Profile Magazine Q2/18 Vol1

clerks, Yankwitt’s attorneys regularly produce stellar outcomes for its clients.

As Westchester’s go-to litigation firm, we are retained not only by companies and individuals throughout New York, but by other firms to collaborate on their high-stakes cases. Our reputation as trial lawyers has helped us achieve exceptional results for our clients not only in trials, but in favorable settlements year after year. We also have particular expertise in the hospitality industry: In addition to serving as Northeast General Counsel for Landry’s, Inc., we regularly represent Hillstone Restaurant Group and Heineken USA in a broad range of disputes. Additionally, we serve as general counsel for several White Plains, New York City, and national businesses.

At Yankwitt LLP, all of our clients receive New York City trained and seasoned litigators at Westchester prices.

Verizon PayPal

From hotels to cosmetics, these companies have sent shockwaves through their respective industries. Discover the executives who help guide them to profitability and, ultimately, success.

P74

of Disruption

Q2/18

Never Stop Learning

Manisha Merchant draws from her career experiences to continually learn and help Banc of California adapt to ever-changing regulations

14

International Integration

Because of DynCorp International’s complex work and global reach, Gregory S. Nixon ensures organizational integration to achieve success

68

Attorney Aspirations

Inspired by Perry Mason, Sidney Kerley pursued a legal career, and he now helms the law department at Insurance Auto Auctions

36

M&A at C&W

Sarah Winters helped guide Cushman & Wakefield through a historic merger, creating a unified tax department for the company

42

Berliner Photography/BEImages (Merchant), Gillian Fry (Winters)

Business Allies

Wesley Dupont helped shape the legal department

Allied World Assurance Company into a business partner instead of a naysayer 106

People Matter Most

Safelite’s CFO, Doug Herron, reflects on his years of leadership with a people-first approach 158

Detroit, Rock Venture’s City

How Howard Luckoff and his childhood friends are revitalizing the Motor City 173

Setting a High Bar at Graybar

Matthew Geekie enjoys and embodies the unique culture at this employee-owned company 116

How to Enhance the Employee Experience

David Jones uses collaboration and courage to improve the workforce experience at Stanford Health Care 140

More than Just Pushing Buttons

Stephen Byers, CIO at Tate & Lyle, explains what it takes to create a global IT infrastructure 164

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Like a Rolling Stone

When I was a kid, the word disrupt carried so much negative connotation that hearing the word typically left you waiting for a repercussion. We are taught at an early age not to disrupt because it’s considered rude. You should go with the status quo, and if a parent, teacher, or authoritative figure tells you that’s the way it goes, then there is no changing it.

Flash forward to a few years later, probably around when I was in middle school. My dad gave me a copy of Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited and told me it was one of his favorite albums. In particular, “Like a Rolling Stone,” now one of Dylan’s most well-regarded songs, struck me. Of course, I didn’t grow up with classic rock, such as the Beatles, Chuck Berry, or Elvis Presley. But there was something different about “Like a Rolling Stone.” Stylistically, it wasn’t composed as a traditional verse, chorus, solo etc. And lyrically, it was interpreted as a stance against songs with trite lyrics about dancing, love, or cars—topics I was accustomed hearing when I listened to anything that predated Dylan.

Nowadays, Dylan is seen as someone who revolutionized music, but this is just one example of a musician in a specific genre/decade. What I really took away from Dylan and his song in particular, “Like a Rolling Stone,” was this idea that it was not only a benefit to disrupt the status quo, but it was also encouraged. I could point to dozens of examples in music, movies, television, and especially business and technology.

Entrepreneurs today such as Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Richard Branson, and Mark Zuckerberg are being cited constantly for their ingenuity and disrupting how we not only view business, but also how we go about our day with technology. But it doesn’t take a CEO of a major corporation to be a disruptor.

David Bernstein and Emily Misleh (P. 76) are using their expertise to further expand Airbnb’s global footprint and disrupt the hospitality industry, while Scott Shipman (P. 84) is transforming smart cities worldwide and disrupting the way governments provide applications. Birchbox is continuing to evolve home delivery for customers thanks to Pooja Agarwal (P. 88). Keith Krach (P. 94) has a history of revolutionizing companies. And Wanji Walcott (P. 98) is helping to lead a dynamic legal team at what is arguably the first disruptor in the online payment industry.

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Disruption isn’t a negative. In fact, without disruptors, we wouldn’t have cell phones that act as laptops, music that makes you question the status quo, or companies that look beyond dollars and cents to support the people who are changing the world. So go ahead, disrupt—just like a rolling stone.

Danny Ciamprone Senior Editor

TALENT

Skilled Communication, Great Collaboration

Rachel Engelstein’s inclusive style has helped turn disagreements into discoveries

By BRIDGETT NOVAK

Rachel Engelstein Chief Litigation and Compliance Counsel

Standard Industries

AAfter years of watching the TV drama LA Law on her parents’ laps, Rachel Engelstein never doubted that she wanted to practice law. “It looked exciting and glamorous. As I got older, I was drawn by the combination of high drama and advocacy,” she says.

Her participation on her high school’s mock trial team further fueled that dream. “We were coached by a practicing attorney, and the trials were presided over by sitting judges,” Engelstein recalls. “It was an amazing learning experience that affirmed my desire to become a litigator.”

Engelstein later earned her JD at Fordham University in 2003 and then joined broadbased litigation firm Herrick Feinstein LLP. The firm needed a junior associate in its Princeton office, and because she lived nearby, she was assigned there. Engelstein recalls how she was the only first-year in the office, assisting two senior litigation associates and

two partners. “I was their go-to associate, which provided me with a lot of early, substantive experience,” she says. “All of their mentoring energy was focused on me.”

After eight years with the firm, an opportunity to move in-house arose. Although she was happy at a private practice, Engelstein says that the move in-house enabled her to become a part of a team as a true business partner. In 2012, she joined GAF, the largest roofing manufacturer in North America, as senior counsel.

Her move in-house also brought about a shift in perspective. “I began to see how each dispute, whether it involved a commercial relationship or a potential product issue, was not a discrete matter, but it instead had significance to the business,” Engelstein says. Now, rather than seeing disputes as problems that had been pushed onto lawyers, Engelstein viewed them as opportunities

“We are constantly serving as sounding boards for our business colleagues. We have gained their trust, and now they turn to us for help and support whenever they need it.”

RACHEL ENGELSTEIN

to identify ways to minimize risk and help prevent problems before they occurred.

For instance, when contract disputes arise, counsel often discover that certain terms could have been drafted more precisely. So, in addition to defending the company’s interests, Engelstein believes that it is important to help her business colleagues take the lessons learned from the disputes and translate them into action.

She also spends significant time developing training programs, often focusing on the potential ramifications of imprecise documentation or careless communication, as well as using examples from actual claims and litigations as teachable moments. “I view each of my matters as a learning experience,” Engelstein says. “By developing training using people’s own emails, I can help my business partners improve their communication skills, which increases efficiency and minimizes risk.”

Her strategic business focus has led to numerous promotions. After being named vice president and chief litigation counsel in 2014, she was tasked with building a litigation team. When she first started at GAF, Engelstein recalls how there were two other litigators, but she says they weren’t a team.

“We were each working on our own matters without much collaboration,” she recalls. Now, Engelstein’s primary focus when hiring other attorneys is to identify candidates she believes will work well with each other and with others in the company. And so far, she’s been successful. “The cohesiveness of the litigation team is one of my proudest accomplishments,” Engelstein says.

In 2017, having proven her ability to manage the GAF litigation group, she was promoted to chief litigation and compliance counsel for Standard Industries, GAF’s parent company. She now has global responsibility

Clyde & Co congratulates Rachel Engelstein of Standard Industries/GAF for her well deserved recognition. Your commitment to excellence is evident in everything you do.

Global law firm Clyde & Co is proud to serve Standard Industries/GAF and the global construction industry with a variety of legal services.

1,500 lawyers 45+ offices 6 continents

for overseeing all litigation and compliance matters for the various worldwide operating businesses. With notable experience in data privacy and security, she also chairs the company’s Information Security and Enterprise Data Management steering committee.

Some wouldn’t necessarily consider data security to be a major concern for a building materials company, but GAF is constantly investing in new technology. In fact, innovation is one of the core principles at the company. “We’re always trying to find new ways to use technology to benefit our customers, whether it’s for homeowners to see how our product is going to look installed on their home or for contractors to check the status of orders,” says Engelstein, adding that GAF’s technological innovation comes with compliance considerations.

Engelstein admits that when she began working with the IT department she had much to learn about the company’s technology initiatives. This is also one of the tenets she promotes for her team: to learn from others in the company. “Asking questions and being a good listener are incredibly important qualities for in-house counsel,” she says. “I’m always asking others for input and ideas. By showing that we have a desire to learn, people become eager to educate us, and we’re able to build stronger relationships with our peers.”

For example, Engelstein recalls when there was some concern about the performance of a product. Representatives from various departments discussed the problem, but there was some miscommunication and finger-pointing. Recognizing that they weren’t making progress, Engelstein sat down with each of the stakeholders and let

them tell their side of the story. When the group came together, Engelstein was able to lead the discussion and objectively explain the various perspectives, which helped everyone get past their individual differences and focus on their common goal. Fortunately, there was no actual product issue—only some confusion as to the interpretation of certain test results. “Some people might think we wasted time going through all of that, but it was an instructive process that showed us how to improve our interactions in the future,” Engelstein says.

She also encourages the attorneys with whom she works to continuously demonstrate how they can help—and not just with legal issues. “We joke sometimes that we should have degrees in social work,” Engelstein says. “We are constantly serving as sounding boards for our business colleagues.” But all that listening is clearly paying off. “We have gained their trust, and now they turn to us for help and support whenever they need it,” she continues.

Fitzpatrick applauds Rachel Engelstein for her legal expertise, business integrity, dedicated leadership, and significant achievements at GAF. We are proud to work with her and the entire GAF legal team and to join with Profile in recognizing Rachel’s many accomplishments.

Founded in 1928, Herrick, Feinstein LLP is a prominent law firm headquartered in New York City providing a full range of legal services, including real estate, art law, bankruptcy and business reorganization, commercial litigation, corporate law, employment law, government relations, insurance, intellectual property, sports law, and tax and personal planning.

Manisha Merchant draws from both her professional and personal experiences to help elevate Banc of California

By RODRIC J. HURDLE-BRADFORD

Manisha Merchant has never stopped learning. It’s an apparent truth that applies to both her professional and personal experiences. She consistently utilizes the knowledge and mentorship passed down to her, and she relishes in the personal relationships that have made an impact on her life. It’s a meaningful notion that Merchant takes to heart.

“No matter how successful you are professionally, always remember where you come from and those who helped get you where you are today,” Merchant says.

Now in her role as executive vice president and division general counsel of Banc of California, Merchant uses her commitment to continual learning to help fuel not only her own success but also the

success of Banc of California, which is in an industry that is consistently redefining itself as stricter compliance and regulations arise.

“Working in this industry is all about learning as you go, through relationships, and continuing education,” Merchant says. “In this role, you have a lot of responsibility on your shoulders, so you have to review items two or three times over, know the latest laws and regulations, and completely comprehend what applies to your bank.”

Both her level of responsibility and base of knowledge have expanded since she

Manisha Merchant EVP, Division General Counsel Banc of California

joined Banc of California. Initially, her focus was solely on operations, which included account deposits and banking regulations. Today, though, her role has expanded to include managing multimillion-dollar litigations and internal investigations as a human resource attorney. “You have to learn as you go, so it is great to have friends, colleagues, and resources that help,” Merchant says.

It’s this concept of teamwork that also continues to fuel her inspiration. In fact, Merchant will be the first to recognize the successes of her team rather than her personal accomplishments.

“Being part of a team, that in of itself, is a big relationship,” Merchant says. “A team aspect is really important to me, and I think it’s also important for them because we all feel part of this process. Part of being a good leader is to always acknowledge the individuals who help get you to where you are and what you want to do.”

Colleagues, friends, and resources are all a necessity for Merchant at the rapidly growing Banc of California. With more than $10 billion in assets and nearly forty banking and lending locations, the bank prides itself on a strong balance sheet, deep community roots, and a commitment to lasting and meaningful relationships.

“Because relationships are such a large part of our ongoing success, performing the proper due diligence is a large part of the compliance responsibility of this position,” Merchant explains. “You have to work harder and fact-check everything you do because you know the buck stops here.”

With her responsibility for general banking operations, institutional banking, employment law, regulatory compliance, and litigation, Merchant works as a part

“No matter how successful you are professionally, always remember where you come from.”

MANISHA MERCHANT

of a team of senior attorneys. They cover everything from lending matters and merger and acquisition deals to vendor contracts and reviewing policies and procedures. Prior to joining Banc of California, Merchant was vice president and senior counsel at Union Bank for five years. She provided support to the retail banking network, including retail product development and consumer deposit operations. Merchant also worked with business units to ensure compliance with new and existing regulations.

One of Merchant’s most impactful achievements at Banc of California has been leading the process of streamlining the use of outside counsel by different business divisions. This has allowed Banc of California to also have a better understanding of its legal needs while giving its in-house attorneys an opportunity to increase their knowledge on relevant issues and ongoing situations.

“The process builds upon itself internally, and our business lines learn that we have attorneys in-house that they can rely on for a range of issues,” she says. “This also has led us to have a greater understanding of the costs of utilizing outside legal counsel to our bank.”

As part of the process of streamlining use of outside counsel, Merchant also led a project to create a preferred vendor list. In doing so, she has removed unnecessary counsel, which were duplicating the services already provided by Banc of California. She also renegotiated rates for the legal vendors that made the preferred vendor list.

“We still want to challenge our preferred vendors on their results and pricing, so they are never comfortable with our relationship

just because they are on the list,” Merchant says. “At the same time, we are constantly communicating why our banking divisions need to use the outside counsel on our preferred provider list. They know our bank and our clients, and the relationships are already successfully formed and the proper resources have already been identified.”

Identifying the proper resources, in fact, is the key to Merchant’s risk-assessment and risk-management strategies. Her internal communication and relationship with Banc of California’s chief compliance officer also allows her to focus on the most relevant issues, while at the same time ensuring that integration is occurring on every level—from the C-suite to employees on-site at banking locations.

“You have to know what the appetite for risk is for the client, which is Banc of California,” she explains. “The message and the following actions have to be consistent and easy to deliver to the individuals at the banking and lending locations. You also have to take into consideration the bank account size that you are dealing with. An account with $5 million is obviously treated differently than an account for $5,000 for a variety of reasons.”

There are also a variety of reasons why a more efficient legal and risk management process benefits Banc of California.

“Rules change, but the culture of compliance and properly using resources has to remain the same,” Merchant says. “When you work with regulators all you have is your reputation to receive the benefit of the doubt. So when a mistake is made, it is a learning experience for all involved.”

LESSONS IN GIVING BACK OUTSIDE OF THE OFFICE

Perhaps even more important than a successful career for Manisha Merchant is the ability to make an impact on her community.

“In college, I would help prepare high school students for the ACTs and SATs, and ever since then, I have had a passion for educating and helping others,” Merchant says.

Education is the key at Pratham USA, a charity that Merchant works with to help provide education to children in Mumbai, India. Pratham USA focuses on innovative interventions to address gaps in the education system.

But her commitment to education stems back further than her involvement with Pratham USA. When Merchant first graduated law school, the leaders of the South Asian Bar Association, and later the Association of Corporate Counsel, served as mentors for her when it came to providing advice and professional development opportunities. “They taught me how to be a professional and think out-of-thebox when it comes to ongoing learning and getting the most out of peer relationships,” she says.

In fact, Merchant was first introduced to Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAAJ) through the South Asian Bar Association.

“When I first joined Union Bank, Union Bank already had an existing relationship and had sponsored AAAJ in the past. To me, joining the board of AAAJ when I joined Union Bank seemed to be a natural fit in terms of solidifying that ongoing relationship,” Merchant says. She then brought that relationship to Banc of California.

SoaringNeverStop

Brad Jenkins motivated his supply chain team at Pilot Flying J to reach the next level of excellence by getting diesel and gasoline to customers at unbeatable prices

By RUSS GAGER

Brad Jenkins has experienced his share of incredible highs and challenging lows throughout his career in the oil industry. In fact, one of Jenkins’s low moments nearly cost him his life. On April 24, 1995, nearly 40 percent of his body was burned in an explosion at a small refining plant in Parker, Arizona, where he was completing some consulting work. The explosion was the result of a flammable vapor that ignited from a pilot light that failed to shut down automatically like it should have.

Jenkins was in a coma for forty-five days and stayed in the burn unit for three months. He beat the odds. Later, doctors told him he only had been given a 5 percent chance to live. But he still had to relearn how to walk, talk, and eat. “I was down there covering for the plant manager to make sure everyone was there for work that day and happened to be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Jenkins recalls. “The accident was a defining moment in my life. I would say it’s the worst and the best thing that ever happened to me because it made me appreciate life more. It changed my perspective on life. It was a miracle in my mind that I lived.”

Despite that immense obstacle, Jenkins has persevered and is currently enjoying one of the highest points of his personal and professional life. Now, he is leading a team and streamlining the supply chain at Pilot Flying J in Knoxville, Tennessee, where he was hired as the senior vice president of supply and distribution in 2012. Pilot Flying J was already successful when Jenkins arrived, he says, and he realized that spearheading change in a financially stable organization would actually be more of a challenge than improving a company that is not doing well.

“They were very profitable, very efficient, but they were also behind in technology and had the potential to be so much better,” Jenkins says. “When I first got here, our systems were fifteen years old, and there had been very little system development. The change management was critical, and it was very well received by our team. I couldn’t

be more proud of the team and how they’ve embraced the change and the challenge, and we’re seeing the result because of it.”

The numbers bear out that improvement, which was achieved by developing new software and convincing different departments to cooperate with each other. In 1996, Pilot Flying J sold roughly 1.1 billion gallons of diesel and gasoline fuel. In 2017, the company was on track to sell more than seven billion gallons of fuel. It now has about 750 locations in forty-four states and six Canadian provinces, and it is opening 20–25 new locations annually.

One of the ways Pilot Flying J has achieved that growth is by delivering fuel to customers at the lowest possible price. Achieving this meant aligning the goals and incentives among the company’s different departments and improving its technology so that different departments were not siloed and working against one another.

For example, the price of oil fluctuates throughout the day. Obtaining a lower price sometimes means trucks having to wait to fill up with oil at the best price. It costs money to have trucks idling and hurts the bottom line of the transportation department. But if it means a lower fuel price, then that will benefit the supply department and the company overall. To mitigate this issue, Jenkins aligned incentives and goals for all of the departments in the supply chain so they help another department save money.

“The goals and the compensation may be weighted differently, but everybody has skin in the game to make sure supply, logistics, and transportation are all working together to get fuel to the store at the lowest possible price,” Jenkins explains.

Pilot Flying J developed special software that makes this possible, which helps Jenkins and his department manage the company’s portfolio of supply in an optimal way for the stores, he says. “We have three pretty clear goals: keep the store supplied with fuel, deliver it at the lowest price, and use our assets as efficiently as possible,” Jenkins says. “Getting the lowest-price fuel delivered into the store is a combination of

Brad Jenkins SVP of Supply and Distribution

Pilot Flying J

Meaghan Roland

Pilot Flying J’s Lebanon, Tennessee, location features eight diesel fuel lanes and a variety of amenities.

how we bought it, how we transported it, and how we sold it.”

Jenkins’s six departments are responsible for the fuel products Pilot Flying J sells, of which about 80 percent is diesel fuel and the rest is gasoline. His ability to manage his departments successfully, however, is the product of decades of experience in the oil and gas industry.

Jenkins began his career in the 1980s at his father’s oil company in Flagstaff, Arizona, while he was still attending high school. “I did everything from grunt work to billing to sales to you name it,” Jenkins recalls.

He then went on to play football in junior college in 1987 and 1988, but when his father was diagnosed with cancer for the second time in 1988, Jenkins left school to work in the family oil business. After his father sold the business in the early 1990s, Jenkins worked for Seaport Petroleum in Phoenix, where he met one of his mentors, Keith Perry.

“How to drive value is something Keith taught me at an early age,” Jenkins says. “That was where I learned more about the supply chain. I didn’t have anybody to blame if something broke down; I caused it. There was nobody to yell at.”

To this day, Jenkins puts the lessons he’s learned throughout his career to good use as he pilots his team toward even greater success in the future.

FROM GAS TO GRASS-FED CATTLE

Brad Jenkins has spent his career in the oil industry, but he is looking forward to a more agrarian home life. He recently bought a farm that is only a twenty-five-minute drive from his office in Knoxville, Tennessee. With his wife and two boys, who are nine and threeand-a-half years old, he plans to raise 15–20 grass-fed cattle for beef and sell it to local buyers.

“We’ve had enough interest just from people that are concerned about the quality of food that exists in today’s world with all the steroids and antibiotics that are being injected into cattle,” Jenkins says. “The idea is to teach our two boys to start working outside like my dad taught me.”

Currently, the farmhouse is being rebuilt. “Our intention is to live there on the farm full-time,” Jenkins continues.

Home-Field

How Brandon Etheridge earned his way to the Baltimore Ravens’ front office before his thirty-second birthday

By ZACH BALIVA

Advantage

When Brandon Etheridge drives to work, he crosses the route his school bus used to take. He recalls pressing his face to the small, rectangular window, hoping to spot a running back or a middle linebacker. This was around the time when the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens had just moved to town, and in poor weather, the team would practice at Etheridge’s school. For any sixth grader, it was a dream come true. Years later, Etheridge is living another dream with the same franchise.

In 2016, at age thirty-one, Etheridge became the first general counsel for his hometown football team. And if thirty-one seems like a young age for a top NFL legal officer, that’s because it is. But Etheridge’s pedigree, résumé, and background made him impossible for team president and former private practice law partner Dick Cass to overlook. Cass wanted an in-house lawyer to handle employment matters, legal affairs, sponsorship deals, and negations that often fell to him. And he wanted someone with both sports and NFL experience. In Etheridge, Cass found the perfect candidate.

The Baltimore native played defense for Yale’s football squad. During his time in New Haven, Connecticut, Etheridge once sacked Harvard quarterback and future NFL starter Ryan Fitzpatrick. But an unfortunate injury before his senior year prematurely ended Etheridge’s collegiate football career.

With his professional football aspirations on hold, Etheridge—a political science major—turned his attention to his academic journey. Curiosity about criminal justice led him to apply for and win an internship at the US Attorney General’s office. Later, Etheridge took courses in constitutional law and civil rights law. Those classes confirmed his growing interest in legal affairs. He took the LSAT, was admitted to Harvard Law School, and started his journey to become a lawyer in 2008.

At Harvard, Etheridge’s passion for the law grew, but he still found himself drawn to the sports world. “I woke up watching ESPN and spent the evenings checking box scores,” Etheridge recalls. “I started to wonder if there was a way to unite what had become my two main interests.” Soon, an announcement caught his eye. A sports lawyer was offering a course at Harvard. Etheridge enrolled and never looked back.

When it came time to land his first major role, Etheridge had two main goals: he wanted to work at a firm with a large presence in the sports industry, and he wanted to stay close to home. That led him to Covington & Burling, which counted the NFL among its clients. Etheridge scooped up as much sports work as he could, but he soon discovered that other associates shared his NFL dreams. It was competitive, and Etheridge was forced to bide his time. Then, an opportunity presented itself when a leading sports practice partner asked for Etheridge’s input on a legal matter for the Ultimate

Brandon Etheridge General Counsel

Baltimore Ravens

Fighting Championship organization. As he won the favor and confidence of Covington & Burling’s leaders, Etheridge gained more responsibilities.

From there, Etheridge was involved in every NFL litigation that Covington & Burling handled. Those matters included arbitration disputes between players and teams, which gave Etheridge exposure to every lawyer in the football league’s labor department. In 2014, he received a call to interview at the NFL, and in August of that year, he accepted a job as an assistant labor relations council.

As a result of his tireless efforts, few were surprised two years later when the Baltimore Ravens came calling. “My friends at the firm and the league would say it was the worstkept secret that the top legal job at the Baltimore Ravens is the job I’ve dreamed of having ever since I set my sights on becoming a sports lawyer,” Etheridge says. Cass wanted someone who also understood the city of

Baltimore and knew the law well. Etheridge spent the early part of his career working for the NFL and advising team lawyers. He was a Ravens fan and a member of the Maryland bar. It was a perfect fit.

Etheridge, who is still one of the league’s youngest general counsel, says he had to embrace his lack of experience with an air of transparency. Cass’s background as a lawyer helped, as did the Ravens’ hiring process. Cass and other leaders asked Etheridge to meet with every senior vice president in the organization. He developed good relationships with leaders in finance, marketing, public relations, sales, and other key areas.

“Everyone was invested in me, and I found myself with many mentors,” Etheridge says. “I can learn from all their styles, and I benefit from their knowledge every day. I never feel like I lack experience because I have so many veteran leaders ready to help me succeed.”

OFF THE CLOCK

National nonprofit Up2Us Sports trains coaches in positive youth development and uses team athletics to help young people reach their full potential. The group, a pro bono client during Brandon Etheridge’s time at Covington & Burling, caught the attention of the former defensive end. In fact, the Up2Us mission resonated so strongly with Etheridge that he joined its board of directors.

Etheridge knows firsthand the power of education and says the organization is working hard to harness the power of sports and unite influencers and stakeholders to address low graduation rates, violence, obesity, and other issues that impact kids in underserved communities throughout the United States. Although Etheridge has resigned his board seat to give more attention to his role with the Baltimore Ravens, he hopes to start a Baltimore advisory committee designed to grow Up2Us in the surrounding community.

We are proud to celebrate

BRANDON ETHERIDGE

General Counsel, The Baltimore Ravens LP, for his outstanding leadership and achievements. We wish you continued successes.

Hunton & Williams is a global law firm serving clients from offices in the United States, Europe and Asia. Find out more at hunton.com.

“We’re not just here to win. We’re here to be a positive force on our community.”

BRANDON ETHERIDGE

©2017 Hunton & Williams LLP

And Etheridge’s success isn’t going unnoticed. It’s not only his work as general counsel, but it’s also his involvement in his community that is inspiring others.

“Venable is honored to work with Brandon and the Ravens,” says Geoffrey R. Garinther, chair of the litigation division at Venable LLP. “Having known Brandon for many years and seeing firsthand how much he shares our deep commitment to the Baltimore community, we truly value our partnership.”

Etheridge has stepped into a key leadership role at an early age, but he hasn’t done so blindly. Throughout his career, he’s prepared himself by asking questions as he’s worked with firm partners or league office lawyers. He’s probed for their thoughts on key issues and tough situations. He’s watched and studied lawyers he’s opposed. It’s an approach that has helped Etheridge build his department and win the confidence of those around him. He understands both football and the law, which helps him navigate sponsorship deals and contract negotiations, as well as data privacy and legal staffing.

As Etheridge further develops in his role, he’s finding opportunities to help the franchise deepen its roots and strengthen its impact on the Baltimore area. The team celebrated its twentieth season at M&T Bank Stadium in 2017, and Etheridge says his peers are committed to maintaining a “first-class

NFL venue and fan experience for the team’s dedicated fan base.”

They’ve recently invested $120 million in private funds to enhance Wi-Fi capabilities, introduce ultra-high definition 4K video boards, add LED ribbon signage, and upgrade seating areas. In phases two and three of the stadium project, the organization will improve the sound system, concession areas, and club levels. Throughout the process, Etheridge has been diligently negotiating agreements with architects and working out deals and approvals with the Maryland Stadium Authority. “We play ten games here every year, but the Ravens have a deep connection with Baltimore, and Baltimore has a deep connection with the Ravens,” he says. “We’re not just here to win. We’re here to be a positive force on our community.”

Players and front-office staff are active in numerous outreach endeavors as well. In recent years, they’ve renovated schools, created mentoring programs, updated police stations, and participated in events designed to bridge divides between law enforcement and citizens.

For a local kid from Baltimore and nearby Columbia, it’s an important part of the job. “We take pride in our city and in our role as community leaders,” he says. “I still have to pinch myself when I drive to work each day. I’m fortunate to be here. And I know that I really am living the dream.”

Alloys and Allies

Steel Technologies’ new general counsel, Michelle Harper, champions negotiation over litigation and is putting a friendly face on the legal function

By JACOB WINCHESTER

When your employees spend the day handling colossal, 5,000–40,000-pound tightly wound mega coils of steel and revenue depends on how well you negotiate complex contracts with major manufacturers, it’s definitely a risky business. That’s where Michelle Harper comes in.

“I think everything I do every day is about risk mitigation. That’s the role of a general counsel. It’s almost like you’re trying to rank the risks. You don’t want to turn a blind eye to them, but you also don’t want to pick a contract completely apart and shut the deal down to avoid small risks. Nothing would ever get done,” Harper explains. “So I like to use my role to be someone who is there to counsel, advise, and assess the benefits of those risks, rather than be the roadblock.”

Formerly the assistant general counsel, Harper has recently shifted positions into the seat of vice president, general counsel, and secretary of Steel Technologies, a Kentucky-based flat-rolled steel and aluminum processing company with more than 1,800 employees across eight states, Mexico, and Canada.

Since earning the general counsel seat, Harper’s focus has transitioned from issues such as labor and employment, OSHA regulations, litigation, and workers’ compensation to corporate governance, transactional work, and providing guidance on her former responsibilities to her all-women team. “One of the biggest challenges has been to parse off and let go of things I used to take care of day-today,” she says. “You just can’t do both jobs. But it’s hard not to want to manage everything I’ve always managed for years plus the new things I’m responsible for managing.”

In leading the entire legal department, Harper has now set her sights on humanizing and streamlining the company’s legal department to make it more accessible to employees. “Sometimes I think attorneys get a bad rap as being difficult, and people dread having to involve lawyers,” she says. “What I want within the company is for people to feel like they can come to our team for advice and assistance any time. I don’t want our legal department to bottleneck anything. My goal is definitely to continue making our department more organized, efficient, and a little nimbler.”

The first major step in achieving these goals is a new legal management system that will remove unnecessary obstacles in the contracting process and grant Harper’s team the chance to tackle one of the main challenges the department has faced: time constraints. “It’s going to help us work much more effectively because we’ll be able to look back and easily see how we’ve handled other contracts and situations in the past,” she says. “I’d also like for it to be a way for any lawyer in the group to be able to pick up where one of us has left off as work ebbs and flows.”

This new system will also facilitate more access to data in general, which will help her team adhere to a clear project timeline. Once the Steel Technologies sales team anchors a prospective deal, Harper’s legal team will be able to quickly interface with various versions of sales contracts from partnering clients and vendors, thus bringing the department up to pace in the digital age.

“More and more, companies today are starting to put the terms and conditions of their contacts online,” Harper explains. “It can be both

“I like to think of the other departments as clients, and I want our legal team to operate more like a speed bump than a roadblock. We don’t have to stop doing business with a customer, but we do have to slow down and look around to make sure we aren’t missing something important.”

MICHELLE HARPER

VP, General Counsel, Secretary Steel Technologies

a blessing and a curse.” Although updating and revising contracts might be easier now, technology has also enabled companies to tuck lengthy terms and conditions away on their websites and claim that customers are subject to them even if they may not be actually included within the body of the contract. What seems like a ten-page contract on paper might actually add up to be more than seventy-five pages of supplementary material. In turn, this increases the amount of contract review and analysis required by legal functions.

“That type of situation is one of the times I think the legal department definitely seems like a roadblock because our company moves fast from a sales perspective,” Harper says. “One of the goals I have is to be a partner within our organization. I like to think of the other departments as clients, and I want our legal team to operate more like a speed bump than a roadblock. We don’t have to stop doing

business with a customer, but we do have to slow down and look around to make sure we aren’t missing something important.”

Harper also emphasizes the merits of coming to work in a truly positive mood and forging genuine relationships with colleagues at all levels of the business. “I always try to come to work with a smile on my face,” she says. “I don’t see the need to be a rude or pushy attorney. If you have to be tough, then you have to be tough, but I don’t think that has to be your first approach to be effective.”

Harper’s humanizing approach to the role of general counsel also benefits the company by making it easier to sidestep unnecessary litigation costs. “In general, we have very little litigation across the board—whether that’s commercial or employment-related litigation. I think it’s a function of our company and the way we approach things, and I think that speaks highly to our company’s culture and the way we seek to manage issues before they become something bigger,” Harper says. “In fact, I can literally count the number of labor and employment lawsuits we’ve had in the past ten years on one hand. We generally

win or resolve any employment-related issues in-house.”

Harper explains that many issues are largely settled through mutual negotiation and, if necessary, for a nominal amount. By considering the needs and perspectives of all Steel Technologies employees, Harper is able to cultivate a highly cooperative environment. “There’s always a legal side and a human side to every situation,” Harper says. “We strive to consider the human element. Approaching it from both perspectives makes Steel Technologies a great place to work and will make us even more successful in the future.”

Strong General Counsel-Law Firm Relationships Help Steel Technologies Succeed

Michelle works closely with Frost Brown Todd to anticipate risks and opportunities, while collaborating on efficient handling of legal matters. “Our partnership enhances the legal services we provide by allowing us to support the unique business goals of the company,” says Jeremiah Byrne, Frost Brown Todd Attorney. Sam English

Michelle Harper

Brings

TheBroadestRange the GreatestBenefits FromTheBeatles:RockBandto

motherhoodandstaffdiversity, SueLee’sexperienceandexpertise bringstremendousvaluetoEntegris

ByJEFF SILVER

Ogletree Deakins Congratulates

S UE LEE

Senior Vice President and General Counsel; Corporate Secretary

ENTEGRIS

Ogletree Deakins shares Entegris’s commitment to diversity and is proud to support Sue and her diverse team.

When Sue Lee joined Entegris as its general counsel and corporate secretary in 2016, she became the company’s second general counsel in its fifty-year history. Since then, she has introduced innovative legal practices and business strategies while providing an incredible range of experience and expertise. In fact, innovation is exactly what attracted her to the company.

“I was always drawn to technology and emerging markets,” Lee says. “The most successful companies are always innovating. To serve our clients, lawyers need to constantly evolve and embrace change as a natural state.”

Change is something that certainly has been a constant throughout Lee’s life. She immigrated to the United States from Taiwan at a young age. As a child, she learned English by going to the library, reading, paying close attention to pop culture, and by her own admission, watching a lot of TV. She credits her career to the determination of her mother, a former school teacher in Taiwan, who had Lee moved from remedial English into regular classes.

“If I had continued on the remedial track, the instruction I received and the expectations placed on me would have been completely different,” she says. “I learned from an early age the fundamental importance of language and the value of each individual word. Legal terms are often complicated and usually not intuitive, so lawyering frequently requires translating text for yourself and your client.”

After graduating and earning a bachelor’s and a JD from Harvard, Lee began working as outside counsel, where she made sure to learn about different industries. At Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, Lee saw Google reinvent the search engine industry and Pixar set the standard for computer animation. At Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, she worked on matters for Under Armour, which created the performance athletic wear market, and McDonald’s, which constantly innovates to keep up with changing customer tastes.

These experiences made her realize she wanted more opportunities to work on the

full life cycle of clients’ businesses. This led her to in-house roles at Genzyme, where she witnessed the ability of technology to save lives.

Sue Lee SVP, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary

Entegris

Then at MTV and its spin-off Harmonix Music Systems—the developers of the video games Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and Dance Central—she saw how technology can transform the way people experience music. And at CYREN, she saw that cybersecurity protection requires constant innovation to fend off malicious threats.

One of Lee’s most challenging and rewarding experiences was helping to guide the creation of MTV’s The Beatles: Rock Band video game. “Economics are often a project’s primary driver, but The Beatles: Rock Band was about how we could best honor the band’s legacy,” she recalls. “We had to gain the trust of the two surviving Beatles, the estates, the record labels, and the publishing houses. There was much more to it than just licensing the songs. It was an enormous responsibility.”

The high-profile project carried tremendous risk since it was the debut of electronic distribution of The Beatles’ catalog. Even iTunes had been denied access at the time.

Ultimately, the game was a huge success. The New York Times stated, “It may be the most important video game yet made.”

Lee loves that her son, who was born during development of the game, is listed in the credits. Interestingly, her experience as a mother also came into play with LEGO Rock Band. She made sure risks with phthalates— potentially dangerous compounds in plastics—were addressed because young children might put the game’s microphone in their mouths. It’s that kind of shrewd judgment Lee is bringing with her to Entegris.

Since Lee joined the company, Entegris’s stock price and market capitalization has doubled, but the company isn’t resting on its laurels. It is still focused on trying to push itself to do better and to be better. To that end, Lee has been given free rein to take the law department to the next level.

“Lawyers are among the best equipped to tackle the most vexing issues. We are trained to think analytically and to tease out the logic of issues of first impression and issues that haven’t come up before. In that way, law is innovation.”

SUE LEE

When she joined Entegris, she assessed the needs of the different stakeholders and set out to map the most efficient delivery of legal services. For example, she challenged the company to think about how to support its Asian business. Lee studied the region by business demand, markets, revenue sources, and other metrics to develop a strategy to support the business and its needs.

“Asia isn’t one monolithic state. It’s many different countries with distinct cultures, histories, and legal systems,” she explains. “Even Chinese speaking countries are very different. We can’t assume because Mandarin Chinese is spoken in China, Taiwan, and Singapore that we can support them the same way.”

By focusing on differentiated business and customer needs, the legal department improved its ability to provide real value to the company and the overall quality of its service. It also led to increasing the department’s diversity, which is now 75 percent women and 40 percent people of color.

This is typical of Lee’s approach to most challenges. “Lawyers are among the best equipped to tackle the most vexing issues,” she says. “We are trained to think analytically and to tease out the logic of issues of first impression and issues that haven’t come up before. In that way, law is innovation.”

Lee on her achievements as Senior Vice President & General Counsel of Entegris

is a great honor and a privilege to work with you and to represent Entegris matters in China.

From JunHe LLP

www.junhe.com

Beijing | Shanghai

Guangzhou | Shenzhen

Dalian | Haikou

Tianjin | Hong Kong

New York | Silicon Valley

Purveyors

Existing in the rarefied space of food supplements and ingredients, Omega Protein Corporation’s John Held keeps the company solvent, legal, legit, and growing

By JOSEPH KAY

It’s not easy being in the health and organic food business. Companies that make claims on nutrition, the purity of the supply chain, attention to sustainability factors, and the humane treatment of animal sources are subject to intense public scrutiny in what is already a highly regulated industry.

To meet this challenge, attorneys such as John Held are valuable. Supplier contracts and regulatory compliance are on his shoulders, as are other transactional aspects of business law. But in his role as executive vice president and general counsel for the Houston-based Omega Protein Corporation, Held had to manage something that was literally explosive in 2010 when the Deepwater Horizon disaster—also known as the BP oil spill—essentially wiped out an entire fish harvest season that is essential to the company’s fish oil supplements.

The event was the largest accidental marine oil spill in the industry’s history, resulting in billions of dollars of losses to individuals and businesses throughout the

Gulf Coast region. Omega’s losses drove the company to scramble to find alternative sources of fish. “The oil spill took the Gulf of Mexico out of production for a year,” Held says. “Of our three plants in the region, one was completely shut down, and the other two curtailed operations.”

The company shifted its fishing fleet— refrigerated steamers that launch purse boats with nets, aided by spotter planes the fish— to the mid-Atlantic area. However, the firm was also among the first companies to win a settlement to recoup its losses. The win was sizable: Omega received nearly $45 million from the court-established BP claims fund.

Held credits his outside counsel who worked with him on their strategy, which was to position the case to be settled early in the process. That way, Omega was able to keep all of its employees on the payroll while BP could point to the payout to win positive PR for making amends.

The case and its outcome underscore how Omega is dependent on a few, narrow sources for what it produces. The fish species in the Gulf is the menhaden, which is considered a production stock—too small and bony to be served on a plate but suitable for making fish oil and agricultural fertilizer. It’s a sustainable species, but it has a limited season

KELLEY DRYE

IS PROUD

TO HONOR

JOHN HELD

FOR HIS OUTSTANDING CAREER AND WORK AT OMEGA PROTEIN CORPORATION.

We look forward to continuing our work with him and the Omega Protein team.

“Legal training is great, but if you love to wear multiple hats, this is the fun place to be.”

JOHN HELD

in which it can be efficiently fished. To supplement its fishing business, Omega Protein Corporation also provides nutraceuticals sourced from fruit and vegetable extracts as ingredients to the food industry and fresh dairy whey from artisan cheese makers who adhere to USDA organic standards.

The rigorous quality assurance practices required by each of these product lines are business tasks with a number of legal issues attached, such as being compliant with organic standards as stipulated in customer contracts. So, it’s no accident that Held has been in this position since 2000. He’s an attorney who enjoys business. Prior to joining Omega Protein Corporation, he held senior executive positions, including that of president and cofounder of two firms, Red Hawk Industries LLC, a bank equipment company, and American Residential Services Inc., a consolidator of HVAC firms. Both were successfully sold under his guidance.

“I was always interested in corporate law, securities, and acquisitions,” Held says. “As a principal in transactions, I learned to work with imperfect information. The law has some gray areas as well, but business lacks the luxury of time. Decisions—such as when to invest in capital—need to be made quickly.”

In the seventeen years that Held has been with Omega, consumer awareness of and

demand for fish oil has risen considerably. He says the company had previously harvested fish for animal feed, but acquisitions of a series of four human nutrition companies helped transition the company to human food and supplements markets. This includes Omega-3 ingredients and other specialty oils and essential fatty acids sourced through black currant seed oil and hemp seed oil.

Although Omega is diversifying its business to source more from the land, Held must still ply treacherous waters of the administrative type: bank financing, government loan programs, corporate transactions, working with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the New York Stock Exchange, an alphabet soup of other regulators (FDA, FTC, MARAD), the Coast Guard, and getting proper fishing licenses. And while the company maintains what Held describes as a rigorous training and safety program, employee injuries are managed and compensated for through the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, a unique set of laws that pertain to businesses that operate on the high seas.

From bony fish to Washington regulators, Held’s job goes far beyond case law. “Legal training is great,” he says, “but if you love to wear multiple hats, this is the fun place to be.”

INCREASINGLY SUSTAINABLE

Omega Protein is based in Houston, which is essentially the heart of America’s fossil fuel industry. And yet, it serves a global customer base that is focused on clean nutrition, which is culturally adjacent to concerns for the environment.

So the company has a strong orientation to sustainable practices, wherever and however it can do so. Omega reduced water use at fish processing plants by eighteen million gallons annually, is phasing in new fishing vessels that burn 56 percent less fuel, and recaptures hot air from a Wisconsin facility boiler for use in drying operations. The Mississippi Department of Marine Resources also sunk a retired boat donated by Omega to create a species-supporting reef.

“Congratulations to John Held on this well-deserved recognition, honoring his dedicated leadership and commitment to advancing Omega Protein Corporation’s national reputation, safety and compliance culture, and environmental stewardship. We are thrilled to work with you in support of your business goals.” –Gregory F. Linsin, Partner, Blank Rome LLP

From TV to GC

Inspired by shows he watched as a kid, Sidney Kerley has climbed the legal ranks to serve as Insurance Auto Auction’s general counsel

By JOSEPH KAY

WWhen he was eleven years old, Sidney Kerley was helping his father clean the dishes in their rural Alabama home when his father asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. Instantly recalling the intelligence and strength of characters on TV shows such as Perry Mason , Law & Order , and LA Law , he replied, “I’m going to be a lawyer.” From that point on, he never considered another career path.

“I liked the intelligence,” Kerley recalls. “I liked how thoughtful they were, how they dug into the details of their cases, and even when what they learned was not necessarily favorable to their clients, they were able to present the facts and circumstances in such a way that it served their clients’ needs and moved their interests forward. It required sense and sensibility in understanding the truth you’re faced with, while simultaneously mustering the savvy, intellect, and self-confidence to master that truth. I wanted the challenge of it.”

Today, Kerley serves as senior vice president and general counsel at salvage automobile auction company Insurance Auto Auctions (IAA) in Westchester, Illinois. It’s not the destination he imagined, but it’s one where he’s happily served for sixteen years. Never second-guessing his journey to general counsel, he completed undergraduate studies at Auburn followed by law school at Vanderbilt. Then, he headed west to Los Angeles to practice law. “I discovered that the practice of law—especially litigation that I had idealized on television— was vastly different from the reality, and I was not cut out for litigation.

“I hope that the lawyers on my team fully understand that they are partners to the business.”

SIDNEY KERLEY

SVP, General Counsel Insurance Auto Auctions

After spending a few years trying to cut my teeth at practicing commercial litigation—not really being happy—I moved to Chicago,” he says. Originally wanting to start a nonprofit youth home, he stretched his savings until landing the corporate counsel role at IAA.

Kerley immediately enjoyed being able to focus his skills and resources on a single institution. At the time, IAA was in the midst of seeking a buyer. But the deal eventually disintegrated, the interim CEO became the permanent one, and the departure of his immediate supervisor meant that Kerley was the best candidate for the corporate counsel title.

“I was very green,” Kerley explains. “I was very honest about that when the CEO offered me the role.” At twenty-six years old, he had been in practice for only two years, but the CEO responded enthusiastically to his eagerness and diligence. To grow into the role, he studied hard, learned from his associates and outside counsel, and eventually earned his MBA from Northwestern University in 2007.

“I made all our lawyers—our external lawyers and firms—my mentors,” he says. “I felt like I was really learning from them while serving as in-house counsel.”

Sixteen years after Kerley’s arrival, IAA’s entire business has evolved. In 2007, the company became part of KAR and provides sellers and buyers across the global wholesale used-vehicle industry with innovative,

technology-driven remarketing solutions. Today, KAR has more than 330 locations and 17,400 employees in North America and the United Kingdom, including its headquarters in Carmel, Indiana.

“The business itself is interesting and continues to keep me curious about what’s next,” he explains. “The industry has transformed with technology at the heart of compressing and accelerating change. Through those transformations, the legal department has had an array of particular challenges and opportunities to guide the business toward new vistas.”

Thanks to those engaging challenges, as well as the organization’s opportunities for

growth, turnover at IAA is generally low. Kerley says he is fortunate that many of his early hires still work with him today.

True to the intellectual rigor he so admired from those television lawyers, Kerley maintains that mutual challenge is key to the legal department’s process. CEO and president of IAA John Kett requires that senior staff leaders challenge each other in senior staff meetings; no idea should pass unquestioned through the decision-making apparatus. Kerley reproduces that approach with his own staff and puts himself on level ground when it’s time to evaluate options and make the best possible decision for the business. “When we’re trying to make a decision, I

Sidney Kerley

L E GA L S E R V I C E S

• C o r po r a t e and B u s i ne ss C oun s e li n g

• C r ed i t o r s ' R i gh t s , R e s t r u c t u r i ng and B an k r up t c y

• Em ploym ent Law

• C o mm e r c i a l L i t i ga t i o n and D i s pu t e R e s o l u t i o n

• C o mm e r c i a l R ea l E s t a t e & F i nan c i n g

• T r u s t and E s t a t e s C on t r o v e r s y

• W e a l t h P r e s e r v a t i on & T a x P l ann i n g

R E P R E S E N TAT I V E C L I E N T S

P ede r s e n a tt o r n e y s w o r k w i t h t he i r c li en t s t o a c h i e v e

e ff e c t iv e l ega l s o l u t i on s W e c on s i s t en t l y de liv e r

e xc ep t i o n a l r ep r e s en t a t i o n t o a d iv e r s e s pe c t r u m

o f c li en t s , pa r t i c u l a r l y m i dd l e - m a r k e t c o m pan i e s

• Subsidiary of Fortune 1000 multinational automotive auction services company

• D e v e l ope r o f 1 , 200 , 000 s f de v e l op m en t w i t h f iv e - s t a r l u x u r y ho t e l and C l a ss A o ff i c e and r e t a il s pa c e

• P ub li c l y - t r aded , r eg i ona l ban k i n g c o r po r a t i o n and m one y m anag e r w i t h 1 , 300 l o c a t i on s

• O w ne r o f 800 , 0 0 0 s f C l a ss A o ff ic e pa r k

• W o r l d - w i de l ead i ng m anu f a c t u r e r o f no zz l e s and s p r a y i ng equ i p m en t

• Regional, independent beverage manufacturer, seller and distributor

• N a t i o n a l p h a r m a c y c h a i n w i t h m o r e t h a n 6 , 0 0 0 s t o r e s

• P ub li c l y - t r a d e d m e d i c a l a n d p h a r m a c e u t i c a l w a s t e s e r v i c e s c o m p a n y

• U S f o o d p r o c e ss i n g a n d m a n u f a c t u r i n g c o m p a n y w i t h p l a n t s o n s i x c o n t i n e n t s

• W o r l d w i de m anu f a c t u r e r o f f a s t ene r s and c o m ponen t s w i t h bu s i ne ss e s i n 50 c oun t r i e s

• P ub li c l y - t r aded c o m pan y p r o vi d i ng w a s t e and en vi r on m en t a l s e r vi c e s w o r l d w i d e

F I N A N C I A L V A L U E

• D e t a il e d B udge t s

• P r o j e c t M anage m e n t

• A l t e r na t i v e F ee A rr ange m en t s

W e o ff e r s oph i s t i c a t e d l ega l s e r vi c e s t o ou r c li en t s a t

a c o m pe lli n g v a l ue P ede r s e n a tt o r ne y s w o r k w i t h

c li en t s t o i d en t i f y t h e sc op e o f w o r k an d unde r s t an d

t h e nee d t o p r o j e c t l ega l e x pen s e s an d de liv e r s e r vi c e s

w i t h i n ag r ee d – u p o n pa r a m e t e r s O u r c li en t s ’ need s

a r e f o r e m o s t .

Vis it us a t p e d er s enh o u pt .co m t o learn mor e Y o u r s o u rc e f o r l e g a l s o l u t i o n s

ROCK ROCK TRADE LAW LLC

We are proud to recognize our friend and client Sidney Kerley for his insightful leadership of Insurance Auto Auctions Inc.

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Katten congratulates our client and friend� , Sidney Kerley

Senior Vice President and General Counsel for �nsurance �uto �uctions, �nc.� on his signi�cant contributions to the legal industry.

always open the floor and ask staff to tell me where I’m wrong,” he says. “Point out the holes in my position. If I’m convinced, we’ll step back and move in a different direction.” And Kerley expects the same exactitude from his colleagues. He says that no one owns the right answer, and it’s essential that they learn from each other. This approach has earned him praise from many of his colleagues.

“Sidney’s collaborative approach to decision-making is very effective,” says Michael P. Sullivan, leader of law firm Pedersen & Houpt’s real estate practice group. “He routinely engages people from the business side, in-house counsel and outside counsel, and peppers them with questions and comments to arrive at the best decision for the company.”

Since the team’s goal is to position the legal department as the optimal adviser to the business, Kerley repeatedly asks his team to hold each other and himself accountable to it. Legal acts as a partner, furthering business goals and devising ways forward instead of simply identifying obstacles. For their part, the business side knows it can’t do everything, he says, and notes that they’ve thankfully never put the legal team through any serious ethical dilemma.

�atten is a ��ll�ser�ice law �rm with more than 600 attorneys in locations across the United States and in London and Shanghai.

Kerley, who recently took his maternal grandfather’s name of Peryar as his legal surname, now says he’s comfortably in a position to mentor others and pay forward the guidance from those earlier years. As he continues his transition from counselor to senior executive, he’s excited about the continual growth and evolution of his department and the entire business. Although it wasn’t the stylish, high-conflict career that he imagined after childhood episodes of LA Law and the like, Kerley has found his IAA role rewarding, and he has been grateful to have an impact over a period of such far-reaching transformation. He hopes that his growthoriented perspective will remain part of the organization’s approach.

“I hope that the lawyers on my team fully understand that they are partners to the business,” he says. “The legal department exists to facilitate the growth of the business, which means creating opportunities for expansion and removing obstacles that prevent the business from getting to where it needs to be as it evolves. As the business evolves, we evolve with it. That is, I think, one of the greatest legacies I could leave behind me.”

STRATEGY

A Unified Vision

Sarah Winters joined Cushman & Wakefield four months after the company completed a significant merger. In creating a new tax department, she rewrote the status quo.

By GALEN BEEBE

Photos by GILLIAN FRY

Sarah Winters VP, Global Head of Tax Cushman & Wakefield

WWhen Cushman & Wakefield, DTZ, and Cassidy Turley merged, a $6 billion company with few established procedures was born. Four months later, Sarah Winters joined the newly formed company as vice president, global head of tax, and was tasked with creating the company’s tax department from the ground up. “We had to create a new tax compliance process. We had to create a new global tax provision process. We had to create new payment processes, and we had to create processes for prioritizing projects,” Winters says. “You name it, and we had to create it.”

Winters was well-versed in mergers and acquisitions when she joined Cushman & Wakefield, a global real estate services firm. She spent the first eighteen years of her career as a consultant, specializing in international law and mergers and acquisitions. In 2012, she joined Walgreens as director, tax counsel international, and helped to structure the acquisition of the UK company Boots. She also helped build an international tax department for Walgreens, which at the time only operated in the United States.

During her time at Walgreens, Winters gained leadership experience in the front end of a major acquisition. The transition to Cushman & Wakefield offered her an opportunity to integrate and stabilize the newly merged companies on the back end and to build a tax strategy for the company going forward. “It was almost like a continuation of the story that I had started,” she says.

Cushman & Wakefield’s story began in 2014, when the private equity groups that now own the company bought DTZ, a UK-based company that operated in the European and Asian regions. Seeking to establish a global footprint, it acquired Cassidy Turley, which operated in the United States, later that year. In 2015, Cushman & Wakefield, a global company based in the United States, was put up for sale. “Our current owners decided they couldn’t pass up on the opportunity,” Winters says. They bought Cushman & Wakefield, doubling the size of the company and creating

Leaders who push the business world forward

Throughout her career this is what Sarah Winters has done. And we have seen Sarah demonstrate this first hand.

It has been our honor to work with Sarah. We have seen how she has employed her collaborative work style to make sure that tax has a seat at the senior executive table. We have seen how she comes at things from an overall business perspective, adding value and reducing risk at every appropriate opportunity. Sarah is a true business leader. A leader who inspires those around her. A leader we greatly admire.

Sarah, your colleagues at PwC congratulate you on this recognition, wish you continued success in your career, and look forward to working with you in the future.

www.pwc.com

by former Arthur Andersen tax partners

across the U.S.

• Chicago, IL (Headquarters)

• Boston, MA

• Dallas, TX

• Long Island, NY

• Los Angeles, CA

• New York, NY

• San Francisco, CA

• San Jose, CA

• Tampa, FL

200 TEAM MEMBERS

GLOBAL

9 locations REACH FOUNDED IN 2005

“We had to create a new tax compliance process. We had to create a new global tax provision process. We had to create new payment processes, and we had to create processes for prioritizing projects. You name it, we had to create it.”

SARAH WINTERS

the third-largest global real estate company. They rebranded all three companies under the Cushman & Wakefield name, using the most widely recognized company name in global real estate.

When Winters joined Cushman & Wakefield in 2015, the company was, in many ways, still divided into three parts. There were three global headquarters, three enterprise resource planning systems, and three sets of processes for every procedure. It was Winters’s job to develop and implement an integration plan that would create a unified tax strategy. “There’s a small mold of what you have, but everything is pliable,” Winters says.

When developing processes, Winters and her team examined each historic company’s process and explored new potential solutions. One of the processes that they redefined was the tax provision process, which is necessary to complete the annual statement reporting process. Winters and her team reviewed various tax provision tools before choosing one of the softwares that the company had historically used. They upgraded the software with the new modules needed to accommodate the global footprint. Once they had that tool in place, Winters had to ensure that her team members could use it.

“As we hired new team members, we had to find team members that were proficient in that software. If not, I had to send them to training for it,” Winters explains. “In those regions where there is no tax provision specialist, we trained team members from other departments.”

Of Winters’s sixteen reports, only two were carried over from the historic companies. When building her new team, Winters chose team members with diverse experiences and big ideas. “What I looked for in candidates was making sure they would challenge the status quo and they could think strategically about how to enhance the business,” she says. “I want people in the tax department to be strategic thinkers and not necessarily compliant doers.”

The tax department was not alone in turning over its entire group. The newly formed company had an entirely new global leadership team, including the global finance department. Along with changing its team members, the company was changing its processes. While Winters was upgrading the tax software, IT and accounting were implementing new software, and the company was defining its new strategy.

“I think, in a vacuum, what we tried to accomplish would have been fine—changing new software in a steady state. But we took on a lot of changes in a short period of time,” Winters says. “It was almost like we were changing the wheels on the bus while the bus was still moving.”

To establish the tax department’s place in the organization, Winters hired team members who could build strong relationships across departments. “Tax is so often seen as a crossfire instead of a value driver,” she says. “My team and I spend a lot of time building relationships with the business teams in the various regions and understanding what they do, how they do it, and determining how we can help

them increase their earnings and improve their efficiency.”

“When multiple entities come together, many challenges and opportunities arise. As global head of tax at the new Cushman & Wakefield, Sarah Winters is managing the challenges and maximizing value by bringing tax to the table through a collaborative, business-focused approach,” says Rick Emich, tax partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

To further solidify both intra- and interdepartmental relationships, Winters travels regularly to each region and espouses an open-door policy. She learned the value of relationship building when she left consulting and joined Walgreens. She had the technical skills to address tax issues. But on the consulting side she had sold services, whereas on the industry side, she was selling an approach. “You’re still always a sales person; it’s just you’re selling something differently,” she says. “You want people to buy into your strategy.”

At Cushman & Wakefield, Winters defined a strategy in which the tax department is a

vital part of the company’s future. “Tax has a seat at the table at this company, and I think that’s because our tax department globally has built these one-on-one relationships, and our leadership team, especially the global CFO, has empowered and supported the team,” she says. “It’s exciting to know that when we decide to look at an acquisition, or we decide to go into a new line of business, that they think to call me or a team member and say, ‘This is what we’re thinking about. How can you add value?’”

Grant Thornton LLP understands that success is built on more than just talent; it takes passion and perseverance to achieve your vision. We are proud to recognize Sarah Winters on her accomplishments and contributions to the business community.

True Partners Consulting congratulates Sarah Winters, vice president and global head of tax at Cushman & Wakefield. We’re proud to support Sarah and her team as they continue to build a cutting-edge, forward-thinking, and future-ready tax department.

On behalf of Grant Thornton LLP, we congratulate Sarah Winters of Cushman & Wakefield on her leadership and accomplishments.

The New, Improved, and Strategic KBR

Graham Hill explains how he helped develop strategy, transparency, and collaboration at KBR

By JEFF SILVER

KBR is an iconic global brand in the oil and gas industry. But even with a hundred-plusyear history and an international reputation, in 2013, the company experienced what one Wall Street analyst characterized as twenty-seven quarters of negative growth. In early 2014, the board appointed a new CEO, Stuart Bradie.

Then, toward the end of 2014, Bradie brought in his long-time colleague, Graham Hill, as executive vice president, global business development and strategy. Hill immediately accepted the new position. He admits that when he arrived, however, that he was surprised by the complexities of the issues the company was facing. “KBR’s challenges were deeper and more extensive than I could have imagined,” Hill recalls.

Soon, Hill discovered an extraordinarily siloed enterprise. A complicated accounting method had even obscured the fact that many business units were losing money and being subsidized by other profitable units. The internal culture lacked any sense

of transparency or collaboration. The mentality was, “don’t tell me how to run my business, and I won’t interfere with yours.” To address this, Bradie emphasized a new team culture, with executives taking responsibility for their parts of the portfolio while also sharing collective accountability for overall success.

With a portfolio that included strategy development, sales, and mergers and acquisitions, within the first six months, Hill worked with Bradie and the executive team to write off about $1 billion and winnowed sixteen business units down to three: technology and consulting, engineering and construction, and government services.

The sale of the company’s infrastructure and buildings businesses and withdrawal from the Power Industry Lump Sum EPC

business reduced administrative costs by roughly $200 million.

Hill also embarked on an effort to develop a comprehensive business strategy that addressed market information and trends, incorporated employee insights, customer feedback, and provided clear understanding as to why decisions were made and the direction the company was heading.

“Previously, strategy had just been a check-the-box exercise for the company,” Hill says. “You can learn to get by without strategy, but without the foundation it provides, chances are you will miss signs indicating there are problems long before the organization fails financially.”

KBR held global facilitated workshops with staff and management that were intended to educate and empower the participants. Their input was documented in user-friendly formats and updated with fresh data and employee input annually.

“Many people who had never been involved with developing strategy were invigorated,” Hill says. “It was great to ignite the kind of passion that we need if we’re going to beat our competitors. The process also put our entire business into a much more meaningful context that is guiding us forward.”

A number of high-profile wins for KBR have demonstrated the success of the strategic initiatives and the new teamoriented approach. KBR has been awarded contracts for Statoil’s Johan Sverdrup platform and Maersk’s Culzean project, both in the North Sea, and for BP’s Tortue development in Mauritania and Senegal. The company has also entered into a joint venture with SOCAR, the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic, and global contracts with BP and Chevron, among others.

Continuing the change in culture and business environment, Hill is the executive sponsor of the OneKBR initiative. It calls for six specific principles throughout the business: collaboration; emphasizing the value and development of each individual; operating with integrity and character; empowering employees to be independent, accountable decision-makers; and leading by example.

Ten weeks into joining the company, Hill, Bradie, and the executive team presented KBR’s new organization, strategy, and leadership at the New York Stock Exchange. Since then, the company has announced regular profits and experienced steady growth.

“Strategy is like a muscle. If you exercise it, then it gets stronger and extremely useful. And when you can see strategy at work, it’s a good sign that the company is getting healthier, more productive, and ultimately, more profitable.”

GRAHAM HILL

Graham Hill EVP, Global Business Development and Strategy KBR

“Previously, strategy had just been a check-the-box exercise for the company. You can learn to get by without strategy, but without the foundation it provides, chances are you will miss signs indicating there are problems long before the organization fails financially.”

GRAHAM HILL

Part of that growth included nearly $1 billion in acquisitions in 2016 to purchase a technology company and two government services companies. These activities have provided access to highly technical professional services, adjacent technologies, and new government funding sources. They have also strengthened relationships with all branches of the US military.

“Acquisitions are part of our evolving strategy objectives,” Hill explains. “We’re always looking for ways to grow these businesses in pursuit of our long-term goals.”

He has also been instrumental in balancing the company’s business portfolio. When the hydrocarbons markets began experiencing price drops and a worldwide recession, Hill helped shift some focus to technology and innovation. To address new markets requiring new solutions, KBR developed the GVA 10000, a floating production unit that can be deployed in thirty-six months. Capable of producing

80,000 barrels per day of oil, 70 million cubic feet per day of gas, and 40,000 barrels per day of water, the unit becomes operationally economic with oil prices at $40 per barrel.

KBR has also entered a partnership with IBM to introduce digitalization to its customers. “Combining our business domain knowledge and IBM’s information technology expertise creates tremendous new opportunities for our customers,” Hill says.

Although he may have begun with concerns about the challenges he had committed to solving, Hill is now enthusiastic about the new company culture and its path forward. “Strategy is like a muscle,” Hill explains. “If you exercise it, then it gets stronger and extremely useful. And when you can see strategy at work, it’s a good sign that the company is getting healthier, more productive, and ultimately, more profitable. If there’s no sign of strategy, that’s a warning sign for any board.”

As general counsel for Cable & Wireless Communications, Ruchi Kaushal is in a position to make her company more streamlined and effective by finding the right attitudes for success

By PAUL SNYDER

Legal departments typically play a major role in any company’s decision-making.

But when Ruchi Kaushal assumed the role of general counsel for Cable & Wireless Communications—an international communications and entertainment company that has operations in more than forty markets across the Caribbean and Latin America—she noted a disconnect that she had not experienced previously in her career.

“I came to an environment where the last general counsel wasn’t part of the executive leadership team, so it felt like she was separated from the commercial and executive side of the business,” Kaushal recalls. “My first few months consisted of demonstrating the value of the legal department by highlighting all the different things we do, all the complex problems we work through, and all the ways we find solutions. I felt it was important to map out for our CEO the matters we, as a legal department, had completed within a month and the resulting revenue/ EBITDA/strategic impact. It’s not about the number of contracts you secure or litigation settled. It’s about the value of those actions to the company.”

In other words, Kaushal connected the dots in an effort to demonstrate the value of the legal department to the company and reiterate the importance the legal team holds in bridging together various facets of the company, from commercial to finance to regulatory to accounting. Making those connections is a skill Kaushal has accomplished throughout the course of her career, and it seems to be an almost innate talent. Born in

London to Indian parents, Kaushal’s family moved to Canada when she was young. She later returned to London for a thirteen-year period that included traveling throughout Europe before moving to the United States with her husband and two young children in 2017. Kaushal says the multicultural upbringing and a deep-seated love of travel gave her a better understanding of people’s unique backgrounds.

That understanding is important in her current role with Cable & Wireless, which was acquired by Kaushal’s previous employer, Liberty Global, in 2016. Cable & Wireless is an international company that has customers in more than forty different jurisdictions throughout the Caribbean and

Latin America alone, and Kaushal says that, even with a life spent traveling the world, she still had much to learn about the Caribbean when she took on her new role.

“I came in with the notion that the Caribbean culture was relatively homogeneous,” she says. “That’s completely wrong. Every single island in the Caribbean has its own background, its own culture, and its own legal and regulatory rules. As a result, you have a lot to navigate in terms of understanding the rules and understanding the legacy of each of these islands. It makes for a much more complex business environment.”

Some of those complexities have also prompted Kaushal to help spearhead a compliance initiative within the company with

Ruchi Kaushal

General Counsel

Cable & Wireless Communications

Mark Chivers

the help of her Liberty Global colleagues. Because Cable & Wireless was originally a UK-based company before becoming a US company as a result of the 2016 Liberty Global acquisition, it is now subject to the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Kaushal says Cable & Wireless has been rolling out a program to embed a culture of compliance and ethics throughout the company that relates to matters such as anti-bribery, corruption, and gifts and hospitality.

More recently, Kaushal helped establish, and is a director of, the company’s first US public charity, the Cable & Wireless Charitable Foundation. She has been diligently initiating support, programs, and immediate relief efforts to the company’s impacted footprint from Hurricanes Irma and Maria.

Kaushal has also been working on efforts to make her team more effective and accountable within the company, which she says not only can serve to strengthen teamwork at a company level, but can also bolster talent development.

“People want to be challenged and want to be developed,” Kaushal says. “You can help them develop their talents and skill sets—even outside of law. Lawyers are great project managers and organizers, and I’ll often ask different people throughout the company whether there’s anything my lawyers can do on a project that’s not within their traditional remit. It’s good for them to push their boundaries and get that extra experience and mentorship.”

Still, Kaushal says that she’s on the lookout for the right attitude as opposed to just a finely-honed skill set when she’s looking to bring on new hires. Although organization and project management are fine tools to have at one’s disposal, Kaushal says she actively seeks out team members

THE BIGGER QUESTION

Even as a self-proclaimed problemsolver, Cable & Wireless’ Ruchi Kaushal says there’s one major question she’s committed to solving now that she’s in the United States.

Although she notes that most of the top women bankers she encountered in the United Kingdom are American, she says she’s still surprised by a lack of diversity at the board and executive level.

“I am the only woman in my executive leadership team, and I have a department full of very talented women,” Kaushal says. “What I’m struggling with is, although we have a diverse and open recruitment policy, how do you get women in the C-suite? I don’t have the solution, but it’s something I want to figure out.”

who are—above all—proactive, responsive, and energized.

For someone who’s traversed the globe, it’s easy to say those qualities are simply a reflection of her own personality. However, they’re also vital to her most profound achievements in the legal world.

“I like to solve problems,” she says. “I don’t know whether it’s that sense of achievement or accomplishment or just knowing you have made an impact, but I get a thrill out of it. I like to connect the dots and bring people together, and I like people who can do the same.”

Shearman & Sterling is proud to partner with Liberty Global and congratulates Ruchi Kaushal on her continued success. shearman.com

Baked in Success

As the senior vice president and general counsel for food-crafting giant Wilton Brands, Ahna Severts blends collaboration and creativity into her legal strategy

By PORCSHE N. MORAN

With a mission to deliver innovative products and inspire creativity in everyone, everywhere, every day, Wilton Brands has established itself as a market leader in the food, paper, and textile crafting industries. Ahna Severts, senior vice president and general counsel, says Wilton Brands’ spirit of innovation and creativity even extends to the corporation’s legal department.

“The legal team is all about enabling the company’s objectives and supporting its mission,” Severts says. “With my team, it is important that I am fostering collegiality, collaboration, and creativity in how we approach what we do. We are always looking for new and better ways to approach our legal tasks.”

Severts joined Wilton Brands as assistant general counsel in June 2013, and the company promoted her to senior vice president and general counsel in June 2015. Her previous role was division counsel for 3M Company, but Severts says the opportunity to contribute and grow in a different environment attracted her to Wilton Brands.

“Having worked in a big company at 3M, I was interested in experiencing a smaller organization and hoped to be able to see the results of my work in a more immediate fashion,” she says. “I hadn’t worked in the private equity world before. The chance to get to know that type of ownership structure was also appealing to me.”

Founded in 1929, the Wilton Enterprises division of Wilton Brands is based in the Chicago suburb of Naperville. The division specializes in all areas baking, including bakeware, tools, ingredients, display, and storage. It also offers online and in-person classes in baking and decorating.

Even though it’s more than ninety years old, Wilton Brands has continued to change and evolve: In 2013, the company expanded into the sewing and home decorating categories with the acquisition of Simplicity Creative Group. Wilton Brands continually updates its product portfolio with new items, such as its lines with sweets emporium Dylan’s Candy Bar and YouTube baking star Rosanna Pansino, which launched in 2017. The company also boasts licensing agreements with Disney, Nickelodeon, Hello Kitty, Sesame Street, and more.

“The new products and platforms that the company is working on are really exciting,” Severts says. “I am invigorated by having the opportunity to work on the

Severts SVP, General Counsel

Brands

Ahna

Wilton

“The legal team is all about enabling the company’s objectives and supporting its mission.”

AHNA SEVERTS

development of those. My team plays an important role in terms of trademarks, patents, supply chain contracts, and regulatory issues, so my goal is to integrate the legal team into the product development process as early as possible.”

Severts and her team, which includes two other attorneys, two paralegals, and an assistant, handle all of the legal needs for Wilton Brands. They support all the company’s functions, including human resources, finance, sales, operations, marketing, and product management. Although she enjoys the variety that comes with her job, Severts says it is sometimes difficult to guide a small team that has such a wide range of responsibilities. If a certain project requires more than her in-house team can manage, then Severts relies on outside counsel. For example, she required additional expertise when Wilton Brands consolidated and relocated its corporate headquarters in 2017. The new facility has five test kitchens, a cake decorating room, and video and photography studios.

“Part of the critical skill set for in-house counsel is being able to issue-spot and know where it is appropriate to delegate to outside counsel as opposed to doing the work in-house,” Severts says. She makes those judgment calls based on the expertise and availability of her staff and on the nature and complexity of the transaction. “Whenever possible, I like to have an ongoing relationship with a lawyer who I have used for multiple matters,” Severts says. “As a result, the lawyer gets to know me, my staff, and the company. We don’t have to start from scratch every time there is a new project.”

When it comes to leadership, micromanagement isn’t Severts’s approach. She strives

to give her team members ownership of their work and enough leeway to make decisions, keeping an open mind to alternative methods of achieving the desired result. Regular team meetings and an atmosphere of mutual respect and support keep the culture in her office strong.

“It starts with setting appropriate expectations,” Severts says. “Then, you have to allow people the freedom to meet those as they see fit. You must also hold them accountable for achieving the agreed-upon objectives. I understand that the way I might choose to manage a project is not the only way. What is important to me is that a team member has a reasoned basis for the path he or she chose and has completed a thorough analysis to support it.”

In her five years with Wilton Brands, Severts has seen organizational and management changes within the company. She says the corporation’s attention to strengthening a creative, collaborative culture, while also improving processes and increasing efficiency, is paying off.

“We are on a good trajectory now,” Severts says. “In 2016 and 2017, we had to reset our expectations, internal processes, and strategic plan. We will see the results of that in 2018 and 2019 in terms of new products hitting the market and more significant sales growth.” It sounds as though Severts and Wilton Brands have found the recipe for success.

“As outside counsel, we’ve had the pleasure of working closely with Ahna for several years. She is an outstanding attorney who continually displays great knowledge and leadership in her initiatives for Wilton and deserves all the recognition she’s received.” Howard A. Nagelberg –Senior Partner, Real Estate Group, Barack Ferrazzano Kirschbaum & Nagelberg LLP

Congratulations to Ahna Severts Wilton Brands on her merited recognition for all her accomplishments and leadership guiding Wilton Brands down the path for continued success.

Barack Ferrazzano provides a wide range of business-oriented legal services to some of the most respected and well-known companies in the U.S. and around the world. Without the overhead of large, multi-office firms, we have the flexibility to serve our clients in a global capacity — when, where and how they need us.

Ferrazzano Kirschbaum & Nagelberg

Learning to Teach and Teaching to Learn

Public Storage’s Lily Hughes knows each of her team members can bring something unique to the table, and that approach is helping to position the organization’s legal function as a trusted business partner

By LIOR PHILLIPS

There’s a classic proverb about two people fighting over an orange. Eventually, one of them will win and get the whole piece of fruit, and the other person will be left empty-handed. But if they were to just talk about what they actually wanted, then they could find out that one was after the rind for baking and the other just wants a glass of orange juice. Although the lesson may not be a direct correlation to the interests of various departments in a corporation, Public Storage’s Lily Hughes, senior vice president, chief legal officer, and corporate secretary, sees it as a prime example of how the legal office can best serve a company. “When I joined Public Storage, I made sure the legal function became an integral part of the business and involved in

day-to-day decisions in every field,” she says. Knowing exactly what part of the orange each party wants and why they want it, Hughes explains, will allow the legal department to make sure they all get it.

Hughes is a lifelong learner, inspired at a young age by her parents. When Hughes was growing up in Hong Kong, her mother, who couldn’t read or write, and her father, who wasn’t educated beyond high school, constantly pushed the importance of education. When her family moved to the United States, that message was only amplified, as Hughes’s parents strived to take the opportunities they could to build a better life for their children.

In fact, Hughes has been able to give back and continue that passion by teaching others. While working as vice president and associate general counsel at Ingram Micro, Hughes cotaught a course with her company’s Leadership Academy at University of California-Irvine School of Business on how to

Illustrations:

Jany Zhang

effectively influence without authority or a high-ranking title.

Hughes ensures that the legal team at Public Storage is always learning from others and always available to share the knowledge it has. The team hosts regular lunch-andlearn meetings where other teams present on topics such as finance, marketing, and investor relations. In these scenarios, she asks more questions than she gives directives because her philosophy is to always look to amass the best answers from the most information. “I’m focused on education so that we can understand context and make better decisions,” she says. “I want people to think of us not just as lawyers but as part of their team. We’re stronger together.”

All of these traits come counter to what many might expect from a traditional legal function. Individuals at other companies may see the legal function as a roadblock, as the team ready to say no to ideas and as a team in an ivory tower. But with all of her initiatives, Hughes wants the team to feel more like just another function, one that’s involved and eager to help in every new project.

And helping teams grow stronger, Hughes says, is beneficial for every employee and the organization as a whole. In order to retain top talent, companies need to provide them with the ability to grow and develop new skills. In fact, Hughes ensures that her team members have every opportunity to grow, and when they’ve outgrown their role, she will help find them new responsibilities that offer growth. Their personal success is in the best interest of the company, she says.

And all of that intelligent, strategic growth leads to rapid change. “The only thing that is constant is change,” Hughes says with a laugh. Although Public Storage follows the cadences of any public company in terms of reporting and disclosures to shareholders, each day provides a different set of challenges and opportunities. The company operates about 2,400 self-storage properties across thirty-eight states in the United States, serving more than 1.5 million customers. That leads to many complexities that the legal team needs to address.

The internal audit team also reports to Hughes, and the legal team advises another public company, PS Business Parks, which adds another layer of interconnection to Hughes’s role.

But her mind-set would seem to indicate the more the merrier. “I’m very much a relationship-building type of leader,” Hughes explains. When working with others, she

Lily Hughes SVP, Chief Legal Officer, Corporate Secretary Public Storage

“I want people to think of us not just as lawyers but as part of their team.”

LILY HUGHES

MILLER & LEE LLP

High Level Litigation Services

Our firm represents a wide array of clients from national companies to individuals. We offer assistance in a range of practice areas, including self-storage law, construction litigation, hotel and hospitality law, and all types of civil and commercial cases.

Self-Storage Law

Civil Litigation

Business and Commercial Litigation

Construction Agreements and Litigation

874-5105

Proudly supports Lily Hughes of Public Storage

Your leadership, success and commitment to diversity and inclusion are inspiring.

We are honored to serve as your strategic partner.

also stresses transparency, resilience, and empathy, which is always tied to learning from others. That mind-set extends to her own leadership development, as she attends conferences and meetings to become a better leader. One lecture from Judy Olian, dean of UCLA Anderson School of Management, proved particularly enlightening and became a major aspect of the way Hughes teaches her team, sharing Olian’s top ten leadership qualities. “If I see something interesting, I send it to my team,” she says. “The greatest joy as a leader is to have people you touch later share how even a small act of kindness has helped them.”

Being able to deliver those acts of kindness relies on knowing what form it should take and then honoring the commitment. It comes down to respect and trust, Hughes says, and one failure in either respect can seriously damage an essential relationship. “Setting expectations about commitment is really critical so the team can always live up to their commitments with others,” she says.

For more than thirty years, Keker, Van Nest & Peters has litigated complex, high-stakes civil and criminal cases throughout the nation. We take the cases where companies, products, and careers are riding on the result. Our areas of expertise include intellectual property, professional liability, class actions, general contract and commercial litigation, antitrust, white collar, and appellate.

keker.com

As a company, Public Storage lives up to many of those same values. Rather than keep strategy locked away or relegated to only a few members of the leadership group, Hughes and other leaders share their perspectives and make sure that the work of the team is tied to the same unified strategy. When people are better informed, she explains, they work better, become better lawyers, and eventually make better business executives and leaders themselves. Everyone works in the same direction when they have a shared knowledge base and speak with transparency. That single orange can go a long way when you can have an open, honest discussion about how many people there are, what pieces they need, and why they need it.

Subtleties Leveraging the

How James Matthew Vaughn relies on his legal experience and input from experts to take advantage of nuanced regulatory and compliance changes for Par Pacific Holdings

By JEFF SILVER

James Matthew Vaughn, senior vice president and general counsel of Par Pacific Holdings Inc., joined the company in 2014 after fourteen years in private practice at Porter Hedges LLP. Using his vast experience in corporate reorganization and restructuring issues, Vaughn has become an integral part of Par Pacific’s leadership team. It has also made him a perfect fit for addressing price fluctuations and changing regulatory and compliance requirements that simultaneously make the industry a complex, volatile, challenging, and highly rewarding environment.

Houston-based Par Pacific Holdings Inc. is a growth-oriented company that manages and maintains interests in energy and infrastructure businesses. The

company is organized into three primary segments: refining, retail, and logistics. Vaughn spoke with Profile about his transition in-house and how his experience as outside counsel benefits him in his role at Par Pacific.

What advantages does having practiced corporate restructuring law bring to your role at Par Pacific?

Previously, my practice focused on evaluating and structuring creative and complex capital and financial structures. This required a detailed understanding of associated risk created by or that was endemic in those structures. It also provided extensive exposure to the energy industry. The greatest advantage, though, is that I had the opportunity to work in something of a specialist/generalist practice. So, rather than being exclusively a litigator or an energy, transactional, securities, or real estate lawyer, the restructuring arena provided a much broader scope of issues to work with and on which to develop expertise.

James Matthew Vaughn SVP, General Counsel

Holdings

How does your outside counsel experience influence how you work with firms that are now filling that same role for you? When I was an outside counsel, the biggest benefit I could provide was creating a trusted advisor relationship that went beyond formal lawyer/client connections. Because I understood my clients and their businesses, I could anticipate their concerns, and when spur of the moment issues occurred, I was able to have real-time exchanges with them to offer the most appropriate and beneficial advice based on my knowledge of their operations and objectives. I was able to maximize their time and mine. I expect the same thing from the outside firms I work with now.

Compared to other industries, is there anything about the energy sector that makes that type of relationship even more critical?

Regulatory and compliance standards across a wide range of areas in our industry are relatively stable, but the tension of wholesale change always exists, and there are constant smaller fluctuations that can make big differences in operations. So, having outside experts we can rely on for real-time advice is extraordinarily important. For example, within the federal Renewable Fuel Standard, there are highly nuanced exceptions that, with proper guidance, refiners such as Par Pacific can leverage to help drive economic value to our bottom line. And when there are unanticipated changes about which our outside experts can provide advance notice, we can adjust deliberately rather

Par Pacific

Todd Parker

“It was slightly shocking the first time I was discussing an issue, gave my recommendation, and was then part of the decision-making, not asking a client how they wanted to proceed.”

JAMES MATTHEW VAUGHN

than making decisions without appropriate due diligence.

Because we’re a growth company, there are also situations in which we need a very quick response from our M&A counsel. There might be a complex financial structure we’re considering for an acquisition, which typically occurs within an expedited time frame, usually within 4–6 weeks. But we have also completed transactions in as little as 2–3 weeks.

Are there any particular elements or strategies that you’ve been able to carry over from your role as outside counsel to your current responsibilities?

As outside counsel, I was part of the group that developed our strategy for emerging from bankruptcy in 2012. Part of that strategy involved the contribution of our predecessor company’s oil and gas assets into a new upstream joint venture entity, which also resulted in about a $1.4 billion operating loss carry-forward. To monetize that tax asset, we’ve continued growing to generate taxable revenue. Most recently, that has included acquiring Mid Pax Petroleum in Hawaii, one of the largest energy infrastructure networks in the state, with more than eighty-five retail outlets and four terminals. It’s also the exclusive licensor of the 76 retail brand. That transaction roughly doubled our logistics and retail network in Hawaii, which is served by a ninety-four thousand barrel-per-day

refinery we acquired in 2013 from Andeavor, then known as Tesoro. In 2016, we also acquired an eighteen thousand barrel-perday refinery and related logistics assets in and around Newcastle, Wyoming, that serves tourist areas in Wyoming and South Dakota. These all add geographic diversity while we continue our growth strategy, which provides access to advantaged feed stocks and a growing niche of refined products markets. This helps us hedge against market downturns since crude and product pricing in our Wyoming refinery is tied to the domestic North American market indexes, including West Texas Intermediate, as opposed to our Hawaii refinery, where we buy crude on a Brent basis and face product markets in Singapore.

What have been the most significant changes for you since shifting to your in-house position?

Part of my reason for the transition was to get more involved on the business side, but I’ve been slightly surprised by how little I end up actually practicing law. It was also slightly shocking the first time I was discussing an issue, gave my recommendation, and was then part of the decision-making, not asking a client how they wanted to proceed. It was like being a baseball player or manager. Instead of getting signs from the third-base coach, I was the one making the decision to bunt and have the runner on first steal second base.

For more than forty years, Kobayashi Sugita & Goda has been the law firm of choice for Hawaii’s most successful businesses, and has routinely guided the biggest companies in the world through Hawaii’s unique business environment. Our objective is simple - to surpass the expectations of our clients with work of the highest caliber performed with the utmost efficiency, to attain the best results possible.

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SVP, Global Tax

Eric Bern

Arthur Walker Jr.

Ocwen Financial Corporation

Solving the Corporate Tax Puzzle

Arthur Walker Jr. extends his zeal for international tax planning to the whole of Ocwen Financial Corporation

By JONAS WEIR

In 2012, Ocwen Financial Corporation continued its innovation of the mortgage industry when it moved a significant portion of its mortgage servicing ownership and oversight off-shore to the US Virgin Islands with its subsidiary Ocwen Mortgage Servicing Inc.

The significance is that, because Ocwen has its mortgage servicing operation off-shore, the company gets tax deferral on a large portion of its servicing income. It’s a relatively novel idea that came to fruition because the executive team saw that its mortgage servicing operation was one of its largest revenue streams, identified an opportunity to save on the company’s taxes, and committed to the plan.

That’s when Arthur Walker Jr. stepped in. As an expert in tax law with more than twenty years of experience in international corporate tax planning, Walker was the perfect person to dot the i’s and cross the t’s, so to speak.

“I personally came in right after it was planned because they needed somebody to make sure that the structure was implemented correctly, contemporaneously documented, monitored, and that the business units were educated about the structure,” Walker says.

As the senior vice president of global tax at Ocwen, Walker says the move would not have been possible without the dedication and complete support of the company’s leadership. In fact, over the past few years the company’s CFO, general counsel, president of US Virgin

“As the puzzle changes, it’s exciting to see how the new and changed pieces impact all the other pieces.”

ARTHUR WALKER

JR.

Island operations, a number of servicing and senior finance executives, the entire capital markets desk, and Walker himself have moved from the continental United States to the St. Croix, US Virgin Islands. In addition, the company has hired roughly seventy call center employees locally. Walker provided the expertise and guidance to ensure the entire process was properly structured and went as smoothly as possible. It involved several moving pieces, but it wasn’t a chore. On the contrary, the entire process was just the type of project that excites Walker.

Before he entered the world of international corporate tax, Walker earned degrees in accounting and international business from Georgetown University because he wanted to be an entrepreneur. After graduation, he remained at Georgetown but took the path toward law school to learn more about the laws that entrepreneurial operations would face.

“It turns out that being a lawyer has its entrepreneurial side as well,” Walker says. “I liked being a consultant that was able to specialize in one area while also taking the business’ goals and constraints into account.”

The area he ended up specializing in was taxes. He earned an LLM in taxation at Georgetown University Law Center following his JD. His first job at a big law firm was with Baker & McKenzie, where he worked before and during his final year of law school.

There, he found a passion and a zeal like never before in tax planning, and his vision for his career crystallized. “I really just fell in love with doing tax law,” he says. “It allowed

me to really get involved in the business. I like to figure out what practical and tax efficient solutions might work for the business. It was like having a giant number of puzzle pieces. You could put that puzzle together a number of different ways to accomplish what the business wanted to do. But putting that puzzle together in a manner that adds significant value and meshes well with the way the business operates is extremely satisfying.”

That zeal for solving tax puzzles has not wavered after more than twenty years in the industry, including more than nearly fifteen years at Mayer Brown LLP. At the same time, he was trying to encourage his love of tax law into a new generation of lawyers. He taught night classes for more than five years on corporate taxation to JD students as an adjunct professor at Columbus School of Law in Washington, DC. Today, he extends that same zeal to the rest of Ocwen.

“At Mayer Brown, Art was very smart, creative, and extremely hard-working,” says Kenneth Klein, one of Walker’s partners and mentor at Mayer Brown. “He was a fabulous project manager. At Ocwen, Art has used those skills to build a first-class multinational tax department, almost from scratch.”

Everyone on the Ocwen leadership team knows Walker is more than happy to talk taxes, and he says the team is always open to explore and consider any opportunities he might see to make the organization more tax efficient. To execute those plans, he often works closely with the various business unit leaders and the business development team, as well as the entire C-suite, treasury

department, and other senior leaders. It helps, though, that the company views tax planning as an investment.

“I think it’s hard to save money on your tax budget and improve your tax efficiencies in the short term,” Walker says. “We actually look at tax efficiencies as you would any other investment. You may have to spend more in the short term in order to save and/ or improve your long-term position. Putting those tax investment decisions in a costbenefit analysis often highlights the value that tax can bring to a transaction. It is often worth spending a little bit more now if you do it smartly and if you’re getting a good return on it. That’s an investment that is worth it to make.”

By selectively choosing those tax investments, Walker has been able to reduce the overall tax spend at Ocwen while strengthening the company.

A major factor in making those tax planning investments possible is Walker’s team. To help them succeed, he starts by looking for proactive problem-solvers to join the tax department. He then ensures that they have all the resources needed to accomplish their goals, while still providing guidance and holding them accountable. At the same time, he encourages everyone to push themselves and pursue projects that excite them and continue their education through seminars, trainings, webinars, and other similar opportunities. Above all, he enjoys mentoring team members on their career and goals.

Throughout his career, Walker says he has benefited from outstanding mentors, so he pays it forward by providing guidance and advice to his team members. Conversely, his team helps him stay ahead of the curve by monitoring news sources, recognizing trends in tax law as they develop, and constantly looking for new opportunities for efficiency in their department.

Although the sheer scale of navigating taxes on a global scale can be daunting, it helps that he surrounds himself with people that are just as passionate about the field as he is.

“We all get excited about this stuff,” Walker says. “It goes back to those puzzle pieces. As the puzzle changes, it’s exciting to see how the new and changed pieces impact all the other pieces. Sometimes that means making minor adjustments, and sometimes you have to rethink the entire structure in order to stay up on the puzzle. But that’s what’s challenging about it. That’s what’s exciting about it. It’s always evolving. It’s never boring.”

Mayer Brown congratulates Arthur Walker and all of our friends at Ocwen Financial Corporation for this well-deserved recognition. It has been our privilege to serve as your trusted advisers, and we look forward to helping you continue to accomplish your goals.

| www.mayerbrown.com

Gregory S. Nixon—business executive and lawyer—emphasizes the value in lawyers having operational business experience

By JOE DIXON

W Broad Business Experience Matters

When Gregory S. Nixon was courted away from DynCorp International Inc. to be the chief legal officer (CLO) of global engineering company CH2M Hill Companies Ltd, Nixon had no reason to believe that he would be recruited to work for the private equity firm that owns DynCorp International (Cerberus Capital Management) ten months later. He already had blazed an impressive career path as a lawyer, having served in senior roles at McKinsey and Company, Booz Allen Hamilton, the Cerberus Operations and Advisory Company Board of Directors, and other leading firms. But the skills he honed along the way would be put to the test when Cerberus asked that he help transform DynCorp International—utilizing not only his legal prowess, but also his business and operational acumen.

When Nixon joined Cerberus in 2014, his business, management, and legal skills from his prior experiences were perfectly suited for his new mission: to serve as the senior vice president and chief administrative officer (CAO) of DynCorp International and lead the strategic transformation of several key functions and commercial ventures around the world. DynCorp International is a global integrated service solutions provider focused on aviation, intelligence, logistics, consulting, construction, and operations. It operates in thirty-three countries, has forty-five legal entities, and has thousands of employees around the world.

Because of the work it performs for the US government and private sector clients, DynCorp International

often operates in the riskiest and most austere environments in the world. The company is highly regulated and involved in many complex legal and regulatory matters. It is the largest US contractor in Afghanistan and one of the largest aviation maintenance companies in the world. “The global footprint and sophistication of the business and legal matters at DynCorp International are very intellectually stimulating,” Nixon says. “Few companies do what we do or operate in the jurisdictions that we operate in, including conflict zones and areas with recent or impending natural disasters.”

Throughout his legal career, Nixon had steered his corporate clients through a variety of legal and business complexities. Acquisitions, government investigations, media storms, and virtually anything that might come across a general counsel’s desk on a bad day, Nixon probably has seen more than once. So, it was no wonder that DynCorp International, facing dramatic reductions in its revenue, increased competition, and a long list of legal issues, needed Nixon’s legal skills and business acumen to bring the company back to the strong footing it is on today.

Gregory S. Nixon Chief Administrative Officer, Chief Legal Officer, Corporate Secretary DynCorp International Inc.

Morrison & Foerster congratulates Greg Nixon, Chief Administrative Office and Chief Legal Officer of DynCorp International, on his accomplishments and recognition by Profile.

At Morrison & Foerster, our commitment to excellence begins with the understanding that our clients’ needs are unique. We are dedicated to finding creative solutions that ensure our clients achieve their business goals.

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In his current business executive role, which grew to include chief legal officer and corporate secretary, Nixon oversees a team of 175 employees and leads all aspects of legal, contracts, compliance, human resources, supply chain, security, export controls, and crisis management. Nixon manages a complex set of legal issues across the globe, while maintaining focus on the business realities of a highly regulated company fraught with global complexity. The company employs a global workforce and deals with complex litigation and government investigations, congressional interest, government funding, shifting political sands, geopolitical risk, and massive government oversight. It is also both owned by private equity investors, yet answers to the public through SEC filings. In the time he has been back, Nixon has steered the company through a minefield of potential problems, including high-stakes litigation, investigations, substantial organizational restructure, a successful debt-refinancing, better credit ratings, streamlined corporate structure, and strategic growth. During his tenure, Nixon has served as chief legal officer and advisor to three CEOs.

But in order to successfully navigate these issues, Nixon had to leverage his business experience. He identifies transformational leadership and effectiveness as focused on three areas: accurate assessment of organizational state and culture, portfolio management and growth strategy, and effective organizational decision-making that fosters innovation and sound business decisions at the right levels. “Central to organizational and business success is proper syndication and sharing of information to facilitate sound and timely business decisions. Nixon says. “One of the lessons I’ve learned from my previous experiences is the adverse effect of silos. They impede the ability to make holistic, integrated decisions, particularly when the problem is complicated.”

To break down these silos and streamline communication at DynCorp International, Nixon holds weekly meetings that include the leaders of each of the functions he oversees, allowing the leaders to brief each other on developments in their respective departments. He also requires his teams to be

A BIRDS-EYE VIEW OF BUSINESS

Sometimes, inhabiting the C-suite isn’t enough to be an effective leader, says Gregory S. Nixon. He is a vocal advocate for business leaders to serve on boards of directors whenever possible because he says that the experience gives them a unique view of business that they don’t get from their other roles.

Nixon served on the board of directors of BlueLinx Holdings Inc., where he served on the Compensation Committee and Governance Committee. Currently, he serves on the board of the University of Maryland University College Ventures, where he is focusing on fundraising for the organization, which aims to make a positive economic impact by helping entrepreneurs commercialize their discoveries. Previously, he has been on boards for the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund and the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

“Being on a board enhances your strategic view and governance experience, and it also informs your ability to understand business challenges, whether those challenges are in the public or private sector,” Nixon says.

embedded with the business leaders and to be business partners. “Everybody must have situational awareness of what is important to the business, globally,” Nixon says. “By being inclusive, the situational awareness is enhanced across the entire organization and the staff learns in the process. It improves judgment and operational agility.”

Indeed, Nixon himself, with his dualhatted role, exemplifies the blending of the business and legal solutions that have brought DynCorp International to its present state of profitability and growth.

Organizational integration is also critical because Nixon’s teams are spread across multiple continents where the cultural norms can differ dramatically. It’s his job to get his teams on the same page regarding

Polsinelli thanks Greg Nixon for your leadership and service in the practice of government contracts law real challenges.

Rome proudly recognizes Greg Nixon for his impressive legal career and exemplary leadership at DynCorp. We are honored to work with Greg

Steptoe congratulates Greg Nixon for his success and leadership at DynCorp International. We are proud to serve as DynCorp’s trusted legal counsel.

Jackson Lewis P.C. would like to congratulate Gregory Nixon, Esq. of DynCorp International for his exceptional leadership and accomplishments

“By being inclusive, the situational awareness is enhanced across the entire organization and the staff learns in the process.”

GREGORY S. NIXON

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company protocols and to make sure that employees working in different cultural climates still adhere to the US-based business’ rules, regulations, and policies.

“We have operations in Saudi Arabia, India, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo and Egypt, for example,” Nixon explains. “We must diligently work to ensure that our policies are followed and US law is adhered to, especially with respect to anti-corruption and export controls.”

In addition to integrating his teams, Nixon embraces hands-on leadership as another tactic to manage his vast array of responsibilities. As a retired lieutenant colonel and judge advocate general in the US Air Force, Nixon has experience operating in austere environments and geographic areas where the safety conditions could change at a moment’s notice.

“If you are sitting in New York or Washington, DC, it’s difficult to understand the dynamic on the ground in Iraq or Afghanistan,” he says. “It is helpful for a CAO or CLO to visit where the business operations and clients are, regardless of jurisdiction. This improves your ability to provide counsel.”

Despite the potential risks of going to areas of instability around the world, Nixon says the practice greatly enhances his ability to lead his teams.

Nixon wants to utilize his influence to continue to promote diversity within the company. In fact, he has already spearheaded creating a summer legal internship position that focuses on giving candidates from a wide variety of backgrounds exposure to DynCorp International’s in-house legal function. It’s this type of hands-on leadership that is transforming how people within the organization and beyond perceive the role of chief legal officer.

Today, Nixon is as much a business executive as he is a chief legal officer. And even

as DynCorp International moves systematically toward profit and growth while maintaining excellent customer relations and rigorous compliance, the impact of Nixon’s leadership is evident throughout the company.

“There is a big difference between a CLO being a legal technician and a legal tactician,” Nixon says. “I strive to be an integral part of how this company operates every day at a strategic level.”

Jackson Lewis P.C. is a law firm with more than eight hundred attorneys in major cities nationwide serving clients across a wide range of practices and industries. Having built its reputation on providing premier workplace law representation to management, the firm has grown to include leading practices in the areas of government relations, healthcare, and sports law. The firm’s commitment to client service, depth of expertise, and innovation draws clients to Jackson Lewis for excellent value-driven legal advice.

“Greg combines a rare mix of legal acumen and savvy business judgment. He brings an outstanding range and depth of professional experience to every situation, combined with a unique perspective. We are proud to be on Greg’s team and look forward to our continued partnership.” - Rick Vacura, Partner, Morrison & Foerster LLP

A Message from Polsinelli PC

Greg exemplifies how a top in-house attorney is also a business leader. Outside lawyers working with Greg know that he is always focused on the practical implications of a legal issue. He applies his business savvy to our legal advice to reach the best outcomes for DynCorp.

Wilson Elser is a full-service law firm with nearly eight hundred attorneys in thirty-four offices nationally. Founded in 1978, it is ranked among the top fifty law firms by The National Law Journal and, as a founding member of the Legalign Global Alliance, provides clients with ready access to legal resources internationally.

Littler is proud to support Greg Nixon and DynCorp International LLC

We are privileged to work with Greg and his team.

We Listen Before We Act

Wilson Elser attorneys partner with our clients to protect their reputations and assets through negotiations, mediations and, when necessary, litigation. Our 34 U.S. of ces and access to 25 international of ces through our Legalign Global alliance give our clients access to skilled legal representation when and where they need it.

How can we help you advance your business objectives? We’re listening.

Hollingsworth LLP congratulates Greg Nixon on his vision in steering the DynCorp International Legal Department and honors his commitment to the wider community.

Greg’s passion and intelligence have helped make DynCorp one of the nation’s leading global services providers; his dedication to others has led him to work with students in the DC public schools, and with students in law schools while ensuring that DynCorp provides opportunities for female and minority law students.

It has been Hollingsworth LLP’s great privilege to work with Greg and his team on some of DynCorp’s most challenging cases, including the Arias litigation, a mass tort action involving several thousand foreign claimants in which DynCorp obtained a complete defense verdict. We look forward to continuing to learn from Greg and to many future successes together.

From finance to supply chain, these executives are integral parts of companies that are changing their industries and the world at large.

Guided by a mission of belonging, Airbnb’s finance team has become an essential part of the organization’s growth DNA

By Jeff Silver | Photos by Gillian Fry

Internally Hosting the Mission

Since its inception

in 2008, Airbnb has soared to staggering numbers that have completely transformed the travel and lodging industry. There are more than four million listings in more than 191 countries worldwide. And more than two hundred million guests have stayed in an Airbnb. Helping to manage the company’s growth, support ongoing innovation, and ensure that the finance department acts as an integral and collaborative business partner are David Bernstein, chief accounting officer and controller, and Emily Misleh, finance senior manager, special projects. Although their titles may not suggest it, on any given day, they can be working on tools, processes, or infrastructure that help address the quality and reliability of Airbnb’s community platform, reinforce the accuracy and utility of transactions on the company’s online marketplace, or ensure that its technology is scalable to support its global workforce.

Instead of asking employees to remain boxed into a single role, the company encourages them to act as “cereal entrepreneurs,” who are always looking for ways to innovate, improve, and survive—just as Airbnb’s founders did in the company’s early days by selling designer boxes of cereal, such as custom-made boxes of “Obama O’s,” to fund their fledging start-up.

“In many organizations, the finance staff is often in the position of simply pointing out risk,” Misleh explains. “We do that, but we also have a mandate to figure out how to break new ground and turn great ideas into real solutions.”

Bernstein notes that finance was set up as an advisor and active business partner from the beginning. “To stay focused on that priority, we always start by getting a comprehensive understanding of the rationale for any action before figuring out what needs to be done, let alone how to do it,” Bernstein says.

That different approach is something that resounds throughout the organization and even with Airbnb’s partners. “David and Emily’s leadership has helped make it possible for finance to effectively and rapidly optimize its processes and systems over the past few years,” says Neil Smith of CrossCountry Consulting. “Equally impressive is the finance team’s commitment to continuous improvement through a collaborative approach. This should help ensure that the department will continue to find ways to add value to the business as the company evolves.”

It’s all part of Airbnb’s mission of creating a world where anyone can belong anywhere through a single application that provides unique, community-based travel customized for each user’s travel needs. So, in addition to arranging accommodations, the company’s platform has integrated capabilities for making restaurant reservations. It is rapidly expanding its offerings of local experiences: highly curated activities that range from meditative hikes to cooking classes, or anything else that reflects the authentic passions of locals who wish to share those experiences, whether it be a local or an out-of-town traveler.

“More than half the people booking experiences in many of our cities are local,” Bernstein says. “I grew up in San Francisco but had never toured the murals in the Mission District before taking an Airbnb experience. It was a wonderful, unique experience and having someone speak to them in a meaningful and personal manner was powerful and memorable.”

The finance team has also supported the pilot of two new features related to the company’s highly complex payments business, which handles billions of dollars in multiple currencies through a global network of payment processors: Group Payments, which enable accommodation fees to be billed separately to individuals sharing a booking, and Partial Pay, which allows for a 50 percent deposit at the time of an advance booking instead of full payment, relieving some of the financial burden of paying the entire booking fee in advance of the trip.

Although changes such as these greatly increase user flexibility, they require

David Bernstein Chief Accounting Officer, Controller

tremendous collaboration between engineering, business systems, treasury, tax, accounting, and countless other teams. Responsibilities for handling that crosscoordination fall to Misleh, who has established a stellar record for assessing needs, creating implementation plans, nurturing buy-in from everyone involved, and executing flawlessly.

For example, in 2016, Misleh helped launch a standardized global procurement system. But she knew the term procurement would sound too traditional to Airbnb’s forward-thinking employees and would automatically symbolize a slow, bureaucratic process. To address that problem, she named the rollout Buy@.

“We did extensive peer research and crafted a story that presented Buy@ as an opportunity, not new rules that would slow things down,” Misleh says. “We worked collaboratively and flexibly so that the implementation accommodated the needs of each group.”

Bernstein points out that this is typical of Misleh’s approach. “She listens to input and then formulates solutions that provide needed controls but reflect the realities of the organization,” he explains.

That strategy, which recognizes and respects different local customs, has been instrumental in gaining cooperation from different global units within Airbnb. When streamlined reporting processes were introduced, Misleh developed close relationships with the likes of the company’s BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China)market, which were accustomed to completely different holiday schedules, banking regulations, and compliance guidelines. However, after identifying their priorities, local practices, and motivating factors, Misleh succeeded in updating their processes.

Worldwide, her efforts to consolidate accounting functions produced millions in savings and reduced accounting closing from twelve days to six.

Bernstein and Misleh have a successful partnership built on trust, candor, and different, but complementary styles. He describes her as an “outstanding communicator and extremely quick processor of information who is extraordinarily bold—often plowing a new path before I’ve even decided we need one.” She lightheartedly agrees, characterizing Bernstein as “a bit more risk-averse than I am.”

Their differing styles and strategies have created counterbalances that work

Emily Misleh

Finance Senior Manager, Special Projects Airbnb

POINT OF DISRUPTION

In 2008, travelers booking hotel rooms most likely followed this protocol: browse online, compare prices at a few hotel chains available in the area they were visiting, and book a room. Then, Airbnb launched in August of that year and revolutionized the hospitality industry.

Airbnb allows individuals to live like a local anywhere they go by staying in the apartments, townhomes, and condos of Airbnb hosts around the world. Accommodations can vary from a mini-castle in Scotland to a cabin in the Redwood Forest of California, which individuals may select from an online marketplace, complete with photos and user reviews. The varied selection of rooms, locations, and cheaper price tags than traditional hotels appealed to many consumers, and since its launch, Airbnb has hosted 200 million guests and counting.

extremely well together. And even though she frequently pushes existing boundaries, he still considers her his best strategist.

“Our disagreements can get heated because Emily and I are both so passionate about the business,” Bernstein says. “But when she pushes me outside my comfort zone, I have to consider answers to tough questions that ultimately lead to purposebuilt, highly effective, long-term solutions.”

“Just because he says no five times, that doesn’t’ mean I don’t keep trying,” Misleh adds.

Misleh acknowledges that she continually challenges the entire finance team and, counter to most financial professionals’ temperament, believes that taking risks is essential to making progress. This was the case in early iterations of the Buy@ system, which required collaboration between groups that hadn’t worked together before, as well as experimenting with new technical configurations and custom integration

Making a real impact

Individuals working together towards one goal can make a strong impact. At Deloitte, success is the result of teamwork and our multidisciplined, multidimensional approach to business and serving our clients.

We share a tradition of supporting the communities in which we live and work as an expression of our values and commitment to the public trust. We are proud to work with Airbnb as it makes a positive impact in thousands and thousands of communities across the globe.

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strategies. “We had to experience false starts and less-than-hoped-for results in order to learn what worked and what didn’t and make improvements,” Misleh says. “Even if something seems unattainable and we fail along the way, what’s important is how fast we pivot and are able to start moving forward again.”

As Airbnb continues to grow and add more user options and functions, the

finance team will have to continue develop

ing increasingly innovative, sophisticated systems and processes to support the company’s forward-thinking initiatives.

And according to Bernstein and Misleh, they will be able to do that successfully by staying true to the company’s four core values, especially when it comes to embracing the adventure and being a “cereal entrepreneur.”

In 2008, Airbnb debuted in San Francisco, forever changing the hospitality industry. Every day, more guests are checking in for Airbnb arrivals both in the United States and around the world.

After building his career on the foundation of technology and law, Scott Shipman is now inspiring the transformation of smart cities worldwide

A Career on the Cutting Edge

Across his

accomplished career, Scott Shipman has crossed borders both literal and theoretical. His work has taken him from massive corporations to start-ups and back again. He’s traversed many of the corners of the business world and developed a bird’s eye view of the biggest concerns in privacy, information security, data strategy, and intellectual property. And yet, Shipman’s latest challenge finds him working on a new project that achieves much of that same oversight: smart communities.

In his previous role as the chief privacy officer and general counsel at Sensity, Shipman was leading the organization’s work toward a smarter, more interconnected city.

By Lior Phillips

Sensity Systems has since been acquired by Verizon, but his career path started as far back as his time in law school.

At the Santa Clara University School of Law, Shipman focused on high-tech law and spent a summer in Tokyo at the Institute for Comparative Law while working with Honda on intellectual property licensing agreements. It was a great start to his technology-focused career. “I was accepted as a contributing member of the legal department at a very early stage in my career,” he says. “It provided me with a lot of confidence, skills, and a passion for intellectual property and technology.”

When the dot-com boom and a seventy-person start-up called AuctionWeb came calling, Shipman decided it was worth a risk to join a start-up right out of law school. Fortunately, that start-up would become eBay. Thanks to the confidence earned at Honda, he was able to transition easily to the more

POINT OF DISRUPTION

Sensity Systems was founded in 2010 with the goal of changing the way that governments and residents look at their communities. In 2016, Verizon acquired Sensity because of its work to create smart cities. The company plans to convert public lights to LED lighting—which the company says will affect four billion lights worldwide— to create a high-speed, sensor-based, open-networking platform known as a Light Sensory Network. This network will disrupt the ways in which governments provide applications and services such as public safety, environmental and weather monitoring, parking management, and location analytics.

Scott Shipman General Counsel, Verizon

Smart Communities

Verizon

wide-open environment of a start-up. He was also drawn to the company’s culture and mission, where individuals could drive their own success by working as eBay sellers.

Because of that connection, he stayed at eBay for more than sixteen years, helping build the legal department from the ground up. During his tenure, eBay’s global portfolio of companies included more than forty brands such as PayPal, Skype, and StubHub.

In the process, the then-burgeoning fields of privacy and data protection and information security led Shipman to build eBay’s privacy program and become the chief privacy officer, testifying in Congress and meeting with data protection officers and governmental agencies around the world to help shape the field. Shipman led the privacy incident response team through eBay’s data incident in 2014, working closely with regulators and law enforcement to ensure they were kept abreast of the latest developments. Ultimately, eBay’s quick response

and focus on communication with customers and regulators successfully mitigated the incident with minimal impact. But when a new, equally exciting challenge came up, Shipman was excited to take the leap. “I got a call from a recruiter who said that this company was working in a brand new area, much like where privacy was seventeen years ago,” he says.

Not only that, but the company needed a general counsel and chief privacy officer. That company, Sensity Systems Inc., was making remarkable strides in the Internet of Things and smart city infrastructure. As such, privacy and data would be key. Both sides saw the potential in the fit, and Shipman came on board.

The company aims to help governments and residents understand their cities through sensor technology. The sensors put the information into a cloud platform, which allows users to check in on topics such as traffic patterns, fatal pedestrian accidents, parking

availability, and more. “As an example, two video sensors can recognize if a car is parked on the street or if there is an empty space and then connect that information to an application on your phone in real-time,” Shipman explains. “We’re bringing the tools to cities to fundamentally change people’s lives.”

With world-changing events, Sensity’s vision garnered greater interest from cities globally. Working with Copenhagen, Adelaide, Bangalore, Kansas City, and more, Sensity had the largest number of pilots in the 150 tracked The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) projects in 2016. Those initiatives led to Sensity being recognized as a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum. The potential of sharing all the information from those governments—from permit requests to records of crime patterns—could lead to fascinating insights. Of course, all the benefits need to be balanced with the responsibility of making it available in a safe way, respecting personal information and citizen privacy.

Joanne H. Lee/Santa Clara University

As general counsel for Verizon Smart Communities, Shipman works with a team of engineers that develop the technology and enable privacy-by-design. They’ve thought through the potential danger of sharing private information and the concerns of constant surveillance. To that latter concern, he’s quick to note that the technology Verizon relies on is sensors, not cameras. “Our video sensor is the same technology used in self-driving cars: computer vision. It has the ability to analyze the scene below it, detecting objects without recording the scene,” he explains.

Depending on the agreement with each city, recordings from those sensors could be saved for some time to make potential evidence from crimes available and then recorded over. “The whole concept depends on working with the city to determine

interactive touch screens that offer information on the area, potentially including free Wi-Fi, remote city services, emergency safety stations, and other content.

The burgeoning industry continues to offer new growth opportunities for Shipman. “Smart communities is a whole new industry, and we need to create rules of the road,” he says. “We’re devising the best practices for cities so people feel comfortable purchasing these solutions.” In order to get here, Shipman had to learn how to understand state-of-the-art technology such as computer vision and AI, as well as build a new policy paradigm, similar to what he did at eBay.

“We’re bringing the tools to cities to fundamentally change people’s lives.”

Scott Shipman

what you want, how long you want it, and focusing on not keeping anything unless necessary,” Shipman says. “That’s where privacy, information security, open data, privacy-by-design, and other principles come together to minimize the emotional impact. Nobody wants to walk around a city feeling like they’re being recorded and watched.”

Shipman and his team have worked to strike that balance on dozens of pilot projects with cities hoping to create applications that consumers can download to use that shared information. These deployments are only in the planning and initial deployment phases, but they’re progressing quickly. In addition to apps, the company wants to engage with residents through smart city kiosks with

As if these challenges don’t keep him busy enough, Shipman makes education and developing new start-ups a part of his daily life. He built the first of its kind privacy certificate program at Santa Clara University School of Law, where he teaches international and comparative privacy law. He sits on a number of start-up boards as a director, guiding them through the legal and strategic process. His latest start-up is Square Panda, a promising educational tech start-up. “Starting at eBay, there was no way we could know whether dinosaur bones were legal or illegal to sell on the internet, but I learned how to learn. And when it comes to technology and the law, I have experience learning how to learn,” he explains.

“Over the past twenty years, I have experience going into a new area and developing a thoughtful approach to implementing that technology.”

Every day, Shipman works to map out the unknown and show the world what those connections can mean for others.

is proud to congratulate Scott Shipman on all of his achievements throughout his career, and we celebrate his commitment to the community through his dedication to Santa Clara University and through the advancement of technology with Verizon’s Smart City work.

- Philip S. Sellinger, Ernest Greer, Kenneth M. Neighbors, Jeremy Meier, and Your Friends at Greenberg Traurig

With 2,000 attorneys from 38 offices worldwide, Greenberg Traurig sees change as an opportunity and we approach it with agility. Since our humble beginnings in 1967, our goal has never changed: serve clients better.

Grow with Us

How the Birchbox operations team used structure and stability to ensure the start-up grew properly

Pooja Agarwal

By Lior Phillips

wasn’t a beauty junkie when she started working at Birchbox. She subscribed to the beauty subscription service, but not because she was obsessed with the products. That’s a demographic, however, that Birchbox knows quite well. “When I started working here, I found out I am the exact demographic,” Agarwal says. “We go after the girls who want to learn about beauty but who don’t have time to educate themselves.” As the vice president of operations for the company, Agarwal has made it her job to bring people together and share their areas of passion in ways that she may have never expected.

Agarwal’s unpredictable yet meteoric trajectory started when she chose to attend Michigan University, more or less at random. “I threw a dart at the wall,” she says, with a laugh. That decision, though, proved successful. At the university, she studied the unorthodox combination of economics and anthropology. Although it might not seem to have a connection to her current work, she calls anthropology the biggest boost to her career. “In anthropology, you go into different cultures and really learn how to communicate with them,” she says. “It gave me my ability to work with people from an unbiased perspective.”

Coming out of college, Agarwal had two goals: to grow a career in the retail industry and to return to her home of New York. Because of her background, she wasn’t a natural fit for any single function, but she instead was capable of adapting that communicative strength to any number of roles. When she joined flash-sale luxury retailer

Gilt Groupe, she utilized that flexibility to take on any number of challenges. Across her six years with the company, she held roles across merchandising, sales operations, creative operations, and more.

Not long after she joined Birchbox in 2014, Agarwal found a single role that fit her skills. It just so happened that the role encompasses many different functions. When she first came on board as director of operations, the different teams that would traditionally fall under a lead operations role were dispersed throughout the company. Her first step was managing supply chain and subscription, but other functions were quickly rolled into that process, including logistics, web production, and procurement of packaging. In a sense, by making the most of Agarwal’s skills, Birchbox built out a full operations function and are now reaping the benefits. That, of course, includes her being able to work more strategically with the executive team.

Agarwal’s anthropology degree comes in handy when Birchbox needs to bring new initiatives to the whole company. She makes sure to learn as much as she can from each individual team so that she can advocate for their needs and see their challenges. “Companies sometimes create a divide between great ideas and execution,” she says. “We’ve created a level of trust with all the employees because they know we’re making longer-term decisions from a place where we’re thinking about the team and how things will need to be done. A lot of cost in a retail company comes from operations, so it’s really helpful to have somebody from the team in the room to bring those perspectives.”

VP of Operations

Pooja Agarwal

Birchbox

“Birchbox has a vision of having a variety of really great vendors, which helps mitigate risk, provides a different service, keeps people innovating different things, and gives us a lot more freedom.”

Pooja Agarwal

It helps that, much like Agarwal, a lot of the team members don’t have operations backgrounds, and bring fresh perspectives to the work. However, because their work relies on proprietary algorithms to build new subscription boxes, that educative tool can be a bit more technical than at other companies. So Agarwal shares her knowledge and makes sure the rest of her team knows exactly what each other contributes to the end goal and can share the load when needed. In fact, she sees herself as her team’s “thought partner” as much as she does their leader. Her commitment to her team members success and knowledge of the company is especially important due to the relatively small size of the company; no team or employee can work in a bubble and, instead, needs to work across functions. “I love that they’ve really grown inside the company and are developing the operations that best suit Birchbox,” she explains.

POINT OF DISRUPTION

While speaking about the make-ups they use, Harvard Business School graduates Katia Beauchamp and Hayley Barna had an epiphany. To them, buying makeup could be confusing, expensive, and inconvenient. So, what if they could provide an affordable, monthly selection of cosmetics samples? In 2010, they sent out their first Birchbox subscription box doing just that and changing the way people shop for beauty products. They’ve since expanded the company with a supporting online store and editorial content, and in 2012, they launched Birchbox Men.

Eight years ago, the first Birchbox was shipped. Today, millions of boxes are shipped every day throughout the United States and Europe.

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In addition to connections inside Birchbox, Agarwal notes that her team needs to become intimately familiar with their vendors in transportation, packaging, and fulfillment. She ensures that they are able to grow with the company, to move quickly and respond to new ideas that might arise at a moment’s notice.

“The final delivery of the Birchbox into their customers hands each month is critical,” says Christine Kelley of shipping services company OSM Worldwide. “Pooja’s vision for using dependable logistics partners has been vital to the success of Birchbox. OSM Worldwide and the Birchbox team consistently work together to innovate delivery solutions that maximize the fast, consistent delivery of the packages.”

Agarwal and her team also need to share Birchbox’s high demands for consistent quality and affordable cost, so that subscribers get the best products at a price they’re glad to pay. Those vendors aren’t easy to come by, but Agarwal constantly works to find the right fit, no matter how long it might take. “We really value our work with vendors like CDW Merchants. OSM Worldwide

is a wonderful transportation vendor, and after five years of conversation, this year we found a fit for working with them for our men’s business,” she explains. “It’s been wonderful. Birchbox has a vision of having a variety of really great vendors, which helps mitigate risk, provides a different service, keeps people innovating different things, and gives us a lot more freedom.”

Throughout each step, Agarwal and her team find new ways to uphold the Birchbox voice in every detail—whether that’s the weight of packaging or which company will be shipping the boxes—to make sure the best possible products get into the hands of Birchbox customers safely and consistently. “We try as hard as we can to make decisions that we think will benefit our customer,” she explains. “So much of the customer’s experience is actually after they place the order: Did they get their order? What did the order look like? What kind of quality did it arrive in? Was there damage? Was it not what they expected? We track every piece of that journey and try to build that into the experience to make it as positive as possible.”

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Each month, customers receive five beauty samples from Birchbox, which includes a variety of makeup, skincare, bodycare, haircare, and fragrance categories.

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The Category Kingmaker

DocuSign’s Keith Krach outlines his thirty-five-year quest to increase the world’s productivity

By Roy J. MacReady

believes that in order to impact the world, you have to have a winner-take-all philosophy. In fact, recent studies show that the category king— new-industry pioneers that confront the challenge of creating a new market category and achieving significance within it— capture 76 percent of the market cap for the industry.

Krach has become a category kingmaker, building four game-changing companies from robotics to engineering software to e-commerce to e-signature and digital transaction management. All four companies are considered disruptors, became the clear market leader through category creation, generated significant shareholder value, and chose paper or manual processes as its main competitor.

The companies took advantage of four different paradigm shifts at different points in time in different industries. “The principles, strategies, and tactics utilized were

Keith Krach

Keith Krach Chairman DocuSign

essentially the same, while learning new, successful concepts along the way with each successive company,” Krach explains.

It’s a playbook that Krach brought with him to DocuSign when he became chairman in 2009 and CEO soon after that, where he leveraged the concept of e-signatures. But what led to DocuSign’s growth was the category creation of Digital Transaction Management (DTM). In a world of increasing digitization, mobility, and speed, DocuSign capitalized on the opportunity, need, and paradigm shift to create DTM, which empowers anyone to transact anything, anytime, anywhere, on any device—simply and securely.

To this day, the DocuSign Global Trust Network has more than 300,000 companies standardized on DocuSign, more than two hundred million unique users in 188 countries, and 300,000 unique users a day.

Krach believes, though, that most categories do not occur randomly. Instead, he puts

POINT OF DISRUPTION

With the widespread use of smartphones, computers, and tablets, it’s easy to forgot how just a few years ago fax machines and scanners were a necessity in the workplace, particularly for signing and sending important documents. But just as the pen replaced the feather quill, DocuSign introduced technology that revolutionized the need for having a pen at all.

Founded in 2003, DocuSign is empowering more than 300,000 companies and two hundred million users to sign, send, and manage documents from anywhere, any time. Tasks such as printing, faxing, scanning, and overnighting documents are now a distant memory with e-signatures. Along with having a positive impact on the environment, DocuSign gives companies and individuals the power of the pen through digital convenience. And with its Digital Transaction Management—a category of cloud software designed to help individuals and organizations safely and securely manage approvals, decisions, contracts, and workflows completely digitally—DocuSign is proving that e-signature is just the beginning.

a high importance on leveraging growth models; optimizing profitability, growth, and market power; and quantifying the value proposition for the customer. He also believes in building a strong team and the virtue of organizational courage. “It takes a high-performance team that thrives on challenging the status quo and innovating with every discipline of the company,” he says.

And Krach knows from experience. Before joining DocuSign, he became the youngest-ever vice president of General Motors at the age of twenty-six. He was also the founder of GMF Robotics, a joint venture between GM and Fanuc. With the innovative risk-taking nature of Krach’s youth and the power of GM, GMF Robotics quickly became the industry leader while putting IBM, GE, and Westinghouse out of the robotics business. To this day, Fanuc Robotics is the global leader, and Krach is recognized as an early pioneer in the robotics industry.

From there, Krach joined the founding team of Rasna Corporation, which created a new methodology for optimizing mechanical designs, a category known as Mechanical Design Synthesis. Rasna was number three on the 1994 Inc. 5000 fastest growing companies in the United States and later sold to Parametric Technologies for $500 million in 1995. In 1996, Krach became the first entrepreneur-in-residence at Benchmark Capital. It was during those early Benchmark days that Krach and his fellow founders came up with the idea that would change the way business is done: B2B e-commerce.

Known as Ariba, the company soon became the de facto standard by creating the first enterprise application written on the internet and establishing the category of B2B e-commerce. At the time, it was the fastest growing software company, with its revenue doubling quarter over quarter for the first twelve quarters. The company then went public after only a little less than three years after its founding. Ariba’s stock more

“My desire at this point in my career is simply to inspire the next generation of global leaders along their journey.”

Keith Krach

than quadrupled from the offering price on opening day, making the company worth about $6 billion.

In 2000, the stock value continued to climb, and Ariba’s market capitalization was as high as $40 billion. SAP acquired Ariba in 2012 and now has $1.3 trillion going through the Ariba Network annually, which is more than eBay, Amazon, and Alibaba combined. “Our success was not timing, not a fluke, not good luck,” Krach says about the success of Ariba. “It was simply recognizing the profound patterns, looking for the need, the paradigm shift, assembling the team, and giving them a clear mission.”

These same principles that Krach outlined at Ariba were also applied at DocuSign, which means being a category kingmaker isn’t luck or fortune. It’s a playbook, and Krach knows the plays backward and forward. A combination of academic,

professional, and personal experiences have made him realize that successful category creation is teachable, duplicative, and all about pattern recognition. “My desire at this point in my career is simply to inspire the next generation of global leaders along their journey,” he says.

Keith Krach is a notable example of the many ways Purdue University alumni deliver innovative solutions to solve global challenges. Our graduates help feed the world, engineer life-saving devices, lead Fortune 500 companies, pen Academy Award-winning movie scripts, and journey into space. At Purdue, what we make moves the world forward.

DOCUSIGN BY THE NUMBERS

• 200 MILLION+ users in 188 countries

• 300,000+ companies

• 300,000+ new, unique users join the DocuSign Global Trust Network every day

• 85% of successful transactions completed within one day

• 58% of transactions completed via API

Purdue University is pioneering a new vision of the land-grant university for the 21st century.

We place students first, champion research and innovation, and drive economies through industry partnerships and engagement.

PAYING IT FORWARD

Much of the success that Keith Krach has accumulated over the years he attributes to his upbringing, from his engineering background at Purdue University to his leadership skills acquired from Sigma Chi to the business strategies he gained from Harvard Business School.

“I have always felt a great bond and gratitude for my alma maters,” Krach says. “I was given the opportunity to give back to Purdue as the chairman of the board of trustees. This experience was the perfect synergy of my business experience and personal sentiment, and I am proud of the great work we accomplished.”

Krach believes his greatest achievement—and one that will forever change the destiny and trajectory of Purdue—was appointing Mitch Daniels, the sitting governor of Indiana, to be the twelfth president of the university in 2012. In Krach’s view, this was another opportunity to create a category.

“There is a paradigm shift upon us in higher education, and we have the chance to break the mold and harness this moment with an out-of-the-box innovator and leader,” he says. “While the wisdom of this unconventional appointment was as clear as day to me, it was perhaps my greatest exercise in diplomacy to bring him into the Purdue family with the full support and fanfare he deserved from our academic college, alumni, and students.”

purdue.edu/purduemoves

Walcott SVP, General Counsel

Wanji

Kristen Fortier/PayPal

By Paul Snyder

From Disrupting Payment Systems to Evolving

the Workplace

As general counsel of PayPal, Wanji Walcott is not only making strides for her legal team, but she’s also working to influence counsel throughout the industry

In the legal

department of PayPal’s San Jose, California, office, not only does the work seem endless, but it can also come from any direction at any time.

Regulatory changes need to be accounted for in both the United States and abroad. A global network of roughly 18,500 employees work toward a goal of democratizing financial services while also having to adapt to a constantly evolving stream of business and legal developments. Privacy rules are again updated in another country where PayPal does business. Business counterparts may suggest the company moves one way, while leadership ponders another direction. Diversity and inclusion is being discussed throughout the industry, but is enough being done to move it into practice?

More often than not, all of these competing interests and issues intersect in the office of Wanji Walcott, PayPal’s general counsel. With more than twenty years of legal experience—first in private practice and other in-house law departments and most recently at American Express, where she was before joining PayPal—Walcott says she figured she had a solid understanding of the multiple responsibilities a general counsel has. But when she became PayPal’s general counsel in February 2017, she gained a new appreciation for what the role entails.

“Sometimes I ask myself, ‘Well, Wanji, what did you think was going to happen?’” she says with a laugh. “You have an image in your mind of what a general counsel deals with in terms of the weight of certain issues and the volume of work and responsibility, but until you’re in this seat, you might not appreciate the full breadth of those issues. We’re in a highly regulated, global business, and with that comes a lot of complexity and demands.”

It’s an environment in which Walcott thrives. Although PayPal has a seventeenyear history, its split from eBay in 2015 to

POINT OF DISRUPTION

When it was launched from Palo Alto, California, in 1998, few predicted the ramifications PayPal would have on not only the financial market, but also in changing how we manage money all together. At the time of its launch, PayPal acted similarly to a digital wallet, and it has now replaced the need to mail checks, withdraw money, and more.

Recognized by some as the original disruptor when the first payment was sent via a Palm Pilot, PayPal has gone on to increase its platform with the likes of Braintree, Venmo, and Xoom, which enable consumers and merchants to receive money in more than one hundred currencies, withdraw funds in fifty-six currencies, and hold balances in their PayPal accounts in twenty-five currencies.

become its own public company spun the online payment system into new territory. In many ways, Walcott says, it feels like a new company. And while payments, cybersecurity, and privacy laws can change in any part of the world at any moment, Walcott finds the company can ride the sweet spot of being both reactive and proactive.

“We have the benefit of interacting with a lot of regulators around the world to share insights on the mobile payments industry,” she says. “The other side of it is keeping abreast of evolving regulations that impact the business and complying with them. You get to the point where you develop strong, ongoing relationships with regulators and have an opportunity to inform evolution in the industry.”

That influence extends beyond dollars, cents, and bytes of information. In addition to her role as general counsel, Walcott has also been instrumental in helping launch the company’s black employee network to foster and promote a more inclusive workplace that not only promotes cultural awareness and supports recruitment and retention, but also supports further insight and thought leadership. Walcott is also PayPal’s newly appointed sponsor of the company’s women’s employee network and a member of the GC Thought Leaders Experiment, in which general counsel from more than twenty-five major companies measure which law firm practices yield better outcomes and relationships in support of corporate clients.

“As in-house counsel, I feel like we’re positioned to have a positive impact on diversity and inclusion in the legal field,” Walcott says. “Whether it’s more focused

“I want to make PayPal the employer of choice. Not just for my lawyers and the legal team but across the board. I want people to feel included and welcome—that they have a voice and contribute just as much as the employee sitting next to them.”

Wanji Walcott

efforts as we work with outside counsel—I’ve begun to expand beyond the usual suspects and seek minority- and women-owned law firms—or increasing awareness about what we can be doing to have a positive influence on diversity and inclusion, I think we have an opportunity to transform the industry.”

It’s important that the opportunity is taken rather than simply identified, however. In a budget-conscious environment such as the legal department, the goal is always the highest quality service and best possible outcome, at the right cost. Walcott points out that while that should be a driving factor, it can also stifle creativity. Although there’s been some experimentation for more than a decade with flat fees versus fixed fees, Walcott says she hasn’t seen a tremendous amount of innovation. The GC Thought Leaders Experiment could provide the chance to turn current thinking and practices on its head.

“I’d like to see more creativity in billing for services while maintaining quality, pushing firms to facilitate situations where they can get to know us better and optimize how they provide support,” she says. “We can continue to communicate to firms the importance of diversity and inclusion, but I don’t want them to tell me how important it is to them. I want them to show me.”

Talking the talk is one thing, but Walcott understands that walking the walk is another. That’s why, in addition to her own efforts to focus more on minority- and women-owned law firms for outside counsel help, she’s also encouraging her department to not think of themselves simply as the lawyers for PayPal.

“We could just say, ‘These are the new laws; you need to comply with them. Good

LEADERSHIP, AS TOLD TO BY WANJI WALCOTT

“I actually carve out specific time to think about how I’m leading the team, so that I can evolve and optimize how I do it. It’s not just an exercise. I’ve been doing that for many years—from when I led two people to now, where I’m leading an entire legal function. I’d characterize my style as one of a servant leader. I view my role as partnering with and enabling my team to help them in what they need to get done in support of the business. It’s not for me to do it. It’s not for me to second guess them. The three words I’ve been using with my team repeatedly are empowerment, authority, and accountability. I want my team to feel empowered and exercise their judgment in support of the business, and I want them to feel like they have the authority to do that. Everyone’s on a journey but at a different stage. I wouldn’t expect the same from a lawyer with three years of experience that I would from a lawyer with ten years of experience, but within certain bounds, this applies to everyone on the team. Once people are empowered and have authority, they should feel accountable.”

luck; keep me posted,” she says. “Instead, we like to say, ‘These are the new laws and regulations that you need to comply with, and we’ve come up with a few options that we want to run by you.’ These are conversation starters to get you thinking about how to comply. It generates more enthusiasm and sparks their creative juices to come up with other options or augments besides the solutions we’ve suggested.”

In fostering a collaborative environment instead of a referential one, Walcott says she’s pushing three key concepts on her team: empowerment, authority, and

accountability. The goal is not only to build the strongest legal team at PayPal possible, but also to spark a ripple effect that can permeate beyond one department. Given her work trying to change the industry in terms of in-house counsel working with outside firms, that’s hardly surprising.

“I want to make PayPal the employer of choice,” Walcott says. “Not just for my lawyers and the legal team but across the board. I want people to feel included and welcome—that they have a voice and contribute just as much as the employee sitting next to them.”

Debevoise is pleased to honor Wanji Walcott and celebrate her strategic leadership of the legal team at PayPal, as well as her commitment to ensuring a diverse and talented team.

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Building a Better Future

How Wesley Dupont positioned his legal team to see Allied World Assurance Company through three major transitions

By GALEN BEEBE

Photos by SHEILA BARABAD

WWesley Dupont prides himself on building strong relationships. When he was hired in 2003 to help take Allied World Assurance Company—a global provider of innovated property, casualty, and specialty insurance and reinsurance solutions public—he was an experienced securities and public companies lawyer. But during that time, he had mostly been in private practice and predominantly worked as part of a team. Moving in-house required a new approach: becoming a business partner.

In his law firm days, Dupont primarily worked with a team of lawyers. Now, as executive vice president and general counsel, he works directly with individual business clients who focus more on the big picture rather than on the particularities. “That business client doesn’t care what your indemnification provision says, and they don’t care that a comma isn’t in the right place,” he says. These details are important, but business leaders expect lawyers to have the knowledge to get the details right, Dupont says. “As I quickly learned, speed and solutions are the two things that business people want and need most,” he adds.

This solutions-oriented approach encourages colleagues in other departments to see the legal department as an asset, rather than as an obstacle, and to include Dupont’s team in the decision-making processes. “We’re not going to just say, ‘No, you can’t fix it,’ or ‘there is no solution,’” Dupont says. “We’re going to put some options for consideration on the table.”

Dupont staffs his department with this partnership in mind. When he joined the company in 2003, he was one of four employees in the legal department and one of two lawyers. Now, there are forty-eight people in the legal and compliance department globally. “I’ve always found that we’re able to find smart and talented people,” Dupont says. “What I’ve focused on from day one was trying to find people who were collegial and team-oriented.”

Wesley Dupont EVP, General Counsel

Allied World Assurance Company

The New Lawyer for the New World

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“What I’ve focused on from day one was trying to find people who were collegial and team oriented.”

WESLEY DUPONT

Allied World was founded in 2001 as a joint venture of AIG, Goldman Sachs, Chubb, and Swiss Re. These four shareholders owned the company until 2006, when it had its initial public offering. “From a company perspective, it meant the beginning of independence from its founders,” Dupont explains. “From a legal and compliance standpoint, it meant a completely different way of operating the business.”

The company had been preparing to go public from its inception, but making the shift required significant changes. Dupont worked with CEO Scott Carmilani to find independent board members and to create oversight committees within the board. He also led the team in implementing the policies and codes that the New York Stock Exchange and SEC required, such as codes of ethics and whistle-blower policies. “There was a tremendous

amount of documentation that had to be created and then rolled out, implemented, and made part of Allied World,” Dupont says.

By the time Allied World went public, the company had launched platforms in the United States and Europe. At the time, the company was headquartered in Bermuda, and although there were many advantages to staying, there were greater advantages to moving. Dupont led the process, meeting with business and economic development people in jurisdictions around the world. In addition to the business and financial implications of the move, he considered social concerns. “What was the schooling like?” he asked. “Could employees buy a home?” Dupont and fellow Allied World leaders considered more than twenty jurisdictions before deciding to redomesticate to Zug, Switzerland, in December 2010.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF ALLIED WORLD ASSURANCE COMPANY

November 2001

Formation of Allied World, which is valued at about $1.5 billion

June 2006

Initial public offering

October 2008

Purchased Darwin Professional Underwriters in the United States

December 2010

Redomesticated to Switzerland

April 2014

Allied World establishes Lloyd’s Syndicate 2232

May 2014

Allied World establishes operations in Australia

April 2015

Purchased RSA Insurance Group assets in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia

July 2017

Allied World sale to Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited

Although Dupont had previously worked for two international law firms, he was not an international lawyer. “If you talk to a New York lawyer who works for a law firm and has international clients, then they’ll say they’re an international lawyer,” he says. “But they’re really advising an international company on US law.” Allied World operates and has offices in ten countries, and Dupont has become well-versed in the laws and regulations of each one. “You begin to learn the actual differences between one country and another—both from a legal perspective and regulatory perspective,” he adds.

In addition to the legal and regulatory differences between countries, there are cultural differences, which manifest themselves in the company’s office cultures. There are differences even among offices in the United States. In 2008, Allied World

acquired Darwin Insurance, which was headquartered in Farmington, Connecticut.

“In the summers, they had a thing called flip-flop Fridays, when staff could dress down and wear flip-flops to work,” Dupont says. “To this day, we still have flip-flop Fridays in that office.”

In 2009, Dupont took over global claims and human resources. His responsibilities are wide-ranging, but they all have ties with his work as general counsel. He has collaborated closely with human resources managers to design employee compensation plans and related public disclosures for the company since it went public. The legal and compliance department drafts the insurance policy forms, so they have a sense of what should be covered when a claim is filed. For those portions of human resources and claims that Dupont isn’t familiar with, he

We congratulate Wesley Dupont EVP & General Counsel Allied World Assurance Company for his leadership, professionalism, and distinguished accomplishments. Carlton Fields has more than 300 attorneys and government and financial services consultants serving clients from 10 offices throughout the United States. The firm is known for its national litigation practice, including class action defense, trial practice, white-collar representation, and high-stakes appeals; its insurance practice, including life and financial lines, property and casualty, reinsurance, and title insurance; its regulatory practice; and its handling of sophisticated business transactions and corporate counseling for domestic and international clients. www.carltonfields.com

Dupont

Allied World Insurance Company

collaborates with leaders within each division. All of these changes have shaped Allied World into what it is today, just as they’ve helped shape Dupont’s continually evolving role at the company. And despite all of the changes Dupont has already seen at the company, there are more on the way.

In July 2017, Allied World was acquired by Fairfax, a Canadian holding company, for roughly $4.9 billion. “It’s certainly rewarding to have gone from the first day of seeing Allied World as a publicly traded company to Allied World being a part of a much larger public company,” Dupont says.

Allied World will still operate independently and under the same name and leadership within Fairfax, but the company will gain additional expertise from Fairfax’s other subsidiaries. Fairfax owns more than twenty insurance and reinsurance companies around the world. “Their corporate philosophy is to let those companies run independently, not to integrate them,” Dupont explains. “They view the integration process as destroying some value and culture.”

The acquisition introduces new opportunities for partnership—this time with Fairfax’s other subsidiary companies. “I think we’re going to be able to partner on projects where both companies can achieve something more than they could have on their own,” Dupont says.

Baker McKenzie Zurich would like to congratulate Wesley Dupont and his entire team for their achievements. We had the privilege to be Allied’s Swiss counsel for many years and would like to thank Wesley for the confidence he has shown in us during that time.

Carlton Fields congratulates Wesley DuPont on this well-deserved honor and for his steadfast leadership. We are tremendously grateful for our longtime relationship with Allied World Assurance Company. It is our mission to help our insurance clients throughout the nation meet their goals, challenges, and aspirations. To learn more about our firm, please visit carltonfields.com.

Built on the complementary strengths of two leading law firms, Kennedys CMK now offers its clients the expansive reach and deep local knowledge of a growing global firm. While exceptional service remains a constant, our clients, including those in the insurance sector, now access greater influence and possibilities throughout Kennedys’ offices in EMEA and Asia Pacific as well as North and South America. Two perspectives, one great story Want

Embrace the Change

Craig Levine helps WASH expand its footprint in the United States and Canada

By DAVID BAEZ

In 2013, WASH Multifamily Laundry Systems—North America’s leading laundry facilities management service company— was on the cusp of a major expansion. As a result, the company brought in Craig Levine as its first international general counsel to manage its many mergers and acquisitions and guide the company through its next phase of evolution. Inspired by the success of well-structured transactions that benefit both parties, Levine had always viewed M&A as the most rewarding role for a lawyer, and he warmed to his new in-house role rather quickly.

In quick succession, dozens of those transactions soon followed, including a recapitalization in 2015. Fast and furious activity such as that might have been overwhelming for many lawyers, but Levine says the eye of the storm was right where he wanted to be.

“I look at myself as a can-do lawyer,” says Levine, now executive vice president, general counsel, and secretary of WASH. “In M&A, you have to weigh the risks against the benefits. There is always some risk in every transaction, and my job is to mitigate that. We’ve been successful in all of the deals we’ve closed and avoided significant post-closing liabilities. By leveraging my experience in transactions, the board and the rest of the management team can focus on execution and realizing opportunities rather than spending time on things that are primarily legal in nature.”

Craig Levine EVP, General Counsel, Secretary WASH Multifamily Laundry Systems

As acquisitions across the United States and in Canada have accumulated, Levine has also assumed responsibility for corporate compliance and enforcing the company’s commitment to business ethics. As the myriad compliance regulations that arrive on Levine’s desk demonstrate, it’s evident that a blanket approach to compliance is inadequate because every jurisdiction WASH enters has different requirements.

“Canada itself is a different regulatory environment, and every province there has different rules,” he explains. “Because our majority investor is a large European private equity sponsor, we have taken steps to ensure WASH is committed to furthering their goals and commitment to responsible investing principles as well. We have to keep up to speed on changes in the law as they impact our customers and employees. Our strategy is to be one step ahead and make sure we implement best practices.”

To accomplish this, Levine and WASH have been depending heavily on the latest technologies. “We’re leveraging tech solutions across the portfolio,” Levine says. “We are moving over to mobile payments because they are easier for end users. Over the past

Cathy Jackson, German Martinez

“We are looking at the future of laundry and multifamily laundry room management, and it’s exciting to be a part of that.”

CRAIG LEVINE

couple of years, we’ve been integrating tech solutions into contracts, vendor agreements, and internal policies, and we have adopted a culture based on embracing change rather than fighting it. My team is determined to protect the organization and connect data, and tech helps us do that.”

When Levine arrived at WASH, the company’s former general counsel was in the process of retiring, and it was Levine’s duty to grow the business and take advantage of the clean slate presented to him. Levine says that this challenge was particularly exciting for him because of the scale of the enterprise. “I had seen firsthand where gaps in compliance caused issues for clients during my private practice, and I immediately set about turning over rocks to do a more comprehensive assessment of where WASH was and where it needed to be,” he says.

As a result, Levine looked for talent with the specific management skills needed to support the company’s growth plans. Whereas the prior general counsel had focused mostly on real estate, Levine began to fill the department with people who had backgrounds in not only real estate, but also in various new areas: commercial transactions, credit card processing, technology, and intellectual property. He also sought to reduce the company’s reliance on outside lawyers and bring more of that work in-house.

“The first thing I did was look at all the law firms we were using and ask, ‘Are we getting the best value possible?’ Now, all the outside firms we work with conform to our billing guidelines and submit invoices

electronically for review,” Levine says. “We make a point of meeting with them in person and always holding them accountable.”

As of press time, there were four lawyers in Levine’s department. One is in Canada who reports to Levine and handles various legal aspects of the Canadian enterprise with a specific focus on contract review, risk mitigation, and corporate governance. One attorney in the United States handles dayto-day matters with a specific emphasis on insurance compliance and contract review. And a junior attorney works with Levine on various subjects such as acquisitions, tech initiatives, vendor contracts, and compliance. Additionally, there are five paralegals who make the team more robust and support the legal team and overall business.

As Levine continues to transform the legal department, he does so with a clear vision in mind, keeping an eye on the overall purpose of the legal team and the other on the rapidly emerging technology that can help them. He says that embracing change is a cornerstone of his approach and something he is constantly communicating to his team.

“The company has been around since 1947, and there is a lot of history that we’re rightly proud of,” he says. “We want to keep that in place but also be able to change with the future and make sure that we are relevant ten, twenty, and even fifty years from now. Nobody would have envisioned Uber or Airbnb ten years ago, but now that’s the norm. We are looking at the future of laundry and multifamily laundry room management, and it’s exciting to be a part of that.”

When Everyone’s Invested

Matthew Geekie shares how the unique company culture at employeeowned Graybar makes it easy for him to instill an ethical tone and attract top legal talent

By JONAS WEIR

Illustrations:

Jany Zhang

After nine years with St. Louisbased wholesale electrical component distributor Graybar, Matthew Geekie just celebrated a tremendous milestone and, perhaps, his proudest moment as senior vice president, secretary, and general counsel. In March 2017, Geekie and the legal department successfully held a vote to continue the company’s voting trust. It’s a complicated process that dates back to the company’s roots.

In 1929, Graybar became the largest employee-owned company in the nation when employees bought the company from its parent company, Western Electric. At the same time, a voting trust for the company’s shares was established to provide the company with long-term stability.

The trust is composed of five trustees who vote to establish the number of directors on the board and to elect directors for the coming year. They may also vote on other major issues that affect the company and require shareholder approval. However, they do not have the ability to sell or transfer any of the stock that has been entrusted to them. “As a creature of New York Law, all of our 8,400 or so shareholders get the opportunity to say whether they want to participate in the voting trust,” Geekie says. “By law, we have to put it up for a vote every ten years.”

As the general counsel, Geekie led a campaign to educate employees on the process and ramp up excitement for the vote. It was a yearlong process that ended in March 2017 with 81 percent of shareholders voting yes, which Geekie says is a significantly high number. In fact, he says, less than about 1 percent voted no on the measure. For Geekie and the leadership team, it’s an affirmation that Graybar employees and retired shareholders endorse the company’s corporate strategy, and it highlights the unique culture at the company.

Graybar’s employee-ownership structure and one of a kind culture are essential

Matthew Geekie SVP, Secretary, General Counsel Graybar

to Geekie’s role as general counsel because it helps cultivate a shared sense of camaraderie among employees, which helps Geekie establish an ethical tone throughout the company.

“Whether it’s someone in the warehouse driving a forklift, or our CEO who started with the company at age nineteen, we all are invested,” Geekie says. “It’s a simple word to use, but this is our company. We’re all pulling together all the time. When any one of us, I think, wakes up and looks in the mirror, we know and believe that the work we do is going to impact others.”

“Because of our ownership structure, we intentionally take a long-term view of how we behave and the decisions that we make, and that’s reflected in how we treat employees, including the people in the legal department.”

MATTHEW GEEKIE

Although Geekie now says the company culture is one the most rewarding aspects of his job, it was initially something he was apprehensive about. A lifelong St. Louisan, Geekie earned his bachelor’s in history and JD from Saint Louis University before he began to practice law. When Graybar moved its headquarters to the Gateway City in 1982 it was big news, so Geekie was well aware of the company’s reputation. When the previous general counsel, Tom Dowd, reached out to Geekie to see if he’d like to be considered for the position, he was excited, yet cautious.

“I was well aware through my research of the tenure of employees and how strong the culture is,” Geekie says. “I was concerned whether they would be accepting of an outsider, but the folks top to bottom all over at Graybar were more than welcoming. Actually, the people there couldn’t be any more open and receptive to an outsider. And I like to say after you spend a little bit of time drinking the Kool-Aid, you’re very happy that you’re here.”

Now, Geekie is approaching his tenth year with the company. And just as Graybar

has adapted to the ever-changing field of electronics since it was founded in 1869, Geekie has seen major changes and is helping guide the company into the future.

“One of our founders was involved with Thomas Edison in helping create the first light bulb,” he says. “So we have a long history of changing and changing with technology.”

One market Graybar is expanding into that excites Geekie the most is Internet of Things (IoT) products: intelligent electronic components that can communicate with software and help Graybar’s customers monitor their energy consumption. But that’s not where Graybar’s twenty-first century evolution ends. Geekie says the company is actually innovating the way it approaches its service. Instead of just providing its customers with electrical components, Graybar is helping its customers look at the entire life cycle of a building, providing the right products for the holistic health of a building.

“We’re doing this in a way that’s sustainable and energy efficient, helping our customers’ end users manage the life of the building,” he says. “We’re helping them predict when things might need repair or

maintenance in a proactive way. We’re helping them make the right choices for the building that they’re creating or rehabbing or refurbishing. It’s almost more of a holistic approach now as opposed to just selling discrete products.”

Similar to the company’s overall innovation, Geekie is helping the company adapt from his seat by adjusting its risk profile. Because Geekie sits on the board of directors and holds the general counsel position, he has been able to contribute to the company’s overall strategy and helped the board see that the company’s risk profile was too restrictive. Now, Graybar is able to expand with new products that the company had previously thought to be too risky. But that doesn’t mean the company has done this in a cavalier way.

“We were very adamant about what kind of risk we were willing to take, whether we are discussing consequential damages, who we would indemnify, or how we would demand indemnification,” Geekie says. “All the products aren’t the same. So we’ve taken a little bit more of a nuanced approach towards products, understanding that some entail more risk than others. And depending upon the nature of the products or the product mix, we’ll adapt what we expect or demand from our suppliers or our customers in helping protect Graybar from risk and, frankly, trying to fairly share risk.”

As Graybar continues to grow and innovate for the future, Geekie knows the company will need a strong legal base. Currently, he oversees a legal team of fifteen, and he says he trusts in and challenges everyone on his team. It’s a diverse group that Geekie enjoys mentoring and helping grow. And when the time comes to add to the legal roster, Geekie has the benefit of Graybar’s strong culture.“It’s easy to attract talent,” he says. “I think Graybar enjoys a great reputation so that’s very helpful. The legal department is highly regarded as a partner in the corporation. Because of our ownership structure, we intentionally take a long-term view of how we behave and the decisions that we make, and that’s reflected in how we treat employees, including the people in the legal department. We want them to be successful and do whatever we can to make them successful.”

M ATTHEW G EEKIE

Lockton is a global professional services firm with 6,500 Associates who advise clients on protecting their people, property, and reputations. Lockton has grown to become the world’s largest privately held, independent insurance broker by helping clients achieve their business objectives.

Congratulations!

Lockton appreciates the opportunity to serve as Risk Management partners to Matt Geekie and the entire Graybar team.

Counsel for Compassion

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital provides treatment for life-threatening diseases at no cost to families. Robyn Diaz is on a mission to manage the risk of that caring endeavor.

By PORCSHE N. MORAN

Seth Dixon/St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

Robyn Diaz SVP, Chief Legal Officer

The high cost of medical care is an ongoing topic of discussion in the United States.

But at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, families never receive a bill for treatment, travel, housing, or food. The nonprofit hospital has a mission to understand, treat, and defeat childhood cancer and other life-threatening diseases. US News & World Report ranks St. Jude number one among the nation’s pediatric cancer hospitals. Fortune magazine has put St. Jude on its list of “100 Best Companies to Work For” every year since 2010. And Robyn Diaz, senior vice president and chief legal officer, says all of these factors contributed to her joining the Memphis-based organization in 2010.

“It can be difficult to find mission-driven work as an attorney, so I was excited for this opportunity with St. Jude,” Diaz says. “Discovery, innovation, and compassion are key components of the culture here. My main goal as chief legal officer is to minimize risk to the institution. But ultimately, the work my team is doing is part of improving the patient experience.”

Diaz oversees the offices and corresponding budgets of legal services, government affairs, and technology licensing at St. Jude. She is also the direct supervisor of six attorneys and five legal and government affairs professionals. Diaz handles significant agreements and transactions, litigation for dispute management, and governance issues related to the St. Jude Board of Governors. Diaz and her staff deal with a complex regulatory environment, which includes legal matters in health, life sciences, information technology, and education. When needed, she brings in outside counsel to provide help with major transactions, litigation, and regulatory advice in discrete areas. She also chooses outside counsel based on fees, expertise, and staffing models.

“Working in partnership with trusted outside lawyers makes our internal team better at our jobs,” Diaz says. “They fill in the gaps in our knowledge, and they allow us to best use our time on our areas of strength. The outside counsel who we trust the most already know our institution well, so they have a head start on the issues that we engage them on.”

Outside counsel was invaluable to Diaz and her team during the establishment of the St. Jude Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, which welcomed its first class in August 2017. The legal department set up the school as a nonprofit limited liability

“It can be difficult to find mission-driven work as an attorney, so I was excited for this opportunity with St. Jude. Discovery, innovation, and compassion are key components of the culture here.”

ROBYN DIAZ

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

ROBYN DIAZ AND THE LEADERSHIP TEAM AT

company and worked on an extensive application to the Tennessee Higher Education Commission to help form the degree-granting institution. They also drafted bylaws and other governance documents.

“We brought in outside counsel for training,” Diaz says. “We had to educate ourselves and the graduate school leadership on hot topics in higher education law, such as Title IX. It was a great growth process. For most of my team, it was their first exposure to this area of the law.”

As a leader, Diaz prioritizes flexibility and communication and avoids micromanagement. She schedules formal, biweekly meetings with her team and tries to make informal contact with each individual a couple of times a week to start conversations and address concerns.

“I treat my attorneys like the licensed, competent professionals that they are,” Diaz says. “I aim to effectively communicate the challenges and motivate my team to meet expectations. I try to be open and flexible to different ideas.”

To that end, Diaz invests in her team members by providing them with opportunities for continuing education. She says it is essential that her team members keep up with the rapid changes in healthcare laws, which also positions St. Jude as a more competitive employer.

“St. Jude is a nonprofit,” Diaz says. “The legal staff here is not compensated at the same level that they would be at a large law firm or a for-profit entity. Sending my team to a several daylong boot camp or an in-depth continuing legal education program is part of how I show them that I support their development.”

In the unique environment that is St. Jude, Diaz believes that it is important for in-house counsel to be proactive and involved. In this

vein, her team spearheaded the recognition of Healthcare Risk Management Week at St. Jude. Each June, the department organizes town halls, coffee talks, and other events to discuss clinical, research, and technical risks. Additionally, the legal department participates in fundraising activities for ALSAC, the hospital’s fundraising organization, such as the Run/Walk to End Childhood Cancer and the Duncan-Williams Inc./St. Jude Dragon Boat Races. Several lawyers also volunteer with the St. Jude Women’s Club.

“Attorneys like to work independently, but in the in-house environment, you have to get to know people to gain trust,” Diaz says. “You build strong relationships by collaborating early and often, understanding the culture, and asking for feedback.”

To influence the organization in a positive way, the legal department produces an internal newsletter called Lines from Legal and a biannual enterprise risk management (ERM) bulletin. Both of these publications are designed to keep St. Jude employees updated on what is going on in the legal department and how legal can assist them.

“These efforts take a great deal of time,” Diaz explains. “They would be easy to skip because we have a lot of competing demands for our time. But I think that keeping our clients informed is an important element of client service. We strive to be trusted problem-solvers who are helping the organization meet its objectives. Everything we do is about advancing the mission of St. Jude.”

Make it up as You Go Along

Guidewire Software’s Priscilla Hung on mentorship and the value of the unknown

By WILL GRANT

Priscilla Hung made it to this point in her career by having absolutely no idea what she wanted to do. Although it’s not a blueprint she would advise following, Hung’s diverse and extensive résumé prior to assuming the chief operations officer function at Guidewire Software, which provides software to property and casualty insurers, has provided her with an invaluable skill: the willingness to do whatever it takes to learn something new. Her evolution from a college engineering graduate with no interest in the field to her current role is a playbook in selfreliance, which has, in turn, helped nurture her passion for mentorship.

Hung says there has always been a steep learning curve for almost any job she’s had because, especially early in her career, she was continually seeking out new experiences that she thought might suit her. From channel management to product marketing and from importing extra virgin olive oil from Italy to exporting diesel engine cleansers to China, each new job interview seemed to present the same potential hang up: “You would look at my résumé and say I wasn’t qualified,” Hung says, with a laugh. That admission, though, provided Hung with an incentive to learn and grow with whatever role she took on.

While serving as director of operations at cloud-based network solution provider Ariba, Hung met four of the six future founders of Guidewire: Ken Branson, James Kwak, John Raguin, and Marcus Ryu. Hung says the founders took a chance on her when they hired her in 2005, and that’s never far from her mind when it comes to working with her own team. “Regardless of how competent or educated I was, if I hadn’t met them, I wouldn’t have been able to go as far as I have today,” she says.

Since joining the company, Hung has held numerous roles: vice president of alliances and corporate development; vice president of operations; senior vice president of operations and corporate development; and chief administrative officer. Now, as chief operations officer, Hung has placed great emphasis on connecting with her team,

COO

Priscilla Hung

Guidewire Software

Jay Kelly Photography

“Just because you haven’t done it before doesn’t mean you can’t do it.”

PRISCILLA HUNG

Union Square Advisors is proud to join in honoring

PRISCILLA HUNG.

and she wants her role to be understood as more than a job dispatcher. She wants to be a mentor. “Nobody guided me or asked me what I wanted to do,” Hung says, recalling her early career. “Had one person sat me down and had that conversation, I probably wouldn’t have hopped around to so many different jobs.” Providing that guidance is now imperative for her as a leader.

That guiding spirit has proven effective when paired with Hung’s willingness to take risks on future leaders. Hung speaks proudly of a vice president she hired recently who, though more inexperienced than some of the other potential hires, seemed to be unafraid to walk in shoes that seemed too big to fill. The transition has been successful, and Hung relishes the chance to embolden her team with a strong candidate, not unlike the opportunity Hung received from the Guidewire founders.

Hung’s team has been focused on growth of a different sort as of late. They’ve worked virtually around the clock to accommodate Guidewire’s acquisition of Cyence, a data science and risk analytics software company purchased for about $275 million. “Every single person on my team is responsible for a little bit of it,” Hung says. “Acquisitions, in general, tend to bring the whole team together.” Hung says that maintaining a light-heartedness when faced with tireless work can be challenging, but it’s what makes her team feel more like a family.

In addition to working to make cohesive acquisitions, Hung is tasked with

creating and maintaining an extensive partner ecosystem. She says the primary goal in developing partnerships should always be to build trust. That means understanding how to build win-win relationships instead of trying to dominate every interaction. Hung highlights the importance of compromise as a key to lasting relationships.

As Guidewire has grown from a start-up to one of Glassdoor’s best places to work, partnerships have remained key, but Hung says the role of those relationships has evolved considerably. Initially, business partners were essential in helping to amplify the message of a relatively small start-up. As the company grew, working to diversify that partner list made it possible for Guidewire to be able to more consistently deliver its message and offer better collaboration for the customers they’re servicing. “It’s extraordinarily important to have a partner ecosystem,” Hung says. “You don’t offer your solution alone as an island. You should always be surrounded with friends in the market to help.”

The evolution of Guidewire’s business partner relationships can easily mirror Hung’s own success at the company. A loose and disparate collection initially working to make its voice heard has given way to a supportive and collaborative network with emphasis on communication and growth. Hung’s team will continue to cultivate new opportunities and new relationships with one of Hung’s favorite axioms in mind: “Just because you haven’t done it before doesn’t mean you can’t do it,” she says.

We congratulate Priscilla on her recognition as an industry leader, and we wish her much continued success at Guidewire.

Union Square Advisors is a leading technology-focused investment bank that works with clients on their most important strategic transactions. The firm advises with leading public and private companies, venture capital and private equity firms across the technology landscape, with a primary focus on Software, Software-Enabled Services, IT Infrastructure and Internet/Digital Media. Since inception, Union Square Advisors has advised on 90+ transactions, with value in excess of $90 billion. We invite you to learn more by visiting:

www.usadvisors.com

Enter the Discomfort Zone

Nicole Daniel was forced out of her comfort zone by a mentor and discovered a new level of confidence that has guided her to success

By RUSS GAGER

In-house attorney Nicole Daniel felt the sweat forming on her brow as Albemarle Corporation CEO Mark Rohr asked her to move from her securities and corporate governance role to investor relations. “I’m thinking, ‘Are you crazy? I don’t have a finance background,’” Daniel recalls. “I’m scared to death. What if I mess up? He said, ‘You’re going to be just fine.’ For the first couple of weeks, when my phone would ring, I was afraid to answer it. What if I said or did something wrong?”

That was the scene in 2004, and Daniel ended up not doing anything wrong. In fact, the change gave her the confidence to take on greater responsibilities in the future. “That was one of the most defining moments in my career,” Daniel says. “I accomplished something bigger than I thought I could, which gave me a higher level of confidence.”

Daniel has since become vice president, general counsel, and corporate secretary of natural soda ash producer Ciner Resources LP in Atlanta, and Rohr is now CEO of Celanese Corporation, where he remains one of her mentors.

Daniel VP, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary Ciner Resources

At Ciner, Daniel partners with president and CEO Kirk Milling and his leadership team as she performs the wide array of tasks her position requires, such as representing a publicly traded company, reviewing agreements and contracts, providing guidance on human resources issues, traveling to Washington, DC, to advance legislation, and leading enterprise risk management.

She attributes the experience of stepping out of her comfort zone to making her realize her potential as a general counsel. “Before that, I had not pictured myself taking on that role within a company,” she says. “I’ll always be grateful to my mentor.”

The confidence she gained from that experience enabled her to excel as she took her first general counsel position at what was then OCI Resources in July 2013. At the time, it was a private South Korean company. She worked on OCI’s IPO, which was offered in September 2013. She also worked with the leadership team and the board to put in place a governance framework for the newly public company.

“Public company requirements and processes are very different, and nobody at the company had that experience,” Daniel says. Two years later, OCI decided to sell the soda ash business, and she assisted them with its sale process. Ultimately, OCI’s soda ash

Michael Feher Photography

Nicole

business was acquired by Turkish natural soda ash producer Ciner and became Ciner Resources in 2015.

Ciner’s purchase of OCI’s business has created synergies and learning opportunities for both companies. It has also necessitated a reorganization and downsizing because OCI was only selling the soda ash portion of its chemical business, and some of the staff at the Atlanta headquarters was working on other products besides soda ash.

The transition to new ownership began the day the intention to sell was announced. “We were a great team, and we loved working together,” Daniel says. “We felt like we were really firing on all cylinders, and then you find out you are being sold. You go through that natural cycle of fear of the unknown and uncertainty about what will happen to your job and all of you.” She believes one of the smartest moves the leadership team did was to go on an office retreat together and openly talk about those fears and how to present the transition to employees.

Members of the leadership team remained united and calm and worked with their respective teams to present the transition in the best light. Because OCI had

OFF THE CLOCK

Just as Nicole Daniel takes the time to hear her employees’ concerns at Ciner Resources, she also believes in the importance of hearing the concerns of others in her community. So, she takes time to participate in her two teenage sons’ activities and is on the board of directors of a group based in Atlanta called Children Helping Children.

Not only does it help children, but it also teaches children the importance of service to the community and sharing their gifts with others. In addition to its board of adult directors, it has a junior board with teens who plan activities to help other children in need. The organization’s signature event each year is a free family fest called Love Fest. “It’s a little different in terms of having kids really be part of a solution and not just benefiting from the organization itself,” Daniel says.

“You can learn a lot from just sitting down and having lunch with somebody.”

NICOLE DANIEL

additional chemical and energy businesses being run out of the Atlanta headquarters that were not part of the sale, many employees, including Daniel, saw their job responsibilities change after the purchase of its natural soda ash business.

Now, Daniel is involved in another new endeavor: keeping the soda ash company growing. Ciner has already worked to fix bottlenecking at its manufacturing facility in order to increase production and help the company grow organically. But Daniel and the leadership team are also evaluating other ways to grow the business, including potential acquisitions of businesses that could be added to Ciner’s master limited partnership. Getting out of her comfort zone has helped Daniel open up in her leadership style. She emphasizes the importance of employees communicating honestly with managers so decision-makers can come to real, effective solutions for the organization.

“Listen to the people in your organization,” she says. “They know so much more than any of the rest of us. You can learn a lot from just sitting down and having lunch with somebody. Ask them what they are hearing and what people are concerned about.”

As a part of this effort, Ciner executives get weekly feedback from the leadership team and monthly with other employees in the office. “Having that open culture where people aren’t afraid to speak and share what is on their mind is one of the most important things,” Daniel says. “Communication and integrity—do what’s right and not just easy. You sleep better at night when you know you did the right thing; that’s for sure.”

Growth Through Acquisition

By JONAS WEIR

How Windstream and Kristi Moody have blossomed together

Headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas, Windstream Communications is the fifth largest DSL provider in the United States, offering coverage in all fifty states, including DSL, copper, fixed wireless, fiber, and cable internet access. When the company was formed through the spin-off of Alltel’s landline business and merger with VALOR Communications Group in 2006, however, that wasn’t the case. At the time, it only served sixteen states with roughly 3.4 million access lines. Yet, the fledging telecommunications company held a lot of promise that initial year, which is right when Kristi Moody joined the legal team.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in political science and history from Louisiana Tech University and a JD from the William H. Bowen School of Law at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Moody started practicing law in 1995. She spent nearly eleven years as a partner at Wright, Lindsey & Jennings LLP, where she worked as a civil defense litigator, specializing in personal injury defense, malpractice defense, and nursing home defense before joining Windstream, which is now one of Little Rock’s twenty-five largest employers.

Moody joined the company at an exciting time. Windstream’s common stock began trading on the New York Stock Exchange, and the company was listed on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. And while the company was in its formative stages, Moody quickly became integral to the company’s legal team, assisting in strategic company initiatives, managing dispute resolution, assisting with customer complaint and billing issues, and managing the IP portfolio. Additionally, she worked on advertising review and analysis, managed real estate matters and contractual issues for the internal network planning team, and worked with various groups on drafting and implementing the company’s policies.

In 2007, Windstream made its first major acquisition when it acquired CT Communications, which nearly doubled its presence in North Carolina. Similar strategic decisions followed in 2009 when the company acquired

Lexcom Inc. and D&E Communications. That same year, with the new acquisitions, Windstream celebrated a milestone when it officially crossed the threshold of one million high-speed internet customers.

Throughout the next few years, Windstream experienced a period of unprecedented growth, acquiring KDL, Norlight, Hosted Solutions, Iowa Telecommunication Services Inc., NuVox Inc. in 2010, and PAETEC in 2011. In fact, the company’s expansion period led to Windstream establishing a new parent company, Windstream Holdings Inc., in 2013, which coincided with its debut on the Fortune 500.

As the company grew, so too did Moody’s responsibilities. In fact, she was named vice president of law in 2012 and deputy general counsel in 2013, and she began to contribute to key company functions, such as corporate governance, securities law compliance, investor relations, capital markets, treasury, external communications, and corporate development. Yet, she also retained oversight of dispute resolution and contingencies.

“Kristi has excelled throughout her career at Windstream and consistently provided exceptional judgment and effective counsel,” says John Fletcher, the company’s executive vice president, chief human resources and legal officer, in a news release. “The board and I are pleased to have her in this expanded governance and compliance role.”

The company’s growth—and Moody’s growth within the company—didn’t end there, though.

In 2016, the company expanded its metro fiber network in Charlotte, North Carolina; Richmond, Virginia; Nashville, Tennessee; Chicago; and Minneapolis. Additionally, it launched its one-gigabit internet service in four markets, expanded its fixed wireless technology in forty markets, and expanded its fiber transport network throughout the western United States. By the year’s end, the company was poised to make the largest strategic decision in its eleven-year history.

On November 7, 2016, Windstream Holdings Inc. announced that it planned to merge with EarthLink Holding Corp., and the board of directors of each company had approved the agreement. The all-stock transaction was valued at roughly $1.1 billion. After securing approval from the federal government, the companies completed

“Kristi is a strong leader who has done exemplary work throughout her career at Windstream.”

JOHN FLETCHER

Raising the Bar

Right Here in Arkansas

Wright Lindsey Jennings proudly celebrates our former partner Kristi Moody and her continued success as General Counsel of Windstream Holdings Inc.

the merger in February 2017, not before naming a new general counsel, though.

Six days before Windstream announced that the merger was complete, it announced that Moody would be the company’s new general counsel. In the new role, she became responsible for overseeing all of the company’s legal affairs, including strategic initiatives, regulatory and securities law compliance, corporate governance and records, contracts, and state government affairs.

“With more than twenty-two years of experience as a corporate legal adviser, Kristi has the broad range of skills and experience required for the general counsel position,” Fletcher says, in a news release. “Kristi is a strong leader who has done exemplary work throughout her career at Windstream. I look forward to the continuing benefit of her exceptional judgment and effective counsel in her expanded role.”

With Moody at the legal helm, Windstream maintained its name and Arkansas headquarters through the merger with EarthLink. The merger meant that Windstream now has a national footprint made of more than 145,000 fiber route miles. It also opened the company to strategic markets in the Southeast and Northeast.

Today, the company is larger than ever. In fact, just months after the EarthLink merger,

the company acquired Broadview Network Holdings in a $227.5 million all-cash transaction, which expanded its SD-WAN offerings. Now, if the company continues to grow at the rate it has since Moody joined the company, she will surely have her hands full as a Fortune 500 general counsel.

Norton Rose Fulbright is a global law firm. We provide the world’s preeminent companies with a full business law service. We have more than four thousand lawyers and other legal staff in fifty-eight offices across thirty-two countries in the United States, Europe, Canada, Latin America, Asia, Australia, Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia.

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Charming the Customer

How PANDORA Americas’ chief marketing officer, Charisse Ford, is connecting with the next generation of consumers

By GALEN BEEBE

PPeople are storytellers by nature. From childhood fables to Snapchat stories, narratives are a main way that people connect with their communities. “Today’s consumers connect around stories,” says Charisse Ford, chief marketing officer of PANDORA Americas, an affordable luxury jewelry company. “That’s how all of social media has been built, and we have one of the most unique opportunities and brands in that space.”

PANDORA’S brand is built on its charm and bracelet lines, which memorialize key moments in the wearer’s life. “Our business started with the bracelet, and the bracelet and charms lend themselves to storytelling around your life and your successes and triumphs,” Ford says. “That builds a community around you, the individual.”

This personal storytelling is key to the #DOPANDORA campaign, which the company launched alongside the 2017 spring collection. For some consumers, selfexpression hinges on conveying their personal style, but for others, it is about expressing their identity—as a mother, a career woman, or a wife—and commemorating the births, promotions, and weddings they have enjoyed along the way.

“The whole idea of #DOPANDORA is really about expressing yourself in the way that you, based on how you feel, want to,” Ford says. “We’re touching you in all of the moments that are relevant and meaningful to you so that you can use the jewelry to reflect who you are.”

Ford’s US team has built a wider community of PANDORA wearers as well, encouraging customers to tell their own stories through social media. In 2017, PANDORA hosted a Facebook Live event called Girls Night Out, which streamed from its flagship store in New York City. One of PANDORA’s key influencers curated products in-store, and more than fifty-eight

Charisse Ford Chief Marketing Officer PANDORA Americas

“One of the things we know is that this generation of women, especially millennials, is incredibly active and progressive in terms of what they believe in—their community, their value set, and what they expect from brands.”

CHARISSE FORD

thousand people viewed the video online. “That was a major microinfluencer moment for us,” Ford says.

PANDORA engages with its customers in person as well as online. PANDORA was the exclusive jewelry sponsor of the 2016 Coachella music festival, where the company partnered with public relations firm Cohn & Wolfe to create a destination with a leather bracelet bar and invited key influencers to style the jewelry.

Coachella’s global following—nearly one hundred thousand visitors attended both weekends of the six-day festival in 2016— presented PANDORA with an opportunity to expand its image beyond its original charm and bracelet brand and to reach a younger consumer audience. The company won a 2017 PRNews Agency Elite Award in consumer marketing for the campaign, which increased consumer awareness of noncharms jewelry and increased the share of social and voice engagement with more than seventy-three million organic social media impressions and more than five hundred thousand social engagements. “Coachella was a big moment for us,” Ford says. “We certainly recruited that younger consumer.”

Soon after joining PANDORA in January 2015, Ford began searching for a nonprofit organization to partner with as both a way to share PANDORA’s mission and to engage younger consumers. “One of the things we know is that this generation of women, especially millennials, is incredibly active and progressive in terms of what they believe in—their community, their value set, and also what they expect from brands,” Ford says.

After completing a comprehensive study of more than a dozen potential partner organizations, Ford forged a partnership with Dress for Success, a nonprofit organization that provides women with professional

How will your brand ring in the New Year?

“Once your significant other has a PANDORA bracelet or a necklace, you know that you can go out and buy and layer incremental charms.” CHARISSE FORD

attire and a network of support to advance both in and outside of the workplace. “We wanted an organization that had a fit with our core consumer and with our mission of empowering women,” she says. “Dress for Success is all about building confidence and really empowering women to go out and take their life back and to be the arbiters of their own future success.” PANDORA has donated jewelry to twenty-five Dress for Success boutiques in the United States, as well as markets in Canada and Mexico, and has sponsored various Dress for Success events for the past two years.

In addition to ongoing partnerships, PANDORA has most recently supported response efforts, such as relief for areas affected by hurricanes Harvey and Irma. On September 1, 2017, the company donated 50 percent of all online sales to the American Red Cross to support affected areas.

Ford’s thoughtful and communityoriented approach to marketing, as well as her emphasis on forging strategic

John Sciulli/Getty Images

PANDORA Americas carries a variety of elegant bracelets, from its Iconic Silver Charm Bracelet to its Fabric Cord Bracelet to its Black Braided Double-Leather Charm Bracelet.

Congratulations C HARI SSE FOR D

WITH YOUR LEADERSHIP PANDORA® JEWELRY CELEBRATES WOMEN IN A POWERFUL WAY. SO TODAY WE CELEBRATE YOU FOR BEING A TRUE ROLE MODEL, A VALUED PARTNER AND OUR FRIEND.

For more than 70 years, H.O. Zimman, Inc. has produced the highest museum-quality publications for the most iconic brands, including the Super Bowl, US Open and Masters

We congratulate Charisse Ford on her well deserved recognition as an innovative leader and recognize PANDORA for its commitment to empowering women through its partnership with Dress for Success Thank you

partnerships, has earned her admiration from many of her peers.

“Charisse stands out in this industry, not only for her exceptional vision and leadership, but also because of her kindness and generous spirit,” says Suzanne Ayello, executive vice president and global account director at Grey Group New York. “She is more than just a client; she is a friend and partner in the truest sense.”

Along with targeting younger audiences, Ford is recognizing a shift in consumer tendencies. Although PANDORA’s end users are women, when Ford joined the company, nearly 75 percent of the marketing budget went toward targeting men. “We have always appealed to men because we are one of the safest and simply stylish gifts,” Ford says. “Once your significant other has a PANDORA bracelet or a necklace, you know that you can go out and buy and layer incremental charms, bracelets, and earrings, and that they will always be loved.”

create video advertisements around key gifting holidays that use humor and sports imagery to engage male consumers.

For Valentine’s Day, PANDORA partnered with two celebrity couples—country music singer Jessie James Decker and her husband, NFL football player Eric Decker, and Canadian hockey player Brandon Prust and his wife, TV host Maripier Morin—for a campaign that targeted married couples. “That was one of our most successful in terms of engagement, in terms of response from men,” Ford says.

One of Ford’s favorite PANDORA stories is of a teacher who wore a pair of earrings from its Majestic Feathers collection. “The earrings were a gift from her boyfriend given to her to symbolize and remind her of the wings she gives her students every day,” Ford says. “That story was so resonant with me because my mother was a teacher, and I know the impact that teachers make. It also touched me because there are millions of women with their unique story or personal expression that they are able to convey through our jewelry. This community and connection is the essence of what we stand for.”

Jewelry marketing has traditionally focused on jewelry as a means of building and sustaining relationships as opposed to as a means of self-expressions. To give women more of a hand in the purchasing process, and to foreground their tastes, PANDORA developed a Wish List function on its website.

“It’s really about what she wants and then you as the man really helping to make her dreams or wishes come true,” Ford says. Although the percent of marketing dollars spent on targeting women has risen, Ford still builds campaigns aimed at men. PANDORA partnered with NBC Sports to

“Celebrating Women. Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow. Facebook and PANDORA believe every woman has a story—a personal collection which defines who they are. We honor them through world-class marketing of finished, modern, and genuine jewelry.

Together with CMO Charisse Ford and her team, PANDORA has mobilized data to drive in-store sales and influence online marketing.

CULTURE

David Jones CHRO Stanford Health Care

Agent of Change

David Jones was recently selected as Stanford Health Care’s new chief human resources officer. He now looks to bring in new leadership and develop a strong culture—something he gained a reputation for in his midtwenties.

Words by LEO HERRERA Photos by GILLIAN FRY

IIf there’s anything David Jones has carried with him throughout his various career assignments, it’s two important principles. The first is collaboration. “It has to be work being done with people, not to people,” says the chief human resources officer of Stanford Health Care. “I bring teams together and help them envision the future they want, with the structures and processes to help them get there—involving and engaging people—and giving them a stake in the future is very important.”

The second is courage. “I’m willing to push against the status quo, to raise expectations, and to set demands on both myself as well as on others,” Jones says. “That really stretches people beyond even what they might think is possible in order for them to achieve outcomes and results that were previously unattainable.”

It’s these two principles that helped Jones earn the reputation of being an agent of change—an identity and skill set he brought to Stanford Health Care in 2017. The academic health system has achieved worldwide recognition for its medical breakthroughs in precision health. Its research is intensive, involving custom-tailored treatment solutions based on an individual’s health history and even their DNA profile.

Every organization that Jones has worked for during his career was looking for an HR executive with experience in driving culture change in an industry under massive dislocation and transformation. Fortunately, Jones has been honing his reputation as a change agent since the beginning of his career. He credits that trajectory to his first opportunity when he brought his unique perspective to United Hospital, which was his first CHRO role at the age of twenty-six. And, with the help of a new CEO, Jones helped lead an organization-wide culture change in one of the first hospitals to incorporate Total Quality Management principles.

“The main thing I learned there was the power of employee involvement,” Jones recalls. “We did a lot to create mechanisms to listen to and engage our employees. We documented significant process improvement, customer satisfaction, and employee productivity gains. We also did a lot to change the leadership, from a commandand-control style to one that was more empowering of employees.”

Last year, Jones undertook another major change when he joined Stanford Health

“I’m willing to push against the status quo, to raise expectations, and to set demands on both myself as well as on others.”

DAVID JONES

Care. At the time, the organization had a new CEO, and virtually all of the senior executive roles were new hires or vacant.

“It’s really an opportunity to come in and help elevate the human resources function to a level of preeminence that Stanford is known for,” he says.

But the first order of business was to get a sense of Stanford as an organization, its driving forces for success, and its restraining forces impacting accomplishments. “When you come on board, learn about the strengths, and identify those potential weaknesses, then that’s where you see an opportunity for us to help forge change,” Jones says. “We know that in the healthcare industry there’s going to be more and more competition based on clinical quality, service, and value—and we maybe took our leading position for granted—but those industry forces are starting to impact Stanford Health Care.”

Jones has his work cut out for him. The industry is undergoing some major changes, from regulation to visibility of quality outcomes, and Stanford needs Jones’s changeagent expertise to help move forward. “One of the biggest areas of change is the whole notion of price sensitivity,” he explains. “Many healthcare organizations are finding ways to drive cost down through efficiency, technology, and physician engagement. As a lower cost provider, you’re able to grow your business by being attractive to multiple customer segments. Stanford has never been known for low cost. We cater to high-acuity patients, the sickest patients, the most complex disease entities.” Finding ways to reduce expenses while also maintaining Stanford’s cutting edge reputation will be quite the challenge for Jones and the new leadership

team. But it’s also one that he embraces with a receptive mind-set.

Because of this, no two days are alike for Jones. Whatever the variety, though, his main responsibilities remain to create a vision and strategy to help lead people who will create a meaningful impact on the care that Stanford delivers. Jones says this will require training and developing people to reach their full potential and then having leadership provide direction and accountability.

“One of my biggest goals is building a strong leadership culture so that our leadership team is able to chart a course and set a vision that can help take Stanford into the future for the next ten years and beyond,” Jones says. “It’s really making sure that everything we do in support of our workforce helps us deliver a preeminent employee experience so that our employees can deliver a preeminent patient experience.”

Jones says one way that is achieved is by focusing on how employees experience Stanford Health Care through moments that matter, which are often facilitated by the human resources team. “For example, hiring and onboarding is a process where we have the opportunity to deliver a certain level of service and quality, to define our brand as Stanford Health Care, and gain the loyalty and commitment of our staff,” Jones says. “That’s one example, but all the way through the employee life cycle employees encounter the human resources function. They’re looking for responsiveness and empathy.”

Broad-based ownership is a term Jones echoes frequently, as he believes that change is only possible and effective when the whole team understands the force behind it.

“You have to get people excited about change because they understand what it’s about and how they fit in to make something great happen,” he says. “Everyone wants to be part of a cause that’s bigger than themselves. Everybody wants to feel like they’re contributing to something meaningful and something that will make a significant difference for others. When employees feel this way, you will get inspired performance that engages the heart and soul of each person and brings out their best effort.”

Of course, getting everyone on board isn’t always easy. Jones must formulate strategies to attract and retain a workforce in a highly competitive market in one of the highest cost of living marketplaces in the country. Now, Jones and his team are working tirelessly to build out the team and the processes for a revamped human resources division at Stanford Health Care. His team has already identified some quick wins—areas with great pain points that could be fixed through subtle improvement. For example, in their leave management area, they’ve improved customer focus on how employees apply for leave, the care, and support they get. Other changes that Jones’s team implemented included clarifying the human resources function and developing service standards for resolving issues and improving technology to enhance the employee experience.

Throughout it all, though, Jones remains passionate about his work and being able to focus on the employees at Stanford. “I am able to create a climate where people can do their best work every day, reach their full potential, and deliver on our mission to our patients and families,” he says.

Willis Towers Watson is proud to congratulate David D. Jones on his outstanding work to help Stanford Health Care and its employees succeed.

Willis Towers Watson’s unique perspective allows us to see the critical intersections between talent, assets and ideas — the dynamic formula that drives business performance and success in hospitals and health care systems.

The DNA of CA Technologies

Kristen Prohl explains why the software firm’s deep-rooted culture is the nucleus of its success

By PORCSHE N. MORAN

The phrase “it’s in your DNA” is often used to describe the fundamental and distinctive characteristics of someone or something. For CA Technologies, a New York City-based software company, its DNA consists of ten core values that drive the corporate culture. With a mission to help customers remove the barriers between ideas and business outcomes, CA employees strive to be resilient, self-aware, results-oriented, authentic, and customer-centric. Collaboration, creativity, social awareness, agility, and uncompromising integrity also round out the company’s guiding principles.

“What is special about CA’s culture is that our DNA encompasses not only building

blocks, but it’s also aspirational—something that employees are trying to achieve on a daily basis,” says Kristen Prohl, senior vice president of corporate law and assistant corporate secretary. “Most of us have the helicase posted on our walls or on our laptop covers as a constant reminder. It is a strong culture that is truly ingrained.”

The deep roots of CA’s culture are due, in part, to the company’s more than forty years of history. Russ Artzt and Charles B. Wang founded the firm in 1976. Prohl notes that this longevity is one of the defining factors that prompted her to join CA in January 2017.

“CA is an impressive company with endurance, which is very unusual in this sector,” Prohl says. “The software industry is ever-evolving with disrupters and game

Illustrations: Jany Zhang

SVP, Corporate Law, Assistant Corporate Secretary CA Technologies

“We have fantastic policies and benefits, but the culture of the company is more than just its programs. It is about the shared understanding that this is an inclusive environment. We all have a value, and we all play a role. That belief resonates with me, and I try to echo that message within the team.”

KRISTEN PROHL

Kristen Prohl

President

Pillsbury salutes Senior Vice

Kristen Prohl and CA Technologies.

changers at every turn. It says a lot that a company like CA is not only still here, but is also thriving.”

Prohl oversees corporate legal matters at CA. She directly manages five of the seven people on her team. The corporate department handles Securities and Exchange Commission and NASDAQ market listing compliance, mergers and acquisitions, and other strategic transactions. It is also in charge of corporate governance, entity management, and legal support for key functions, such as investor relations, treasury, and tax and accounting. Previously, three separate leaders headed these areas. But, Prohl says it is beneficial now to have them all under one domain.

successful at home and at work,” Prohl says. “I think most people are trying to achieve the same goals. It is important that what I need is what I offer to others. I want everyone to know they belong, their input is valued, and what each of us does matters.”

For decades, CA Technologies has been helping businesses compete and thrive through CA’s leadership and innovation in software technology development.

Pillsbury is grateful for the opportunity to work with such outstanding professionals as Kristen and her colleagues at CA Technologies.

“All the functions have interdependencies, so it made a lot of sense to bring them together,” Prohl says. “There is an inherent challenge when you enter an existing community. Fortunately, I’ve come onto a team that has worked closely for many years. Their wealth of knowledge has made this transition much smoother than it would have been otherwise.”

Communication and collaboration are essential to her team’s advancement. She facilitates biweekly group meetings, where each team member gives updates on their current projects and has the opportunity to provide context and comments on the work stream. Prohl believes that acting as a cohesive unit increases output and decreases the likelihood of neglected tasks or other inefficiencies. “My goal is to make sure the lines of communication are open among the whole team,” Prohl says. “There needs to be constant feedback as work product is developed. You want to make sure that once a project is completed that it had all the input required to be successful.”

As a woman of color and a working mother with a young family, Prohl is a proponent of fostering inclusivity and a strong work/life balance. She is supportive of CA’s policy to allow flexible schedules with manager approval. She also has an open-door policy to encourage more discussion and interaction. When it comes to management style, Prohl says that she sees herself as being at the center of a circle, rather than at the top of a pyramid.

Prohl’s philosophy aligns with CA’s culture. The company provides comprehensive benefits and essential programs to ensure a work/life balance, financial security, and employee well-being. A few of its uncommon offerings include paid time off for pet bonding and bereavement, an on-site Montessori children’s center, and adoption assistance. CA has consistently been ranked by Forbes as one of America’s Best Employers. Working Mother magazine has put CA on its list of Best Companies for Multicultural Women three years in a row. And Ethisphere Institute recently named CA as a World’s Most Ethical Company for the second year in a row.

“We have fantastic policies and benefits, but the culture of the company is more than just its programs,” Prohl explains. “It is about the shared understanding that this is an inclusive environment. We all have a value, and we all play a role. That belief resonates with me, and I try to echo that message within the team.”

The future looks bright for CA. One indicator is its €600 million acquisition of Austria-based business and IT automation software provider Automic, and another is its $614 million acquisition of Veracode, a leader in securing web, mobile, and third-party applications, in early 2017. Yet, Prohl isn’t content to rest on her laurels. She is always looking for ways for her team to improve. She says that working in the fast-paced software industry has renewed her respect for how important it is to be an agile thinker.

“This industry evolves quickly and often,” Prohl says. “It is critical for CA to be proactive and creative to stay ahead of the curve. I am always asking, ‘How can we do things better? How can we do things differently? What are the current best practices, and how do we stack up?’” You might say, it’s in her DNA.

pillsburylaw.com

“My husband is a small business owner, and we are both performing a balancing act every minute of every day to make sure we are

Winston & Strawn congratulates Kristen Prohl on her many outstanding accomplishments and for the welldeserved recognition she is receiving. Winston is proud of its relationship with CA Technologies, and we look forward to continuing to partner with Kristen and the CA Technologies team.

A Blueprint for HR Success

Bridie Fanning has spent thirty years helping businesses make their HR departments a key factor of success

By JOE DYTON

No matter how far up Bridie Fanning climbs the corporate ladder or which companies she works with, her approach to building human resources functions will always remain the same: to ensure that employees have a great place to work to maximize their performance for customers, which in turn generates value for investors.

Today, Fanning serves as a senior advisor with Boston Consulting Group, in the People & Organization Practice, a position she’s held for the past eight years. In this role, Fanning works alongside chief executive officers and chief human resources officers in different businesses and industries globally to assess their company’s overall human resources function, its effectiveness, efficiency, and how it impacts the business.

In assessing the HR function, Fanning reviews how the people practices align with the business strategy and identifies the outcomes the department is experiencing both in terms of the value generated by talent processes and the cost of providing those outcomes.

“I’m looking at the people in HR, processes, practices, policies, and technology—from recruitment to leadership development to performance management—and how these are interacting together and what outcomes result,” Fanning says. “Then, I make recommendations on what can be done differently to achieve greater productivity and better business and culture outcomes.”

Fanning not only takes a holistic and strategic approach to the HR assessment, but she also looks at the nuts and bolts of how the HR operation is running. She takes a personal approach in assessing human resources capabilities by interviewing senior executives both within and outside of HR to understand what they consider is important to them.

Fanning’s experience in both CHRO roles and consulting have proved invaluable to combining the strategic needs at the executive level with the operational demands of an in-house CHRO. That was the case when she established a stand-alone HR function at Vyaire Medical—carved out of its parent company, Becton Dickinson—which enabled the organization to operate independently.

Fanning has had a successful thirty-year career in the human resources arena, much

Bridie Fanning Senior Advisor Boston Consulting Group

of which she attributes to the mentoring she received early in her professional life. In particular, she praises John Lynch, General Electric’s chief human resources officer, who hired Fanning at GE UK in 1995. He continually offered her guidance and support even during stretches when she wasn’t working directly for him.

“I’ve benefited from a handful of individuals throughout my career that have taken an interest in my success, and I’ve been very grateful for that support,” Fanning says. “I would not be who I am today without their coaching, guidance, and care.”

Fanning will never forget how mentorship helped boost her career, and she is always striving to pay it forward. She has coached peers who find themselves in difficult situations because the breadth of her experience in consulting and CHRO roles give her a unique perspective.

For example, Fanning had a CHRO reach out to her with a career dilemma. The CHRO’s company had been acquired, and suddenly this woman was looking for a new job for the first time in a long time. An opportunity arose with a Fortune 100 company, but the culture of the company was so far removed from what the human resources professional had been used to that she was hesitant to take the job.

“I said, ‘If you’re looking for that culture again, you are going to enjoy your retirement,’” Fanning says. “She said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘Well, you’re not going to work again. The culture you experienced in your former company was a one-off, and at the top, you can work to help shape the culture.’ And she ended up taking the job.”

In addition to providing career advice, Fanning’s mentorship includes helping people understand the unwritten and unspoken rules of the game. One of those rules Fanning tells people is as a CHRO they need to focus on building relationships and branding themselves because, at this level, Fanning says that it’s not just about capability and performance.

“People don’t like hearing that,” she says. “But the higher up you go and the larger the company is, the more your performance is dependent on your ability to be seen to be doing the right things, connecting and building trust in the leadership team, and creating the environment for others to thrive.”

Although Fanning believes it is critical for all human resources executives looking to move up to make meaningful connections, it’s even more important for women to do so.

Fanning is an authority on helping women succeed in the HR world because she spent her career trying to figure out her way around a male-dominated corporate environment. As someone who twice became the youngest CHRO at a Fortune 500 company and often the only woman on the executive team, it was sometimes challenging for her to find a way to connect with the men at the top.

“Certain norms about how men work are not understood by women,” Fanning says. “Men have many things in common, whether it is sports, grabbing a beer, golf, or other such factors. It leads to men being more comfortable with other men and less so with women. Women are not as welcome in this domain. It is an unconscious bias. Women are judged differently, and men choose to spend time with those they are more comfortable with— other men. This is especially true at the top.”

The advice she received about how to build these connections and encourage men to truly trust her boiled down to finding common ground socially and spending more time with them to connect on a personal level.

Any challenges Fanning may have encountered along the way of her career journey have been worth it because she’s doing something she loves: helping people. Perhaps what she enjoys most about human resources is it’s a discipline that, as she puts it, accentuates a sense of purpose.

For Fanning, the industry doesn’t matter as much as the environment created for employees. So, whether she’s at a healthcare services company such as Surgical Care Affiliates that is patient focused or at a financial services company that is fiscally driven, Fanning’s goal does not change: to create an environment where people are engaged and motivated to give their best every day for those they serve.

“Work is a big part of people’s lives and the communities and societies in which they live and work,” Fanning says. “If you can give people rewarding, satisfying work lives that are motivating and engaging, then that has a filtering effect into the wider community. My purpose has always been to create an environment for employees to be treated fairly, consistently, and to be excited about the mission of the companies they work for.”

Digging Deeper

Nardello & Co. uncovers big truths by employing the best candidates

By

WILL GRANT Photos by BENNY KROWN

Lucy Fato admits that when conjuring up an image of a women-friendly workplace culture, private investigation may not be the first career that comes to mind.

“When people think of PIs, they don’t think about women. They think of men with funny hats and trench coats,” Fato says with a laugh. It may be even more remarkable then that global investigations firm Nardello & Co. has managed to position itself almost in direct opposition to the Hollywood stereotype of short-talking, short-tempered private investigators. Instead, Nardello & Co. has helped secure a global presence with many more women in positions of leadership than most businesses and far more than most in its field.

Fato, managing director, head of Americas and global general counsel, has spent her first year at Nardello growing the firm’s network and global culture of teamwork that has contributed to the growth of much more than a solitary PI office.

Founded in 2003 by CEO and former federal prosecutor Dan Nardello, the company offers a wide variety of investigative services and support with offices in New York City, London, Atlanta, Miami, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Dubai, Milan, Italy, and Washington, DC. That global expansion has taken place with women in key leadership positions including Fato; Sabina Menschel, chief operating officer and head of the Washington, DC, office; Tara MacMillan, chief professional officer and head of the Atlanta office; Amie Chang, associate managing director and head of the Hong Kong office; Rana Feghali, associate managing director and head of the Dubai office; and Sarah Morgenthau, managing director in Washington, DC.

Fato believes that Nardello’s team reflects their CEO‘s approach to recruiting. “Dan Nardello is a smart businessman, very openminded, and always looking for the best available candidate,” Fato says.

Morgenthau echoes that sentiment when describing the incentive of coming to work at the firm. “I was immediately attracted to the culture at Nardello, its entrepreneurial spirit,

Sabina Menschel President, Chief Operating Officer

Nardello & Co.

Sarah Morgenthau Managing Director Nardello & Co.

and emphasis on collaboration,” Morgenthau says. “Dan is hands-on with every aspect of the business, and while bottom line-driven, he also encourages us to be creative and flexible in our thinking.”

Fato says that the company’s team-based mentality has turned what could have been many potential negatives about running a global business into an asset. “We have people across many different time zones, but we’re a cohesive group,” Fato says. “We’re not siloed at all, and we’re interacting constantly.”

Chang sees that interaction as the lifeblood of the company. “A lot of professional services firms tend to have quite a cutthroat, zero-sum nature, where the mentality is very much ‘eat what you kill,’ or the question driving a person’s worth to the firm is what value do they have to immediately offer once hired,” Chang says. Chang believes that mind-set can be toxic for a business and might result in poor decisions being made in favor of personal interests.

Nardello’s approach is much different. “The driving thesis is that the firm’s success is our individual success,” Chang says. “This motivates everyone to jump in and do whatever it takes to ensure that a client will be a repeat client because they are happy with the quality and timeliness of our work, and they know they can count on anyone and everyone at Nardello to help them wherever and whenever they have a need—irrespective of jurisdiction or time zone.”

Nardello’s global reach means the firm’s interactions often take place during nontraditional business hours. Fato sees the company’s flexibility in navigating those issues as one of its major strengths. “The global nature of it means it doesn’t really matter where and when you’re in the office; you’re not necessarily tied to a desk,” Fato says. “We’re not an Eastern time zone-centric firm.”

Although that could mean she is taking phone calls before most individuals have started their day, Fato says that the culture at Nardello supports the need to occasionally disconnect. Fato believes that flexibility enables the workforce to occasionally take time to decompress, a move supported from top leadership.

Nardello’s global reach also makes it particularly alluring to potential clients. “I can’t think of a place other than North

“We’re not siloed at all, and we’re interacting constantly.”

LUCY FATO

Korea where we wouldn’t be able to operate,” Menschel says, only half-jokingly. “We truly are global.” Menschel says that Nardello is a large enough firm that it can operate anywhere effectively yet small enough to be discerning about the resources it uses around the world.

Many of Nardello’s strengths are rooted in what the company considers its “legal DNA.” Unlike many investigative firms, Nardello’s workforce includes a variety of backgrounds and legal expertise—including former US federal prosecutors, former general counsels of multinational corporations, and former law enforcement personnel, including professionals from the FBI, State Department, and other intelligence operatives. “I’m not sure if enough people know how different and unique we are,” Fato says.

Given the confidential and often highly sensitive nature of the work the company does, it can be difficult for Nardello to market itself by more than word of mouth. “We are a high value-add firm,” Fato says. “Relaying that is a top priority for me.”

Fato sees major potential in growing the firm and working to continue expanding its service reach to raise the firm’s profile of the quality of work they do. That means attracting suitable talent and continuing to expand Nardello’s extensive network.

When considering talent, both those already at Nardello and those looking at a future in investigative services, Fato sees a common thread. “Our colleagues are curious by nature. They’re

Lucy Fato

Managing Director Nardello & Co.

Tara MacMillan Chief Professional Officer Nardello & Co.

diligent by nature. They like to problem-solve and put pieces of a puzzle together to get behind what really might be going on,” she says.

Chang says that Nardello’s approach to hiring is another arm of the culture it has worked so diligently to instill. “Dan and senior management look beyond gender, race, sexual orientation, nationality, and look at candidates holistically,” she says.

Fato also credits the company’s CEO for his ability to cultivate talent from a more diverse pool.

“He’s instinctively known that to do well in this industry and to be a high-end investigative firm, we really need to find the best people,” Fato says. “That’s exactly what he’s done. It just so happens that a lot of those people happen to be women.”

GOODWIN congratulates LUCY FATO, Managing Director, Head of the Americas and General Counsel of Nardello & Co., on this prestigious Profile recognition.

At Goodwin, we use law to enable our clients’ success and to make a powerful, positive and lasting impact.

At the time of publication, Fato was no longer with Nardello & Co. full-time, though she still serves in an advisory capacity.

Banking on People

Safelite’s CFO, Doug Herron, reflects on leading with one core, consistent belief

By ZACH BALIVA

Doug Herron EVP, CFO

Safelite Group Inc.

AAfter twenty-five years with Safelite, the company’s chief financial officer, Doug Herron, can sum up the company’s impressive transformation and subsequent success with one belief: people matter most.

As Herron embarked on his final days with the company at the end of 2017, the gratitude he expressed was as sincere as the humility he displayed throughout his tenure. “I retired proud of our achievements and with heartfelt thanks to our associates for their commitment to our customers, our community, our business, and to one another,” Herron says. But behind that modest sentiment is a gifted trailblazer who helped Safelite’s sales grow from $300 million to $1.6 billion, becoming the preeminent leader in the vehicle glass repair and replacement industry during his career.

But long before his years with Safelite, the importance of people and culture were at the foundation of Herron’s beliefs. Yet, it took years for him to find a company and leadership team whose values aligned with his evolving passion in a way that produced monumental change and extraordinary results. Herron was enjoying his professional life in 1992. As chief financial officer for GE Medical Systems, Herron led a team of 625 people, traveled the world, and managed global revenues that topped $3 billion. The headhunters called each quarter, but he was never tempted.

During his time with GE, Herron had several key conversations and experiences that would shape his entire career. One such conversation occurred when a division vice president asked Herron what drives a business. Herron’s response: “people.” But the vice president disagreed. “He said the answer is net income,” Herron recalls. Soon after, the vice president was fired.

GE’s culture was changing under CEO Jack Welch, who cut through formal structure and bureaucracy to create a culture built on people, performance, and integrity. Herron’s own philosophy started to cement around that time.

Five years inside GE’s financial services business also helped Herron develop his

“I believe employees come first, then customers, then shareholders.”

DOUG HERRON

financial expertise. GE was rapidly growing, and each year brought a new assignment. But after twenty years with the company, Herron knew the way things worked. He aspired to lead an entire enterprise with financial responsibility over a total business entity, and his wife encouraged him to consider life outside of GE. So, the next time a headhunter called, Herron listened.

One call introduced him to a position at Safelite Group Inc., a vehicle glass company based in Columbus, Ohio. At first glance, it seemed as though he would pass on it. Herron’s current division at GE was larger than Safelite’s entire industry in 1992. Plus, at the time, the company was losing $40 million per year. He nearly hung up the phone.

Instead, he was convinced to meet Safelite’s new leadership team, and when he did, he discovered something surprising and intriguing. “They were hemorrhaging money, and yet, the leaders were sitting around a table writing a company mission

statement, value statements, and key strategies,” Herron says. “I knew I was looking at a smart group of people—strong leaders who shared conviction around a compelling vision.” Herron took the job.

His first months as Safelite’s CFO weren’t easy. The company needed to be recapitalized. Safelite’s stores competed with one another for resources and on price, and Herron knew the company would have to reinvent its operating model to gain efficiencies and lay the foundation to become a successful national service brand.

Herron implemented strategies to accomplish that. He and the Safelite leadership team started marketing Safelite’s services directly to insurance companies. They knew that by outsourcing auto glass claims, those insurers could spend their time on other initiatives while relying on Safelite’s expertise. Safelite focused on providing its clients with excellent service and innovative solutions. That strategy paid off as Safelite

cultivated trusting client relationships and won key accounts with national insurance and fleet management companies. In 1992, Safelite had $300 million worth of revenue. By 1996, Safelite’s new operating model had increased revenue to $450 million.

With the business consistently gaining momentum, Herron faced another challenge in 2005. With an IT infrastructure that lacked the ability to extend services beyond vehicle glass, Herron was charged with restructuring the function. “To me, it starts with having great leaders,” Herron says. “Although it involved making some tough decisions, I retained and selected leaders whose philosophies aligned with my vision and had the talent and people skills to lead the IT function into the future.”

Two years later, with an established track record of solid performance, Herron led another major acquisition, this time as the acquired. In 2007, Belron, the world’s largest company dedicated to vehicle glass, purchased Safelite, positioning the company for growth with global best practices and capital investments. With Belron came a core belief that aligned with Herron’s: great companies are built by great people. “I believe employees come first, then customers, then shareholders,” Herron says.

Tom Feeney, Safelite’s CEO and president, also shares that belief. So, in the midst of the financial crisis of 2008, Herron and Safelite’s executive team set out to transform Safelite’s culture to become one that puts people first. “I don’t think any of us really realized the scope of change that would come to how we operated the business,” Herron says. “It meant focusing on people as a key part of our business strategy, thinking differently, leading differently, and prioritizing differently, including our investments. It was a bold step during a tough economic climate, but it just made sense.”

Their shared objective was to drive business performance by having talented and engaged employees who look at the business through the eyes of their customers and deliver extraordinary results. Since that time, Safelite has almost tripled its revenue

NOTES TO MY YOUNGER SELF: DOUG HERRON’S ADVICE FOR TODAY’S EXECUTIVES

• Enjoy what you do, and do it with integrity

• Challenge historical thinking

• Demonstrate how culture trumps strategy

• Recognize that pay is important, but experience matters

• Balance a conservative nature with ambition

• Be appropriately aggressive

• Lead with humility

• Keep searching to understand

• Admit mistakes, especially to yourself

• Ask for help; you’ll need it

Aon Risk Solutions

Thank you, Doug!

On behalf of the 14,000 Safelite® Group associates, thank you.

The impression you’ve left as a teacher and leader who is committed to both people and customers will extend far beyond your years at Safelite.

We believe in the commitments that empower results

Aon applauds Doug Herron for his dedication, leadership and extraordinary contributions to Safelite. Your commitment is an inspiration to us; we are honored to call you a long-time partner and friend.

Visit aon.com to see how Aon is helping organizations committed to excellence address risk and shape their workplace of the future.

“We’ve worked as a team to overcome obstacles, transform our culture, and do great things.”

DOUG HERRON

and has more than doubled their employee population to roughly fourteen thousand across the country. “Our people truly power the performance of our business,” Herron explains. “I’d bank on them any day.”

Today, Safelite is a people-powered, customer-driven business with a greater purpose: to make a difference and bring unexpected happiness to people’s everyday lives. “We’ve worked as a team to overcome obstacles, transform our culture, and do some great things. Customers across the country know they can depend on Safelite because of our people,” he says. “It’s amazing to have been a part of that.”

Doug Herron looks forward to using the life lessons from his career and putting them to good use by filling board seats, consulting, teaching, and sharing his Safelite spirit with others.

Aon plc (NYSE:AON) is a leading global professional services firm providing a broad range of risk, retirement, and health solutions. Our fifty thousand colleagues in 120 countries empower results for clients by using proprietary data and analytics to deliver insights that reduce volatility and improve performance.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch works with companies of all sizes to help them operate more efficiently and seize opportunities. Whether updating technology, acquiring another company or conducting business globally, their banking professionals have the solutions and expertise to assist your business.

EFFECT

Transformation with Global Vision

CIO Stephen Byers helped globalize operations for food ingredient supplier Tate & Lyle. The result is a more efficient company that adjusts quickly to market conditions.

By PETER FABRIS

BBeing in operation for more than 150 years, Tate & Lyle has grown exponentially across the region as it supplies the global food and beverage industry with key ingredients. With this expansion, though, the regional units of the United Kingdom-based company developed and operated separately, as did their support services and IT systems. But in 2009, the company developed a new guiding vision. It would transition to functioning as one integrated global company. The aim was to service customers who increasingly operated as integrated multinational companies themselves. Additionally, there were many opportunities for Tate & Lyle to roll out a best practice developed in one region to the entire company after transitioning to a more unified organizational structure. Creating the organizational framework and systems to realize that global vision required a major, coordinated effort. At its peak, about 250 of the company’s four thousand employees worked on the project. The endeavor included representatives from all business units and geographic areas. It exemplified how business

personnel and IT can work in harmony to achieve organizational transformation. And with IT systems as the key enabler, Stephen Byers, chief information officer at Tate & Lyle, was asked to spearhead the effort.

As a result, every business management process and function—including procurement, financial reporting, human resources, shipping, and billing—was analyzed. “We basically rewired the company,” Byers recalls. The overriding goal was to create common processes and data that would allow “extreme portability” of data sets. If data standards were harmonized globally, then there would be numerous opportunities to perform sophisticated analysis that would lead to insights to ensure the business was more efficient and better able to respond to market trends.

That project commenced in 2009, and the first step was to gather staff from various business functions from thirty regional sites to discuss best practices. Understandably, there were conversations regarding who had the best ways of performing certain tasks. To

Stephen Byers

CIO

Tate & Lyle

Campbell

Driving Value with IT

As a leader in the SAP Market, Realtech-US provides transformation services and solutions that help customers quickly evolve with their business needs and is headquartered in Walldorf, Germany.

REALTECH-US provides expert consulting and implementation services along with superior SAP add on’s such as Smartchange Suite of Products along with expertise in technology and processes.

“You have to describe the business objectives so people understand the big picture and feel part of the larger goal. It’s not just teaching them how to push buttons.”

STEPHEN BYERS

encourage consensus building, the company’s CEO Javed Ahmed made it clear that nothing would stand in the way of moving to a unified way of conducting business. To drive this point home, Ahmed participated in the planning exercises himself.

His commitment encouraged participants to talk about their differences and prepared the organization for the work ahead. “Everybody understood that there were going to be business process changes, and there would be increased workloads during the project,” Byers says.

During the three-week initial planning stage, IT staff—along with representatives from SAP and implementation consultants who were embedded in multiple work groups—focused on developing a plan for a systems framework. “It was vitally important to have SAP involved early,” Byers says. “They have seen hundreds of projects from different companies and had a good sense of what are best practices. With their feedback we could get to the most robust solutions.”

The company already had small SAP systems in three regions, but none of them were suitable to be the basis of a new global system. As a result, the strategy was to build a new one from scratch. Roughly sixty participants in the initial planning workshops got to work over a three-week period. The initial design wasn’t overly detailed, Byers says, but it laid the groundwork for features to emerge.

Developing functions to support transactional processes was a fairly straightforward process, he says. There was some regional variation in regulations and taxation to consider, but other matters took more

effort. “The more challenging part was understanding the analytical side,” he says. Different business personnel want different ways of looking at data. Some may want to analyze trends by product, time, region, or by other means.

It wasn’t realistic to expect the first version of the system to satisfy all of the organization’s analytical demands. So, the IT team took an iterative approach that they continue to revamp in quarterly updates. As business leaders become more adept at using the tools, they conceive of new ways to use them.

In response, Byers transformed IT from a traditional technical services unit to one that also collaborates with business groups to develop new analytical capability, including new data visualization functionality. “That’s an area that’s still very fertile ground,” Byers says.

He also split IT into three teams—IT Innovation, IT Operations, and Global Business Excellence. Those in the innovation group spend significant time on advancing analytics capability. Global business excellence focuses on ways to improve IT user training and business processes. Operations staff take care of the traditional IT role of keeping systems working optimally.

Implementation of the new unified global system took place by region, with Europe the first to go live in July 2012. The final major rollout was in the United States in August 2014. The completion of the project marked a turning point for Tate & Lyle. The company is now a unified entity capable of global operations in vital areas such as procurement. Now, for example, procurement managers can buy packaging,

consulting services, and travel services for the entire organization, and they are able to realize the cost-saving benefits of bulk purchasing.

The company has since created a central shared services center in Poland that provides accounting, human resources, and IT services worldwide. This arrangement creates multiple benefits. For example, finance can now provide “greater, timelier cost and profitability reporting,” Byers explains.

The new corporate structure and supporting IT platform also make it easier to transfer best practices in one region to the whole company. For instance, one region may identify a supplier of fiber for nutrition bars that has the best quality product for the best price. That information can then quickly be identified and transferred to other regions so that they can reap the benefits.

Even though technology was a key enabler of Tate & Lyle’s global transformation, the change could not have taken place without significant cultural change. Management asked for commitment from employees at all levels of the company. Altering long-entrenched ways of doing business takes effort, and leaders were able to inspire that collaboration. The key was ensuring everybody understood how their efforts would contribute to the larger goal.

“They needed to know why they were doing it,” Byers says. It’s an important lesson that any organization should take to heart. “You have to describe the business objectives so that people understand the big picture and feel part of the larger goal,” he continues. “It’s not just teaching them how to push buttons.”

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www.softtek.com

Adding Creativity to the Math Equation

How Trinseo’s Marina Zivik and her team build and maintain a strong foundation in the changing landscape of global tax

By GALEN BEEBE

In most cases, taxes are a calculation with the goal outcome of paying a fair share while maximizing the taxpayer’s return on investment. However, for Marina Zivik, vice president and chief tax officer at Trinseo, taxes reflect shifting global politics and economies, and successfully managing a tax department requires more than basic math skills. “It’s a discipline that’s all around numbers, but I also

think there’s a lot of creative thought in that,” she says. “The rules are constantly changing.” Zivik joined Trinseo, a global chemical materials solutions provider and manufacturer, in 2011, a year after the organization spun off from The Dow Chemical Company and was purchased by a private equity firm. At that time, Zivik was one of two members of the tax department. Since then, Trinseo went public, and the tax department has grown to a team of sixteen. To keep up with a landscape that’s in a constant state

VP, Chief Tax Officer

Marina Zivik

Trinseo

Collin Welch/Red C Media

of evolution at a company that has undergone significant growth and change, Zivik emphasizes diversity within her team and flexibility within their approach.

As a result, they created a flexible framework early on that leaves room for growth and adjustments as the company transforms. From 2014 to 2016, Trinseo transitioned from private to public ownership. As ownership changed, so too did their interests, requiring the department to change its processes so that it could report new information within new timelines. “At the inception, we set up strong, sustainable, automated processes, where we would be able to easily adjust them as needed,” Zivik explains.

Zivik doesn’t believe in a don’t fix it unless it’s broken mentality. Instead, Zivik and her team regularly evaluate their practices and procedures and find avenues for improvement. Because the company was previously owned by a large organization, its processes and procedure reflected the scale of its transactions. Starting from scratch with a smaller organization allowed Zivik to establish a new baseline.

“That’s the freedom of not having an established organization,” Zivik says. “We’re not writing anything in stone, so let’s just be flexible and continue to develop.”

Having built her team from scratch, Zivik chose members who had diverse experiences, skill sets, and approaches. She combined senior members who could address the complexity and global nature of their responsibilities, as well as younger team members who will develop into future leaders. By hiring people who are motivated as well as talented, Zivik establishes an expectation of growth for both her leadership team and the department at large.

She also oversees a multinational team, with members located in Europe, Asia, and North America, which is a challenge that requires strong interpersonal skills to overcome. Because team members primarily communicate through conference calls and email, they can’t rely on body language as a communication tool. “I think it raises you up to a different standard,” Zivik says. “It forces you to communicate very clearly.” Communicating across multiple time zones requires team members to remain flexible about how and when they share information.

It also reinforces the fact that they work in a global discipline, with global implications. “You’re constantly thinking about a global picture if your team is global,” Zivik explains.

Navigating geographical and cultural differences, such as collaborating across time zones, also requires flexibility and understanding. “Everyone expresses themselves differently,” Zivik says. “Everyone has different ways of reacting to certain situations.” This can be a challenge, but it can also be an asset. Because of the team’s varied backgrounds and experiences, they approach problems from different perspectives, which leads them to a stronger end result. For example, four team members may view a challenge from four different perspectives given their diversity. “Somewhere in those four different points of view, you build the right answer,” Zivik says. “Applying all of our individual talent is how we make this team successful.”

But Zivik doesn’t try to create a solution that will last forever. Instead, she leverages her team’s wide range of experiences to find a solution to a given problem at a given time. Each team member comes with prior successes, but those successes won’t necessarily work in every situation. “You’re going to try all those different ways of doing things. Some of them will work; some of them will not,” she says. “They combine their experiences to find a solution that works for them in that moment.”

The team’s strong interpersonal skills and distinct viewpoints make them a stronger asset to the finance organization, as well as to their business partners. When establishing a new business relationship in a country where Trinseo hasn’t worked before, they can leverage a team member’s understanding of the cultural and business practices of that region in order to be a more effective partner. Zivik emphasizes cross-functional relationships within the organization as well, highlighting her department’s role in the organization’s overall function. “I don’t believe that my function should be isolated,” she says. “We don’t operate on an island. The better we partner with the rest of the organization, then the more contributions we can bring.”

Inherent in Zivik’s approach is the notion that an individual’s success hinges on the success of the team.

“My success is attributable to the strength of my team and their talents and their contributions,” she says. “Everyone who works with me is so exceptionally talented and exceptionally generous in giving their talents and in teaching me everything that they know so that we can together rise and deliver value to the organization.”

Creating Dialogue for Development

Opening Lines for Engagement

At Boehringer Ingelheim, Desiree Ralls-Morrison has focused on facilitating new conversations for further development

By LORI FREDRICKSON

Desiree Ralls-Morrison knows from experience that leading a team is not something that should be approached halfway.

“A big part of leading a team is not just performance reviews and how people set their goals,” Ralls-Morrison says. “It is a day-to-day job if you’re doing it the right way.”

So when she joined Boehringer Ingelheim in 2013 as senior vice president, general counsel, and secretary, her goal was to make sure that her lines of communication were wide open in addressing the interests and development of her team members. Having worked as in-house counsel in the healthcare industry for nearly two decades—with more than seven years at Merck and eight at Johnson & Johnson—she knew the industry and its challenges well. And having managed teams at both companies, she also knew that it was important to gain the trust of the people working for her.

One of her early priorities was to make sure that her team members knew that she didn’t want to come in and make dramatic changes. Instead, she wanted to get to know the group and see where the strengths and

Desiree

Ralls-Morrison

SVP, General Counsel,

opportunities were. “I think it’s important when you come into a senior management role—especially when you haven’t grown up in that company—to get a sense of the people and culture and set clear expectations,” Ralls-Morrison says. So early on, she partnered with human resources to do a survey of the law department staff and business partners to learn where the organization was and to identify strengths and weaknesses.

After setting clear expectations about what was important to her and defining the team’s purpose and mission, Ralls-Morrison set up a number of mechanisms to encourage dialogue among the members. This included monthly lunches with various groups of people to informal monthly touch points with everyone in her group, a suggestion box, and whiteboards where people could leave questions.

She also created a group with HR called the BOLD Team—an acronym for Building

on Our Law Department—that consists of various individuals throughout the legal and government affairs departments. They work as facilitators who listen to feedback and questions from team members and bring those to Ralls-Morrison directly. The BOLD Team was an immediate hit with her group. The input Ralls-Morrison received was immediately instructive. It showed her ways that her words and messages weren’t being heard the way that she intended and areas where her team needed more reassurance. “There were times when they didn’t feel comfortable asking questions, but once I became aware of their concerns, we were able to easily resolve their anxiety and fears with open communication,” she says.

She also realized that sometimes there were opportunities they wanted but didn’t know how to ask for them. For example, although her team was getting internal development and training, they felt they

Secretary Boehringer Ingelheim

SOME TAKE CREDIT.

“Lawyers often think they don’t say no to things, but their communication style and body language would suggest otherwise.”

DESIREE RALLS-MORRISON

were not getting enough external development and opportunities to network with peers in other organizations. Ralls-Morrison heard their concerns and set up a separate budget for her team members to have those opportunities. With her leadership team, she also rolled out a number of programs to help her team develop in other ways, including giving and receiving feedback from peers and providing in-house learning opportunities on a variety of healthcare topics.

be a major hit as well. In fact, this year there is a waiting list for members.

Considering all of this success so far, Ralls-Morrison still views her initiatives as a work in progress, and there are many more programs on the horizon, including team-building events, community service, and an MBA program for nonbusiness team members. “One of the things we’ve found is that in order for us to be able to do our jobs well, we need to understand the business,” Ralls-Morrison explains.

Some legal teams are more concerned with taking credit than initiative. At Butler Snow, our teamwork approach allows us to anticipate

After all, we measure our success by yours.

In addition to creating new opportunities for development, Ralls-Morrison has focused on behaviors, highlighting areas such as being able to assume positive intent among colleagues and enhancing communication strategies, particularly as they pertain to risk-based discussions. “Lawyers often think they don’t say no to things, but their communication style and body language would suggest otherwise,” Ralls-Morrison says. Another key focus for her was leadership, particularly enterprise leadership, and making sure that every team member was able to hone their leadership abilities. “One of our missions and goals is that we would be viewed as business leaders with legal expertise, as opposed to the legal team,” Ralls-Morrison explains.

As all of these programs rolled out, RallsMorrison saw improvements in many areas. Employees have become more solutionoriented, and they take on smarter risks and understand business objectives. She also saw improvements in communication, both with her and among her team. “We’re a pretty tight group now,” Ralls-Morrison says. “There was some negativity that doesn’t exist anymore, and we’re all working toward the same objective.” The BOLD Team, which is made up of volunteers, continues to

Above all, she also spends time looking at the development of each of her team members on an individual basis to make sure they’re getting the opportunities they need. “I wouldn’t have the team I have today if they weren’t already good lawyers,” RallsMorrison says. “My work is to continually help develop their skill sets.” Equally important, she adds, is to have those skills developed in ways that create advantages for the company. “We are here to bring medicine to patients,” Ralls-Morrison says. “Irrespective of our role, we never want to forget that.”

And having advanced in her own career with the help of some great mentors, Ralls-Morrison has been passionate about being able to do the same for those she works with. “The more that I can create opportunities for my team or put them in positions where they have those opportunities,” she says, “the more I think I will have done my job.”

“Desiree is a forward-thinking innovator who brings both passion and practicality to the practice of law. We are proud to be counted as one of her trusted advisors.”

-Mark K. Ostrowski, Partner, Shipman & Goodwin LLP

Hometown Pride

How Howard Luckoff and his childhood friends are revitalizing downtown Detroit

By GALEN BEEBE

When Howard Luckoff was in high school, he worked as a pizza delivery man with his friend Dan Gilbert. Luckoff and Gilbert had known each other for a decade at this point. They grew up together in metro Detroit, where they played on the same little league teams and went to elementary, junior high, and high school together. As they drove through the streets delivering pizzas, they had no idea that one day they would each play a role in transforming the landscape of the city around them.

After attending Michigan State University together, Luckoff and Gilbert both went on to receive law degrees, albeit from different universities. “I went to law school because I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I grew up,” Luckoff recalls. He began practicing as a transactional lawyer, and when Gilbert became involved in commercial real estate, Luckoff represented him, eventually representing Gilbert’s Family of Companies for nearly two decades as outside general counsel. “We have a very close-knit community in the Detroit area,” Luckoff says. “Most of my clients were my friends from growing up.”

After thirty years in private practice, Luckoff went in-house as general counsel at Rock Ventures LLC, the company that serves and connects Gilbert’s portfolio of more than one hundred companies.

Luckoff has seen Detroit change since his childhood, and through his work with Rock Ventures LLC and Gilbert’s Family of Companies, he has been a part of the change. The real estate company Bedrock, which has brought national retailers such as Shake Shack and Lululemon to downtown Detroit’s Woodward Avenue, is an integral part of the Family of Companies. “I don’t think there’s a real estate lawyer in the country today that has had the opportunities that I’ve had working with Bedrock and Gilbert’s Family of Companies,” Luckoff says.

Bedrock has purchased vacant buildings, repurposed existing structures, and built new retail and residential developments that incorporate Detroit’s historic industrial design. In December 2017, Bedrock broke ground on a building that will stand at the location of the former Hudson’s department store, a mainstay of the Detroit of Luckoff’s youth. “One of my earliest memories of

“I feel like I am making a difference. Before, I felt like I was just practicing law.”

HOWARD LUCKOFF

Detroit was coming downtown during Christmastime to the Hudson’s Department Store with my grandparents,” he says. “There was a special area devoted to children, where the children could go and buy gifts for their family. There were no adults allowed.”

Hudson’s, once the tallest department store in the world, closed in 1983, and the building was demolished in 1998. The fiftynine-story tower planned for the site is set to be the new tallest building in Detroit, and it will hold retail, office, residential, and public space.

In helping to revitalize downtown Detroit, Luckoff is involved in the creation of a commercial hub, where generations for years to come will form memories such as those he formed at Hudson’s. “Kids are going to create memories on that site, but the kids’ memories are going to be a lot different. They are going to go to the observation deck, which will be the tallest point in the city Detroit and see houses in the suburbs on a clear day,” he says.

Luckoff has seen his friends transform along with the city, but he likes to remember where they come from. “We talk about

delivering pizzas together. From time to time, to create levity in a meeting, I’ll pull out a picture from our yearbook in 1978,” he says. Along with Luckoff and Gilbert, these pictures include Bedrock CEO Jim Ketai, who grew up on the same block as Luckoff and two other executives with the Family of Companies.

For Luckoff, working alongside old friends is similar to working alongside family. Their shared history creates a deep level of trust. “It is fun sharing experiences with people that you’ve known all your life,” he says. “You have lived with them through thick and thin. You have been to each other’s bar mitzvahs when you were thirteen years old. Your kids have grown up together. You know that you have their back, and they have your back.”

What Bedrock and the Family of Companies are creating is a new Detroit. “It’s a different city today than it was three years ago. It’s a different city than it was five years ago,” Luckoff says. “I had a sophisticated law practice, but nothing compares to what I have here. I feel like I am making a difference. Before, I felt like I was just practicing law.”

HELPING TO BUILD A COLLABORATIVE CULTURE

The culture at Rock Ventures and its Family of Companies is a mix of camaraderie and professionalism. The culture is based on nineteen philosophies, known as ISMs. The ISMs are published in an illustrated paperback book that highlights both the company’s professional expectations and the creative atmosphere. The philosophies largely revolve around being attentive and proactive to achieve the best business outcomes, but the illustrations, like the office where Luckoff works, are bright and informal.

“It’s a fun and collaborative work environment,” Luckoff says. “You want to come to work, and you want to create something.”

We at ColburnColburn value our partnership and consider it a privilege to work with Howard Luckoff and The Family of Companies. It is our adaptability in the face of complex and frequently intricate challenges that positions us as a proven provider of an exceptionally wide range of insurance, risk management, and consulting services. Our diverse client base includes leading real estate organizations, general contractors, gaming and hospitality properties, international and domestic manufacturers, technology companies, and high net worth families and individuals. We have protected the operational and strategic interests of clients in over fourty states, fifteen countries, and five continents. The relationships ColburnColburn seeks are long-term and achieved by a company-wide commitment to empowering clients to make the most cost-effective decisions. We are proud to offer Howard our most sincere congratulations on a well-deserved recognition and look forward to future collaborations.

ColburnColburn Congratulates Howard Luckoff for His Years of Dedication and Ongoing Contributions to the Family of Companies.

It is our adaptability in the face of complex and frequently intricate challenges that positions ColburnColburn as a proven provider of an exceptionally wide range of insurance, risk management and consulting services. Our diverse client base includes leading real estate organizations, general contractors, gaming and hospitality properties, international and domestic manufacturers, technology companies, and high net worth families and individuals. The relationships ColburnColburn seeks are long term and achieved by a company-wide commitment to empowering clients to make the most cost effective decisions.

colburncolburn.com

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