sources such as the Center for Disease Control and the World Health Organization for guidance.

“We worked every workday from March 2020 through January 2021,

and three days a week after that, on the COVID policies and procedures,” Hogan says. Based on protocols recommended by the CDC, WHO, and OSHA, the team developed effective policies based on available science.

“Early on, it became clear that COVID was a respiratory disease impacted by distance,” Hogan recalls. First came a comprehensive assessment of how closely workers were spaced. “Where we could move machines six feet apart, we did. If that was not possible, we placed plexiglass in between work stations.” Tenneco also launched a vigorous contact tracing regimen to identify and quarantine infected workers.

“By and large, these measures allowed us to limit the spread of COVID within our operations,” she says. “Our workers have said they feel safer in our plants than the surrounding communities.”

Challenges like COVID that straddle the worlds of science and regulations allow Hogan to employ all her skills and experience. At Tenneco, she continues to fulfill the mission she set in the formative years of her career: melding science and legal principles for environmentally responsible business outcomes.

“[The COVID-19 crisis] was a challenge of a lifetime. . . . The pandemic pushed the boundaries of work in this field.”

Standing Strong

By Zach Baliva

CHRISTI MORRISON ALREADY HAD A DECADE of experience in the energy industry when she joined Weatherford in 2014. The company provides equipment and services to major players in oil and gas, and Morrison wanted to get international experience and lead complex projects. When Weatherford’s leaders decided to redomesticate the company, she got her wish.

Tax strategy and planning drives the domestication of any corporate entity. Weatherford was once a Bermuda company, but in 2008, it incorporated in Switzerland. Six years later, changing regulations compelled the board to approve a second move—this time, to Ireland.

At the same time, the company maintained its tax residency in Switzerland. Suddenly, Morrison was in the middle of a cross-border transaction that required her to master multiple jurisdictions and engage lawyers and securities officials in three countries.

The redomestication was extremely complex. Morrison and her colleagues in Weatherford’s legal department had to solicit the votes of share-

holders to approve a reverse merger, prepare proxy statements and other documents, call special meetings, coordinate stock transfers, adopt new governing documents, and educate all involved parties. Weatherford is now domiciled, with a tax residency in Ireland and corporate headquarters in Houston.

The redomestication project helped Morrison add to her wide-ranging professional experience. The Texas native graduated from the University of Houston Law Center and started her career as an associate at Thompson & Knight, where she specialized in corporate and securities law. When a partner left for a job at an energy company, Morrison followed. She later took in-house positions at Global Industries and Spark Energy before coming to Weatherford.

Weatherford is a large, publicly traded company in a highly regulated space, but Morrison has also worked for small companies with fewer regulations and less oversight. The variety has helped her experience a range of leadership styles, risk tolerances, and business strategies. “A

Christi Morrison knows the energy industry is not for the faint of heart. The veteran lawyer uses her industry expertise to help Weatherford navigate complex challenges.

broad professional experience helps lawyers determine what kind of leader they want to be,” she says. “Seeing many different styles helped me develop my own.”

The experience also helped Morrison improve as an attorney. As she sat in on business discussions and strategy meetings, she developed the ability to spot issues, work preemptively, and even realize when competing agendas became obstacles to shared goals.

“In-house lawyers hear from CEOs, CFOs, COOs, CCOs, CHROs, CAOs, treasurers, board members, and others who each have preferences, perspectives, and needs,” she says. “It gets complicated, but a good legal leader can find common ground and help the business succeed within certain boundaries.”

After many years in energy, Morrison knows one thing for certain—it’s not for the faint of heart. The industry is notoriously volatile. “It’s boom or bust

here, and that leads to intense projects, high-pressure situations, and extreme growth or prolonged contraction,” she says. When Morrison joined Weatherford in 2014, oil prices topped out at $108 per barrel. The next year, they dropped to under $35 a barrel.

The industry-wide depression of oil and gas prices hit Weatherford hard; the company had made several acquisitions and was overleveraged, with $8.3 billion in debt. Revenues mirrored plummeting oil prices, dropping from nearly $15 billion in 2014 to less than $10 billion in 2015.

Weatherford started planning for a potential restructuring in 2018 and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in mid-2019. On December 13, the company emerged with a new board of directors and shortly thereafter a new management team. The lean company had shed $6.2 billion of its debt and, after many years of cost cutting, a significant number of employees.

During the restructuring process, Morrison was Weatherford’s assistant general counsel and assistant secretary in charge of leading transactions. It was another complex era.

Weatherford had filed bankruptcy in three countries, and its board meetings were required to be in Switzerland. Morrison was coordinating with financial, restructuring, and legal advisors to implement a restructuring agreement, develop new processes, and comply with new financing agreements.

After Weatherford’s emergence from Chapter 11, she was also helping onboard a new board of directors, working with a new capital structure, handling the filings of a public company, and creating a plan to move the business forward. As a manager, Morrison was also focused on helping her team navigate changing requirements.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, further complicating a situation that was already challenging. In June 2020, Weatherford’s CEO and general counsel both separated from the company. Morrison became interim GC and corporate secretary. Two months later, she stepped back into her role as assistant general counsel.

Today, Morrison and her colleagues are focused on cutting costs, rightsizing the business, and achieving sustainable profitability. The legal team is looking for

Christi Morrison Assistant General Counsel and Corporate Secretary Weatherford

ways to “work smarter and more efficiently” while still supporting the business with necessary controls. Morrison says she’s advocating for the increased use of workflow automation and AI-powered technologies. “We have to take advantage of new technologies in the legal realm because they improve our work and drive down costs over time,” she says.

With over two hundred legal entities around the world, Weatherford keeps its small corporate legal department of just four in-house attorneys busy. In early 2021, the company transitioned from NYSE to NASDAQ, for which the legal department prepared related listing applications and other policies and documents. Morrison also oversees supply chain issues and mergers and acquisitions.

Morrison is now dedicated to supporting a new management team in charting a path forward. “We’ve been through a tough time, but the dedicated people here are confident and hardworking,” she says. Many industry experts expect oil and gas prices to rebound in 2022 and beyond. After surviving several years of change, a remade Weatherford is ready to take advantage of the next big boom.

Baker McKenzie has worked with Weatherford and Christi on multiple projects. Christi is a dedicated professional: she has a thoughtful and practical approach to complex issues while demonstrating amazing leadership. Congratulations to Christi on this noteworthy honor.

Doing Well While Doing Good

TPG’s Brandon Vongsawad is working to create meaningful impact throughout the world while also delivering strong returns for investors

By Peter Fabris

Brandon Vongsawad

Deputy General Counsel, TPG Growth and the Rise Fund TPG

A DAIRY PROCESSOR AND DISTRIBUTOR IN INDIA IS making a big difference in the lives of small farmers. Through Dodla Dairy, farmers who herd just a few cows bring their milk to the dairy’s collection centers, where it is tested for quality, packaged, and sold to the local populace. The company offers resources to contract farmers to educate them on animal healthcare and clean milk production, procures affordable animal feed and veterinary services for them, and enables them to reliably reap money from the product of their cash cows.

The surprising backer of this venture is an alternative investment firm based in California: TPG’s the Rise Fund, an impact investing platform that invests in a wide variety of businesses around the world. Its investments, such as Dodla Dairy, aim to generate positive, long-lasting societal impact. These investments, under the direction of the Rise Fund—cofounded by TPG in partnership with U2 singer Bono and tech magnate Jeff Skoll—aim to realize an attractive return for investors while making the world a better place.

Private equity funds frequently return a higher rate on investments than stocks and other investment vehicles; that intention also holds true for TPG’s impact investments. “The market will not accept subpar returns, so we have to get that right first,” says Brandon Vongsawad, deputy general counsel for TPG Growth and the Rise Fund.

The Rise Fund is just one of the innovative financial products that TPG has introduced to the private equity market in recent years. Vongsawad has supported the Rise Fund since its inception and now supports the global legal needs for TPG’s growth equity,

“The market will not accept subpar returns, so we have to get that right first.”

middle market buyout, social impact, infrastructure, and climate efforts.

All told, he supports nine investment funds and three investment platforms totaling more than $15 billion in assets under management. His responsibilities touch on all legal aspects of private fund management, including global investment activity, governance, portfolio company business building, dispute resolutions, investigations, restructuring, regulatory compliance, and crisis response.

As a result, Vongsawad has as much impact on the business as any attorney could hope for. “We’re responsible for billions of dollars of capital that others have entrusted to our stewardship,” Vongsawad says. “And the decisions we make every day impact people’s lives.”

TPG investors include national sovereign funds, endowments, and pension funds. These investors rely on TPG to invest their capital responsibly, monitor the progress of these investments, and drive value and impact at the companies they invest in to help them

succeed. Unlike publicly traded companies, private equity firms are not subject to the same public scrutiny. Instead, investors place a high degree of trust in fund managers—who must earn and maintain that trust. “Trust is our biggest asset,” Vongsawad says.

He works hard to be worthy of that trust with every decision he makes, whether that is being transparent with investors, helping a portfolio company manage through a crisis, or evaluating an investment opportunity.

In the early stages of his TPG tenure, Vongsawad, who was a seasoned M&A lawyer, spent the majority of his time managing investment activity all over the world. For Rise investments, he worked on innovative deal technology to ensure that its portfolio companies would deliver on the positive impact they promised in addition to financial performance.

Over time, he found that aligning incentives proved stronger than the best-drafted contracts. Investing up front to confirm the collinearity between a company’s financial growth and the impact it

Weil congratulates Brandon Vongsawad of TPG Capital on his well-deserved recognition in Modern Counsel

creates ensures that everyone is well aligned. “We found that we were singing from the same hymnal,” he says, and TPG used that to build strong relationships of trust with management teams.

Nonetheless, monitoring the progress of TPG’s investments is essential. Vongsawad is part of a larger team that develops, monitors, and drives value along several key performance indicators (KPIs) for nearly one hundred portfolio companies. In addition to raw financial performance such as company profitability, KPIs include metrics that reflect ESG (environmental, social, governance) goals and societal impact. For example, in the case of Dodla Dairy, this includes improving agricultural yields and increasing household incomes for local farmers.

“My role includes working with deal teams and management to continue to improve on KPIs during our investment period,” Vongsawad says. This can include negotiating with regulators, advising on material transactions, creating meaningful connections to key advisors and partners, improving credit and capital structures, training executives, and other areas where legal and business operations intersect.

Building trusted networks of advisors that can provide insights into regulatory issues, evolving local political risk factors, and general legal developments is crucial to Vongsawad’s role. “When you rely on your in-house lawyer, you’re not just relying on one person,” he says. “You’re getting their entire network of trusted advisors.”

Vongsawad puts considerable effort into cultivating these personal relationships with attorneys, advisors, local investors, and business intelligence specialists around the world. “I make a lot of phone calls and meet with contacts regularly,” he says.

To feel comfortable working with a new contact, Vongsawad looks for people with a private equity mindset. “I want to know that their advice is based on my risk tolerance—not their risk tolerance,” he says. That requires a thorough understanding of advisors’ approaches to business strategy and their grasp of TPG’s guiding philosophy.

Vongsawad’s colleagues admire his efforts. “Brandon is the critical linchpin between us and the TPG deal teams. His deep understanding of TPG Growth and the Rise Fund goals and values and ability to quickly and effectively identify the issues and deal terms most relevant to those ends is invaluable,” says Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher Partner Steven Shoemate.

Cleary Gottlieb Partner

Michael Preston also recognizes the groundbreaking work that TPG and Vongsawad are doing around the world: “It’s a privilege to work with Brandon and the TPG team, who have been pioneers in impact investing. They’ve demonstrated how to identify opportunities that positively affect communities around the world while producing meaningful returns for investors. We look forward to working with Brandon as he leads new, exciting initiatives in this space.”

TPG’s legal and compliance team includes about thirty-five people, located in its San Francisco office and in a half dozen offices around the world. The staff of lawyers, paralegals, risk managers, and other specialists keeps Vongsawad up-to-date on numerous topics impacting TPG’s business, from cyberattacks to SEC enforcement. “At TPG, we say that private equity investing is a team sport, and I rely on a bench of internal and external experts to help me stay at the top of my game,” he says.

He’ll also be expanding his network to include climate specialists as TPG prepares to launch a new fund: TPG Rise Climate. This new venture adds another area demanding Vongsawad’s attention and that of the TPG specialists who focus on measuring social impact—assessing the climate impact of various investments. The new fund will be headed by Jim Coulter, TPG’s founding partner and co-CEO, and Hank Paulson, former CEO

Brandon Vongsawad Deputy General Counsel

at Goldman Sachs and US treasury secretary under President George W. Bush. The goal is to identify and fund businesses that TPG believes have a positive climate impact that would benefit from additional capital to achieve scale. The new fund requires a lot of legwork to get started.

“I anticipate that this fund will require a lot more of my time,” Vongsawad says. Unlike other climate-focused investment funds that are often focused on earlier-stage tech ventures or stabilized infrastructure, he says, “TPG Rise Climate will invest across company type, size, location, and deal structure through a sector-focused investment approach, and it will be important for me to stay at the forefront of how these assets are structured and regulated.”

www.gibsondunn.com

Looking out over the next couple of years, there’s no telling what new challenges or opportunities may arise as TPG expands its investment activity. “We are always working on new things,” Vongsawad says. “Innovation and entrepreneurship are at the core of TPG’s culture, and our teams are given a lot of room to think big. Not everything takes off, but when it does, it moves very quickly.”

We are proud to work with Deputy General Counsel of TPG Growth and The Rise Fund Brandon Vongsawad

and the talented team at TPG. Congratulations to Brandon on his achievements and his recognition by Modern Counsel.

People & Companies

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Buchalter’s Products Liability Practice

Group attorneys handle the highest stakes litigation, the most significant class actions, and the most difficult regulatory problems for their clients.

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