s t a ke yo u r c l a i m p ro f i l e and professional football coach for many years before he retired in 1992 with the Cleveland Browns. She is also proud of her brothers, Joey and Jim. Joey Popp is well known in the Charlotte area for his work in the news and media business. A former television news reporter, he is currently the weekend voice on the local NPR affiliate, WFAE. Joey also hosts the weekly “HealthWise” television show on WTVI, a PBS television channel. Her brother Jim is the general manager of the Montreal Alouettes in the Canadian Football League (CFL), who are the first league team to repeat as Grey Cup Champs since Doug Flutie and the Toronto Argonauts in 1997. They have been in the CFL title game eight of the last 11 years, and their 2010 win gives them three titles in that time, the first in 2002. Not surprisingly, Karen Popp is her brother’s agent and served in the same capacity for her father during his long and successful coaching career. Where she finds the time and energy to do all she does is a great question. Her high-octane personality was evident as an undergraduate. While studying at UNC Charlotte, Popp was named the University’s “Woman of the Year.” She also was the recipient of the University’s “Humanitarian Award” and received the University’s most outstanding student recognition, the “Bill Mitchell Award.” She was inducted into the campus leadership fraternity, which is now known as Omicron Delta Kappa, and the National Political Science Honor Society, Pi Sigma Alpha. She was also founder and president of the University’s Honor Society, which is now Phi Kappa Phi, and the founder of the UNC Charlotte Alumni Ambassador Program. As a freshman, Popp played on the varsity women’s basketball team. “I wore the same uniform number as Cedric “Cornbread” Maxwell,” she says with a big smile, referring to the No. 33 jersey word by Maxwell, who was one of the key UNC Charlotte players on the 1977 NCAA Final Four club. Popp may have not made it as far as Maxwell did on the basketball court, but her accomplishments on campus were stellar. In fact, she was so busy with her student-government duties and as a resident advisor that she chose to play basketball after her freshman year. As a member of the North Carolina Student Legislature, she proposed a bill to improve www.UNCC.edu
nursing homes in the state. In 1978, the bill won the “Best Bill of the Year” award and three years later, the real North Carolina Legislature adopted the bill as state law. Popp traveled to Washington, D.C., twice to represent UNC Charlotte as student body president. One was at the invitation of the White House to meet with President Jimmy Carter and his advisors on student issues and the imposition of the draft system. In her senior year at UNC Charlotte, Popp was offered the chance to study at Oxford University. She won a Rotary International Scholarship, studied law and joined the rowing team.
| UNC CHARLOTTE
conspirators in the case. “I took a 75 percent cut in pay when I took this job,” Popp says. “But it was a very prestigious position and I was rubbing shoulders with some of the top attorneys in New York.” Soon U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno hired her to join the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice. Popp subsequently served as associate counsel to the president, where she advised President Clinton and the White House staff on congressional and grand jury investigations and domestic policy issues. Following her White House stint, she joined Washington, D.C.-based Sidley Austin LLP as a partner.
Just six years out of law school, Popp prosecuted members of the five Italian Mafia families in New York. Following her time in England, she went to law school at UNC Chapel Hill, where she served as an editor on the law review and was a member of the Order of the Coif. Upon graduation in 1985, Popp clerked for the Honorable Sam J. Ervin III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Following that, she joined the Wall Street law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, where she represented banks and Fortune 500 companies. Some of her other clients were Exxon, Bank of Montreal, Barclay’s Bank, Mellon Bank and Goldman Sachs. In 1991, Popp left the corporate world for a different legal arena. She became a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of New York, and specialized in organized crime and racketeering. Just six years out of law school, Popp prosecuted members of the five Italian Mafia families in New York: Gambino, Luchese, Colombo, Genovese and Bonanno. Her cases included racketeering, corruption and other charges involving fraud, bribery, extortion, tax evasion, money laundering, obstruction of justice, witness tampering and perjury. One of the high-profile cases she prosecuted involved murder and conspiracy charges against members of the Gambino crime family. Mafia boss John Gotti and Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano were named as co-
Currently, she is global co-chair of Sidley Austin’s White Collar Practice Group and a member of the firm’s executive committee. Her clients come from a diversity of industries, including finance, retail, oil, pharmaceutical, health care, communications, technology, insurance, security, charitable groups, transportation, labor and the government. Popp is on the annual Best Lawyers list for 2011 and received the first annual “Rainmaker Transformative Leadership Award” given by InsideCounsel magazine in 2010. She also was the 2006 recipient of the “Star of the Bar” award by the Women’s Bar Association of the District of Columbia. Popp is also a frequent speaker at national conferences and before various groups. She has been a legal commentator on programs aired on CNN, Fox News and NPR. She has also written and consulted on books and news articles and the TV show, “The West Wing.” Still, the University is never far from her mind. “One of the top things I have learned from my time at UNC Charlotte is that it is a great university and you can’t get a better education anywhere,” she says. “It takes a great school to give you the confidence you need to compete and succeed in the world.” Paul Nowell is media relations manager in the Office of Public Relations. Q111 | UNC CHARLOTTE magazine 13