Women We Admire is pleased to announce the Top 50 Women Leaders in Law of 2022. These individuals are trailblazers who are being celebrated for their excellence in and commitment to the legal sector. They represent clients from Fortune 500 to growth-stage companies, individuals, nonprofits and others. Their unparalleled dedication and knowledge are invaluable to those they serve across the globe. As minorities in their field, this group of women work relentlessly to make strides and are inspiring the next generation of women lawyers.
Among this year’s awardees is Daniela Fonseca Puggina, Partner of Baker & McKenzie, who represents companies in Latin America and North America to assist them with navigating resolution of regulatory enforcement involving multiple jurisdictions and complex cross-border litigation issues. Awardee Cindy Jen, Partner of Fragomen Del Rey Bernsen & Loewy, focuses her practice on business immigration, providing strategic counseling on a wide range of employment based immigrant and nonimmigrant visa matters. Also awarded is Britt Miller, Partner of Mayer Brown, who for more than two decades has represented domestic and international corporations in price-fixing, market allocation, monopolization, and conspiracy cases.
Please join us in recognizing the outstanding accomplishments of Top 50 Women Leaders in Law of 2022.
1. Teri Plummer McClure
General Counsel, CHRO & VP of Labor Relations & Communications, UPS
Teri Plummer McClure is the General Counsel, Chief Human Resources Officer, and Vice President of Labor Relations and Communications for UPS’s more than 444,000 employees worldwide. She is also a member of the company's Management Committee, responsible for setting strategy, profit and operating plans for the company's worldwide operations.
McClure began her legal career in private practice, focusing on labor-and employment-related civil litigation. Before joining UPS, she practiced with the Troutman Sanders firm in Atlanta. McClure joined the UPS Corporate Legal Department in 1995, and was promoted into various legal roles including vice president and head of the Legal Department. In 2003, she assumed an operational role as president of the Central Florida District responsible for all package delivery operations, revenue generation and administration for the district. Before returning to the Legal Department, she held special assignments in UPS Logistics and Distribution and served as UPS Global Compliance Manager.
McClure was appointed general counsel and corporate secretary in 2006. During her time as general counsel, she also assumed responsibility for audit and compliance, public affairs, communications and HR functions. She assumed the role of CHRO and SVP of labor in 2016. McClure serves on the board of directors for Lennar Corporation, GMS, Inc., Heart for Africa, the City of Refugee, and Chair of the Board for the Task Force for Global Health. She earned an undergraduate degree in marketing and economics from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, and her JD from Emory University School of Law in Atlanta.
2. Margo Tank
Partner, DLA Piper
Margo Tank is the U.S. Co-Chair of DLA Piper’s Financial Services Sector and Co-Chair of the Financial Regulation and Technology practice. She advises commercial enterprises and technology companies on regulatory compliance and enforcement matters related to digital transactions, commerce and payments offered online and via mobile devices including utilizing smart contracts, blockchain technology and artificial intelligence. In particular, she advises on the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act and the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act, privacy, cyber risk, information security, digital record custody, digital communication methods, and on unfair or deceptive acts and practices. She also advises on money transmission, virtual currency, and other forms of asset value transfer.
Tank co-authored eight editions of The Law of Electronic Signatures and Records (2012-2021) and three editions of SPeRS, a compilation of strategies for developing systems to create, sign, manage and transfer legally enforceable electronic records and signatures. Her recent publications of note include, Enabled by Lenders, Embraced by Borrowers, Enforced by the Courts: What You Need to Know About eNotes, MERSCORP Holdings, Inc. (2018) and Electronic Retail Installment Sales Contract in California, The Review of Banking & Financial Services, Volume 33 No 12 (2017). Before joining DLA Piper, Tank was a partner at Buckley Sandler LLP, and before that, a partner at Goodwin Procter LLP. Earlier in her career, she worked with the U.S. House of Representatives as a counsel. Tank graduated from Drake University Law School with a JD and from the University of Vermont with an undergraduate degree in political science.
3. Daniela Fonseca Puggina
Partner, Baker & McKenzie
Daniela Fonseca Puggina serves as a trusted advisor to multinational corporations and domestic clients doing business globally. She represents companies from a range of perspectives and backgrounds and jurisdictions supporting their entry into new markets (with emphasis in Latin America and North America), assessment and mitigation of risks, restructure of global operations, internal investigations, and resolution of regulatory enforcement involving multiple jurisdictions and complex cross-border litigation issues. She stands out for her wealth of expertise in a range of cross-border disputes and offers notable expertise in matters concerning the financial services sector. She has represented numerous financial institutions and other corporate entities in internal and governmental/SRO investigations as well as related enforcement proceedings, civil litigation and arbitration.
Puggina serves as the chair of Baker Mckenzie’s BakerWomen initiative for the Miami office which is tasked with driving forward the firm’s inclusion and diversity strategy. She has successfully represented clients under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, FINRA, OFR, OCC and state attorneys general. Her practice also covers cross border commercial disputes, and disputes concerning wills, trusts and estates involving assets located in several jurisdictions. Puggina also has considerable experience representing corporate clients in contract and partnership disputes before U.S. state and federal courts. She graduated from Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad College of Law with a JD and from Faculdade de Direito Milton Campos with an undergraduate degree in law.
7. Candice Andalia
Litigation Partner, Kirkland & Ellis
Candice Andalia is a Litigation Partner in the Washington, DC, office of Kirkland & Ellis, representing clients around the world in complex litigation and arbitration. Kirkland & Ellis is a law firm with approximately 3,000 attorneys representing global clients in private equity, M&A, and other complex corporate transactions, litigation and dispute resolution/arbitration, restructuring, and intellectual property matters.
A strategist for all stages of a potential dispute cycle, Andalia works closely with clients and draws on a deep well of technical expertise to prevent, mitigate, and resolve high-stakes disputes and to deliver business-driven results for the innovative clients she serves. Previously, she was a judicial law clerk for the Honorable Andrew L. Carter in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. She received her JD from Cornell Law School and graduated from Yale with a dual degree in history and political science.
8. Cindy Jen
Partner, Fragomen Del Rey Bernsen & Loewy
Cindy Jen is a Partner of Fragomen Del Rey Bernsen & Loewy. She first joined the firm in 2000.
Jen focuses her practice on business immigration, providing strategic counseling on a wide range of employment based immigrant and nonimmigrant visa matters. She has provided counsel on a vast array of visa strategies for professionals, managers and executives, persons of extraordinary ability, entrepreneurs and immigrant investors. Jen has extensive experience advising companies from large, Fortune 100 corporations to startup businesses on developing compliant immigration programs to suit dynamic business needs. She regularly counsels investors on obtaining permanent residency through EB-5, and is a lead on the EB-5 team in the firm’s northern California practice.
Previously, Jen was a U.S. attorney and consultant where she worked in Fragomen’s Beijing office, managing the firm’s China outbound visa practice and assisting Fragomen offices around the world with local embassy and consular support. She also partnered with the firm’s worldwide investor group to provide local support for significant investor visa applications for Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. Jen earned a JD from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, and an undergraduate degree in English language, literature, letters, and anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley.
11. Britt Miller
Partner, Mayer Brown
Britt Miller serves on Mayer Brown’s global Management Committee and co-leads the firm’s global Antitrust & Competition practice. Mayer Brown is a leading global law firm with more than 1,800 lawyers in offices across 27 cities and four continents. Miller’s practice focuses on high-stakes antitrust litigation and complex commercial litigation, representing domestic and international corporations in price-fixing, market allocation, monopolization, and conspiracy cases, and has also counseled clients on general antitrust issues.
For more than two decades, Miller has litigated some of the largest antitrust cases in the United States involving a host of different products and industries. Since joining Mayer Brown in 1998, her antitrust work has involved a variety of products and industries including synthetic rubber, aspartame, resins, household moving services, consumer health products, industrial chemicals, paper products, financial services, fertilizers and vitamins. Her general litigation experience spans both the federal and state court systems and includes client representations relating to contract disputes, constitutional rights, securities fraud, banking practices, airline deregulation, products liability and trust interpretation. Miller graduated from Auburn University with an undergraduate degree in political science, English and musical performance. She earned her JD from Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law.
14. Marian Lee
Partner, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher
Marian Lee is the Co-Chair of the FDA & Health Care Practice and a member of the Life Sciences Practice with Gibson Dunn & Crutcher. She brings over 17 years of experience advising clients on strategic FDA regulatory and compliance matters, risk management, and enforcement actions. Lee’s practice spans the FDA-regulated product life cycle, including the conduct of preclinical and clinical studies, good manufacturing practices and quality systems, premarket approvals and clearances, scientific communications, product labeling and advertising, and post-market compliance. She regularly advises companies during FDA inspections and investigations and she has led an array of FDA legal assessments for corporate transactions. Lee also counsels on FTC matters relating to the marketing of foods, cosmetics, over-the-counter drugs, medical devices, and other health care products.
Lee is a member of the Food and Drug Law Journal’s Editorial Advisory Board and a member of the Board of Ambassadors for the National Health Law Program. She also was a Leadership Council on Legal Diversity Fellow and a member of the Law360 Life Sciences Editorial Advisory Board. Lee is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Harvard College, magna cum laude.
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17. Mary Kaiser
Partner, Morrison & Foerster
Mary Kaiser is a Partner in Morrison & Foerster’s Global Antitrust Law Practice. She represents domestic and multinational companies as both plaintiffs and defendants in all aspects of antitrust and competition-related matters, including internal and government antitrust investigations, enforcement proceedings, and class action litigation in federal and state courts. Kaiser has defended companies in antitrust and related complex litigation involving claims of price-fixing, monopolization, and refusals to deal, as well as prosecuted antitrust counterclaims in patent and IP infringement matters. She also has experience counseling clients on antitrust compliance and merger advice. Her clients span various sectors from media to life sciences to computer software.
Kaiser also maintains an active pro bono practice, with experience representing clients in voting rights, asylum, and landlord-tenant matters. Prior to joining Morrison & Foerster, she clerked for the Honorable Marian Blank Horn of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims and handled complex commercial litigation matters at another global law firm. Kaiser graduated from the University of California, Berkeley - School of Law with a JD, and from the University of Virginia with an undergraduate degree in interdisciplinary studies.
19. Tamra Moore
Partner, King & Spalding
Tamra is a partner in King & Spalding’s Government Matters practice where she leverages her prior experience as a DOJ attorney representing the United States and its federal agencies to advise clients in government-facing litigation and investigations including those initiated by DOJ, FTC, CFPB and State Attorneys General. She also has a robust regulatory counseling practice, advising healthcare, life sciences, pharmaceutical, digital health, and emerging technology companies regarding regulatory compliance with global, federal, and state privacy and security laws, federal consumer protection and civil rights laws, best practices for implementing responsible artificial intelligence (AI) and/or machine learning (ML) governance programs.
Prior to joining King & Spalding, Tamra was senior counsel at a Fortune 100, global aerospace and defense technology company, where she managed a diverse litigation docket and played a key role in developing the company’s AI governance framework. Recognizing the growing importance of AI to clients that develop products that rely on AI or use AI technologies in their business operations, Tamra obtained a certification in global AI policy. A recognized authority in AI ethics, she is a peer reviewer for the Journal of AI & Ethics and has spoken at national conferences on AI ethics, bias mitigation, and privacy. Earlier in her career, Tamra was senior counsel in the Department of Justice’s Civil Division, Federal Programs Branch, where she represented the United States in complex and novel legal challenges to federal policies and programs impacting the healthcare and other regulated industries. She also has experience litigating under federal consumer protection and civil rights laws based on her tenure as senior litigation counsel in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and as a staff attorney in the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, Division of Financial Practices.
Tamra earned a JD from Boston College Law School and an undergraduate degree in biomedical ethics and judaic studies from Brown University.
21. Jamaica Szeliga
Partner, Seyfarth Shaw
Jamaica Szeliga’s practice focuses principally on intellectual property litigation, particularly matters relating to biotechnology, biologics, medical devices, and pharmaceuticals. She has also litigated cases involving other technologies, including mechanical devices, communication devices, and high technology products. She currently serves as a Partner for Seyfarth Shaw. Her practice further includes design patent litigation, oversight of utility and design patent prosecution, opinion drafting, and providing advice on the licensing and protection of intellectual property in corporate transactions.
Szeliga has significant experience in the management of patent litigation and has participated in several bench and jury trials. As part of her experience, she has drafted dispositive motions, coordinated complex fact discovery, managed expert discovery, taken and defended fact and expert depositions, examined witnesses at trial, argued motions, and briefed multiple appeals. She also has been a member of several joint defense groups, and litigated against such groups, and understands the challenges associated with multi-party litigation. Before joining the firm, she was a member at an intellectual property boutique. Prior to that position, she was counsel at a major general practice firm with a significant IP practice in Washington, DC, where she belonged to both the Intellectual Property Litigation and the Appellate and Supreme Court Litigation practice groups. She also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Arthur J. Gajarsa of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Szeliga graduated from Harvard Law School with a JD and from Stanford University with an undergraduate degree in chemistry, with a minor in biology. She is admitted to the District of Columbia and the New York State bar and is registered to practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
24. Christina Russo
Partner, Akerman
Christina Russo is a Partner in the Corporate Practice Group of Akerman’s Capital Markets Practice. With extensive experience representing public and private companies, she routinely advises clients on corporate and securities matters, and mergers and acquisitions. She also counsels boards and senior management on a variety of corporate governance matters, including Environmental, Social, and Governance matters.
Previously, Russo represented Republic Services in its $12.9 billion merger with Allied Waste Industries, Inc. She also advised Armour Residential REIT in the tender offer and merger with JAVELIN Mortgage Investment, as well as in at-the-market offerings of common stock and cumulative redeemable preferred stock. Russo graduated from Emory University School of Law with a JD and from the University of Florida with an undergraduate degree in accounting.
25. Dawn Yamane Hewett
Partner, Quinn Emanuel
Dawn Yamane Hewett is a Partner in the firm’s Global International Arbitration and Investigations Practices. Dawn draws on decades of experience in policy and international affairs, including nearly 15 years of specific experience in complex investment treaty and commercial arbitrations, multi-jurisdiction litigations, and high-stakes government investigations. Given her fluency in English, Japanese, Spanish, and Portuguese, she regularly represents clients with disputes from around the world. Dawn has extensive experience in investment treaty and commercial arbitrations, including those administered by the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes and under other arbitral rules. She also represents clients in government and internal investigations and in litigation in administrative hearings and in federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. As a seasoned trial attorney in numerous bet-the-company disputes with a deep understanding of government agencies and practices, Dawn provides clients with strategic advice at all stages of an investigation or dispute.
Prior to joining Quinn Emanuel, Dawn was deputy general counsel for strategic initiatives at the U.S. Department of Commerce, where she helped to lead a 400+ person legal department and handled a broad range of legal issues for the department. She also served as a law clerk for the Honorable M. Margaret McKeown on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Prior to her legal career, Dawn worked in international public policy, including at the Princeton Project on National Security; Front Line, an international non-profit protecting human rights defenders; and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Sierra Leone. Later she founded and directed a special legal research program that continues to aid the work of the U.N. Khmer Rouge Tribunal. Dawn holds advanced degrees from Yale Law School, Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs, and Trinity College Dublin, and undergraduate degrees from the University of Washington.
26. Diane Cafferata
Partner, Quinn Emanuel
Diane Cafferata is a Partner of Quinn Emanuel in the firm’s Los Angeles and Chicago offices. Her practice involves a wide variety of complex commercial litigations in federal and state courts, where she represents both plaintiffs and defendants. She has substantial experience in patent, trademark, trade secret, and other intellectual property matters, privacy issues, class actions, derivatives and other financial matters, construction and real estate disputes, contract and business tort cases, and probate litigation. Cafferata’s transnational practice includes several foreign clients and issues of comparative law.
During more than two decades at the firm, Cafferata has enjoyed several high-stakes and bet-the-company cases, and her teams have brought in more than $3bn through trials and settlements. Her practice also incorporates many other smaller litigation and counseling matters.In 2020, Cafferata published Business Litigation Demystified: Bridging the Gap Between Your Company and Outside Counsel, which hit #1 in five Amazon categories in its first week. Business Litigation Demystified is a readable and entertaining overview of the U.S. litigation process. It provides background to business executives, managers and lawyers in domestic and foreign companies that enables them to make better, more informed decisions around dispute resolution issues. Cafferata graduated from Stanford University with a JD and MBA, from The George Washington University with an MA in Russian and East European studies, and from Indiana University Bloomington with an undergraduate degree in Russian and East European studies.
29. Stephanie Yarbrough
Partner, Womble Bond Dickinson
Stephanie Yarbrough is a Partner at Womble Bond Dickinson. Investigate South Carolina’s largest economic development deals of the past 20 years, and chances are Yarbrough played a role in making them happen. One of the biggest assets she brings to clients is her familiarity with local and state decision-makers throughout the Southeast, and particularly in South Carolina, where she has previously served as the City of Charleston’s Director of Economic Development. In fact, when the New York Times profiled Charleston’s economic development boom in 2017, Yarbrough was one of the local leaders the Times turned to for insight.
Yarbrough works closely with domestic and international companies seeking to expand or relocate operations to the Carolinas and the Southeastern United States. Her philosophy is to invest in her clients from the outset in order to build long-term partnerships for the future. She has extensive experience advising companies across a wide range of industries, including life sciences, retail & consumer, manufacturing, and software/technology. Her efforts on behalf of clients have led to the creation of thousands of new jobs and billions of dollars in new investments. During the recent COVID-19 economic downturn, she worked to help clients stabilize their businesses. Yarbrough works with new and expanding businesses in identifying and negotiating all aspects of a complete incentive package, advocating before the proper entities during all phases of the incentive approval process, and drafting all related documentation for Fee-in-Lieu of Tax Agreements, state grants, job tax credits, job development credits, utility grants and many other economic development incentives and grants. She also advises clients in general tax and corporate matters. Additionally, Yarbrough works side by side with leading consulting firms and large law firms as local counsel on economic development deals where her local knowledge and tenacity can be critical to getting deals done. As a recognized thought leader in the economic development space, she is frequently sought after to speak at local and national industry conferences and regularly publishes articles and insights for her clients and the community.
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30. Britt Whitesell Biles
Trial Lawyer & Partner, Womble Bond Dickinson
Britt Whitesell Biles is a Trial Lawyer and a Partner in the Business Litigation Group of Womble Bond Dickinson. Resident in the firm’s Washington, DC office, Biles has extensive experience at the highest levels of the federal government, having served in senior legal roles at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the White House, and the U.S. Small Business Administration. She has nearly two decades of experience representing and advising clients in high-stakes government investigations and bet-the-company litigation.
Most recently, Biles served as the general counsel of the U.S. Small Business Administration. She was appointed in 2020 to manage the immense and unprecedented legal needs that arose from the SBA’s role as a lead agency in the federal government’s economic response to COVID-19. As the SBA’s chief legal officer and third highest ranking official, Biles led the SBA’s legal function, managing 140 lawyers and staff across the country. Before she was appointed general counsel of the SBA, Biles served as a special assistant to the President and Associate White House Counsel. During her tenure at the White House, she provided legal advice on financial regulation and reform, consumer protection, privacy, transportation, and congressional oversight matters. She also was the White House’s legal liaison to the Departments of Treasury, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development, as well as independent financial services and consumer protection agencies, including the SEC, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Biles began her law career as a federal appellate clerk for the Honorable Julia Smith Gibbons on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, after graduating magna cum laude from Duke University School of Law and being elected to the Order of the Coif.
32. Jennifer Gillon Duffy
Founding Partner, Rimôn Law
Jennifer Gillon Duffy is a Founding Partner of the Santa Barbara office of the international firm Rimôn Law. She is an attorney who specializes in employment and family law matters and is a Certified Family Law Specialist. In 2023, Duffy will be President of the Santa Barbara County Bar Association.
Duffy attended UCLA and then the University of San Francisco School of Law, where she was Editor-in-Chief of the Law Review and a judicial extern to the California Supreme Court for the Honorable Joyce Luther Kennard. She is a passionate community volunteer, paying it forward in appreciation for the people who have helped her on her own journey. She is a sustaining member of the Santa Barbara Chapter of the National Charity League with her three daughters, with which she served as Vice President, recently completed six years of service on the Board of Storyteller Children’s Center, and was Dream Foundation’s Volunteer of the Year in 2018. Duffy is the group leader of one of the Santa Barbara groups of ProVisors and a member of The W Source, both national networking organizations.
34. Jennifer Miller
General Counsel & Chief Legal Officer, Starship Technologies
Jennifer Miller is the General Counsel and Chief Legal Officer of Starship Technologies, having joined the company in 2021. Starship is revolutionizing last mile delivery through its fleet of autonomous robots that are designed to deliver food, groceries and packages across college campuses and neighborhoods in minutes. To date, Starship’s delivery robots have completed over 2 million autonomous deliveries, traveled 3 million miles, crossed over 17 million roads, and met millions of people in cities around the world. Miller is a business-focused legal executive with a unique blend of experience working with fast-paced and disruptive global software, hardware, and services businesses, often with unique regulatory challenges and significant M&A, IPO, sale and/or investment activity.
Prior to Starship, Miller served as the general counsel and head of regulatory and government affairs for Loon, the Alphabet Moonshot Company. Prior to Loon, she held roles of increasing responsibility at Cisco, HP and Gigamon. She seeks out and thrives at companies undergoing explosive worldwide growth while developing innovative and disruptive technologies and is an active community volunteer and regular public speaker on panels and podcasts alike. Miller has been recognized by her peers for her achievements, most recently as a 2020 Corporate Counsel/Law.com Women, Influence and Power in Law Awardee. She was also honored in 2019 as one of the Top Women in Technology by the National Diversity Council and was selected in 2017 as Corporate Counsel of the Year by the Silicon Valley Business Journal. Miller earned a JD in law from Georgetown University Law Center, an MA in political management from The George Washington University and an undergraduate degree in politics and religion from Mount Holyoke College.
35. Monica Williams Monroe
Partner, Tucker Ellis
Monica Williams Monroe currently serves as Partner-in-Charge of the San Francisco office of Tucker Ellis LLP. She practices in the area of complex civil litigation, with a focus on commercial and product liability claims. In her capacity as both local and national counsel, she has represented a variety of corporate and insurance interests, including those of technology companies and product manufacturers. Monroe regularly handles client matters involving general contract analysis and business disputes, including pre-litigation counseling designed to identify and address potential litigation risk and support business teams with unique solutions to address key external partnerships.
Monroe is a long-term member of the Tucker Ellis Equity & Inclusion Committee, serving to support minority and underrepresented groups through the development of sustained diversity initiatives throughout the firm. She also serves as a Practice Group liaison, helping to guide and mentor the firm’s most senior counsel in their overall practice growth and professional development. Monroe received her undergraduate degree from Clark Atlanta University and earned her JD from Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, where she attended as a Loyola Scholar and was inducted into the Order of the Coif in 2003.
36. Nicole Kalajian
Partner, Rimôn Law
Nicole Kalajian is a Partner of Rimôn Law. She is a Chicago-based attorney who focuses her practice on investment management. Kalajian represents securities and commodities professionals in a variety of regulatory, compliance and corporate matters. She has extensive experience advising private fund clients, including hedge funds, commodity pools, cryptocurrency funds, fund of funds, socially responsible investment vehicles, venture capital funds, private equity funds and real estate funds. Kalajian provides legal, regulatory, and compliance guidance to registered and exempt investment advisers, commodity pool operators, commodity trading advisors, proprietary trading firms, robo-advisers, and family offices. She drafts offering documents, compliance manuals, business contracts, investment agreements, and advertising materials. Kalajian also provides legal and structuring guidance concerning master-feeder structures, domestic and foreign funds, international offerings, separately managed accounts, and robo-adviser platforms.
Kalajian also represents institutional investors and family offices in analyzing investment opportunities into various types of private fund and other investment vehicles, as well as in negotiating side letters. She further assists investment management clients with industry comment letters and requests for no action relief, as well as with regulatory examinations and investigations. In addition to her JD, Kalajian has an LLM in financial services law and is an Investment Adviser Certified Compliance Professional.
40. Charina P. Garcia
Strategy and Innovation Partner, WR Immigration
Charina P. Garcia is the Strategy and Innovation Partner at WR Immigration and manages the firm’s Northern California offices. She represents and advises many Fortune 500 and startup companies, as well as individuals on both employment and family-based immigration matters. She presents at many industry conferences on the intersection between law and technology focusing on the firm’s technology – WRapid™, a centralized, cloud-based technology and Enterprise Resource Planning solutions software powered by Salesforce. Her conference presentations include panels at the American Bar Association’s Women in Legal Tech Summit, Worldwide Employment Relocation Counsel’s (WERC) Global Workforce Symposium, American Immigration Lawyers Association’s Technology and Innovation Summit and Filipina Women’s Network’s Global Summit. She also has been invited to speak at Fortune 500 companies on the topic of Diversity, Equity, Accessibility and Inclusion (DEAI).
Charina was appointed to the American Bar Association’s Commission on Immigration and is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA). She currently serves on both the AILA University Committee and AILA Business School for Immigration Attorneys Conference Committee. In addition, Charina is a 2019 Filipina Women’s Network 100 Award recipient: 100 Most Influential Filipina Women in the World. She has also earned the National Filipino Lawyer’s Association Inaugural President’s Award and been named by Best Lawyers as one of the 2023 The Best Lawyers in America®. Charina earned a JD from the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of California, Berkeley majoring in economics and a minor in Asian-American Studies.
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47. Stephanie Hamm
Partner, Thompson & Horton
Stephanie Hamm is a Partner of Thompson & Horton. She represents school districts, colleges, and other governmental entities in a wide range of disputes in both state and federal court. Hamm primarily focuses on matters arising under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Texas Labor Code, and the Texas Education Code. She also represents clients in administrative matters before the State Office of Administrative Hearings and the Texas Education Agency.
Hamm graduated from the University of Saint Thomas, summa cum laude, with an undergraduate degree in political science. She received her JD, magna cum laude, from South Texas College of Law. While attending South Texas College of Law, Hamm was a varsity moot court advocate with one of the nation’s top advocacy programs, and was also a member of South Texas Law Review. She also interned with United States District Judge David Hittner with the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas.
48. Karen Gottlieb
Senior Partner, Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks
Karen Gottlieb is a Senior Partner in the New Media, Film, TV, Podcasting, Publishing, Fashion and Licensing practice group at the New York entertainment law firm Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks, PC. She first joined the firm in 1996 and has been a key player in growing and expanding the firm from the music business into all other areas of the transactional entertainment and media industry. With over 25 years of experience, Gottlieb represents a wide range of clients across all aspects of new media, motion pictures, television, podcasting, branding, licensing, digital distribution, ecommerce, spokesperson engagements, news, internet, book/magazine/electronic publishing, merchandising, fashion, radio, consulting and executive employment. She advises high profile actors, celebrities, journalists, screenwriters, authors, directors, producers, fashion designers, as well as executives and national and international institutions.
After graduating from Duke University and Fordham University School of Law where she was associate editor of the Fordham Law Review, Gottlieb began her legal career at Stroock in its Entertainment, Labor and Employment Department. She negotiated and advised major and independent record labels, film studios and production companies on entertainment industry union and guild collective bargaining agreements and employment policies and agreements.
View the complete list of awardees.