The 2026 Houston Corporate Counsel Awards last week featured the general counsel and senior in-house counsel for some of the largest companies in Texas and the world.
Stories were told. Bourbon, beer and wine were sipped. Shrimp, crab cakes, beef sliders and ice cream sundaes were devoured. Laughs and smiles abounded.
Most importantly, challenges and successes were shared and honored.
Showing that the energy and chemical industries are still king in Houston, top lawyers were celebrated from ConocoPhillips, Cactus, Castleton Commodities, Deep Blue, Energy Transfer, Energy and Minerals Group, Enerflex, ExxonMobil, KBR, LyondellBasell, Phillips 66, Plains All American, Shell and Siemens Energy.
Not to be outdone, legal department leaders from educational and healthcare institutions such as Rice University, Houston Methodist and the Lactation Network were recognized for their extraordinary achievements.
In all, 278 corporate GCs, managing counsel and their outside lawyers joined the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook in celebrating their legal and business accomplishments from an 18-month period that was chock-full of turmoil and stress.
“What an extraordinary event this is every year,” said Travis Torrence, who is U.S. head of legal for global energy giant Shell. “The Texas Lawbook and ACC Houston make this one of the must-attend events for the legal industry in Texas. So many great lawyers being honored for doing such great work.”
The May 28 awards ceremony took on an extra energy because two of the award recipients — Fertitta Entertainment General Counsel Steven Scheinthal and ExxonMobil Senior Counsel David Kern — were in the news that very day for two huge successes for their clients. ExxonMobil shareholders only hours before the event had approved the energy corporation’s retail shareholder voting initiative making it easier for individual stockholders to vote on company matters. And Fertitta Entertainment announced that very morning that it was acquiring Caesars casinos and hotels for $18 billion.
“Steve has had an incredibly successful and busy day, year and career,” said John Zavitsanos, a partner at Ahmad, Zavitsanos & Mensing, who nominated Scheinthal for the GC of the Year award.
Award recipients took to the stage to make their acceptance remarks to music that included Creedance Clearwater Revival, Creed and Survivor (“Eye of the Tiger” for LyondellBasell GC Jeff Kaplan).
The Lawbook is pleased to present these photographs from the 2026 Houston Corporate Counsel Awards. Profiles of the honorees can be found here.
Corporate Legal Department of the Year
LyondellBasell
The multimillion-dollar lawsuits were piling up. Dozens of them, accusing LyondellBasell of “unsafe and hazardous practices” that led to a chemical leak in 2021 at its La Porte facility, causing two deaths and scores of injuries. Legal analysts predicted the Houston-based chemical company would be tagged with damage awards in the billions of dollars. The job of defending LyondellBasell fell to its 65-attorney legal department, led by its longtime general counsel Jeff Kaplan.
The result: 45 cases dismissed on summary judgment, 20 cases settled for nuisance value, three cases settled with funds from indemnitors and fatality case settlements fully reimbursed by the insurance carrier.
Lifetime Achievement
Richard McGee, Plains All American
In the world of oil and gas, Richard McGee has seen it all — and he’s done most of it.
As a corporate transactional lawyer for Vinson & Elkins, he represented some of the biggest players in the oil patch, including Enron. In 2001, he joined Duke Energy, first as a lawyer and then as president of its international operations. Houston-based Plains All American hired Richard in 2009 and became its general counsel in 2012. Along the way, he led or was heavily involved in more than 100 M&A transactions totaling in the tens of billions of dollars. This month, he is working to close the $3.8 billion sale of Plains’ natural gas liquids business to Canadian-based Keyera.
Richard exemplifies the qualities the Lifetime Achievement Award is designed to honor: decades of strategic leadership, unwavering integrity, mastery at the intersection of law and business, and a deep commitment to service.
GC of the Year for a Large Legal Department
Denise Hansen, Siemens Energy
The past 18 months have been among the most challenging of Denise Hansen’s most impressive career.
Denise has helped Siemens Energy navigate the consequences from constantly evolving tariffs; the continuous and massive federal regulatory changes in the energy sector, including the dialing back of wind-industry tax credits; the executive orders regarding diversity and inclusion; the emergence and employment of artificial intelligence; the successful licensing necessary to do potential work in Venezuela; and the extraordinary growth that SEI has experienced.
ACC Houston and The Lawbook honored Denise with the General Counsel of the Year for a Large Legal Department Award for her leadership and proven ability to overcome challenges.
GC of the Year for a Midsized Legal Department
Steven Scheinthal, Fertitta Entertainment
Steven Scheinthal has one of the most unique and challenging jobs in corporate law — the general counsel for Tilman Fertitta, whose business holdings include the NBA’s Houston Rockets, the Golden Nugget casinos and hotels, Landry’s Seafood, and Morton’s and Del Frisco’s steakhouses. The Houston billionaire also announced on May 28 the deal for Caesars casinos and hotels.
In all, Steve has led the entrepreneur through more than 50 acquisitions in building the $10 billion empire that is Fertitta Entertainment.
Those successes continued through 2025. There was a major confidential settlement he achieved in Harris County against insurance giants such as Chubb and AIG in a business interruption case, and there were multimillion-dollar wins in three discrimination cases at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
GC of the Year for a Small Legal Department
Laura Tyson, Energy & Minerals Group
The evening before Thanksgiving last year, Energy & Minerals Group General Counsel Laura Tyson was working to close a $1.5 billion transaction when she learned that an investor had filed a lawsuit in Delaware to pause the deal. The litigation didn’t just threaten a transaction, it threatened the future of the company. Despite facing enormous challenges and extraordinarily tight deadlines, Tyson identified and hired a new legal team and put together their legal response to force the litigation into confidential arbitration only five days later.
EMG and Tyson won the litigation and closed the major continuation vehicle transaction.
Solo GC of the Year
Wendy Wright, The Lactation Network
In October 2024, Wendy Wright became the first in-house lawyer and general counsel of The Lactation Network, a healthcare company that connects families with insurance-covered lactation consultants. Within months, she established the legal infrastructure required to support a rapidly scaling, multistate healthcare organization.
Wendy says her biggest success at TLN has been helping the business to restructure for purposes of opening up revenue opportunities and standing up the company’s compliance program.
GC of the Year for a Nonprofit
Omar Syed, Rice University
Omar Syed’s path to representing educational institutions came during the summer before his senior year in college while participating in a program designed to train future schoolteachers and education leaders. He realized he would “better help those schoolchildren as a public advocate and counsel than as a classroom teacher.”
Now the GC at Rice University, Syed is still advocating and counseling during one of the most tumultuous periods in higher education.
Business Litigation of the Year
Ali Henderson, Energy Transfer
Most lawyers go a lifetime without winning a nine-digit litigation.
Energy Transfer Assistant GC Ali Henderson won two in 2025. She co-led a complex, high-stakes trial in North Dakota that culminated in a historic $667 million jury verdict for the midstream energy giant. And she co-led the defense of a $200 million lawsuit against her company for negligence and trespass.
“Ali is a trial warrior,” Paul Yetter told The Lawbook. “If you want to know about high-stakes trials, ask Ali. In the last few years, from rural South Texas to freezing North Dakota, she has been leading more courtroom action than many business litigators see in their entire career.”
Kriste Sullivan, KBR
When a federal jury in Houston hit KBR with a $71 million verdict in a trade secrets case involving processes used to manufacture polycarbonate, the engineering and construction firm’s senior counsel Kriste Sullivan didn’t flinch.
She knew the plaintiffs had taken a big gamble. And she knew she had an ace in the hole. But it wasn’t just the luck of the draw that resulted in KBR eventually completely pouring out Trinseo’s $360 million trade secrets case.
Kriste’s legal colleague at KBR, Bryan Blades, said while her work on the Trinseo “bet-the-business-unit” case is probably her biggest success at the company, it also came as no surprise. “Kriste rarely finds herself on the losing side of a matter,” he said. “It was a big win. She also was instrumental in having the costs picked up by our insurer.”
Transaction of the Year
Will Marsh, Cactus
As general counsel of Cactus Inc., Will Marsh is experiencing a second (or third) career, depending on how you count. Wherever it fits in his 37-year legal career, Marsh is making the most of it.
In 2023, Cactus expanded its offerings with the $621 million acquisition of FlexSteel Technology Holdings, a deal led by Marsh that earned the 2023 M&A Transaction of the Year from The Texas Lawbook and ACC Houston.
Now they’ve done it again, winning the 2026 award for their $344.5 million purchase of a controlling interest in the surface pressure control business formerly owned by Baker Hughes.
Senior Counsel of the Year for a Large Legal Department
David Kern, Exxon Mobil
As the corporate world focuses on artificial intelligence, global disruption caused by tariffs and now the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, ExxonMobil has quietly undertaken two massive, strategic corporate restructurings that dramatically change the business by implementing its “Retail Voting Program” and filing to redomicile from New Jersey to Texas (which Exxon shareholders approved on May 27).
While each of these transformational efforts required teams of in-house and outside counsel, lawyers agree that there is one critical common denominator in making these initiatives successful: ExxonMobil Managing Counsel David Kern.
Scott Kelly, ConocoPhillips
ConocoPhillips Senior Counsel Scott Kelly scored more large-dollar litigation victories during his first year with the company than many lawyers achieve in a two or three decade career. He achieved three trial victories that defeated $250 million in damages and recovered $12 million in another case.
One of those courtroom victories was the first-ever trial before the new Texas Business Court in a Winter Storm Uri-related force majeure dispute. With about 75 active litigation matters on his current docket, Scott is not afraid to take cases to a jury.
Senior Counsel of the Year for a Midsized Legal Department
Melanie Benefield, Enerflex
Melanie Benefield was a “landman” long before Billy Bob Thornton made being a landman cool — except it involved offshore assets. Fifteen years later, Melanie is a senior counsel at Calgary-headquartered Enerflex Ltd., a global energy firm that specializes in natural gas processing, power generation and water solutions.
Over the past 18 months, Melanie has helped support Enerflex’s entry into the data center market, developed reusable tariff frameworks to adjust to a shifting tariff landscape, and assisted in achieving a defense verdict in one of the company’s most significant long-running litigation matters.
Senior Counsel of the Year for a Small Legal Department
Ali Denson, Deep Blue
Last year, Ali Denson played a leading role in Deep Blue’s $750 million acquisition of Environmental Disposal System from Diamondback Energy and spearheaded the $950 million term loan needed to finance the landmark transaction. The deal positions Deep Blue for sustained growth and reinforces its leadership in sustainable water management solutions within the Permian Basin.
Deep Blue GC Isaac Griesbaum, who hired Ali as his deputy in May 2024, says Ali consistently delivers enterprise-level legal leadership within a lean team, providing practical, actionable advice and ensuring that legal strategy is fully aligned with business objectives.
Senior Counsel of the Year for a Nonprofit
Marissa Marquez, Houston Methodist
Marissa Marquez is the go-to employment lawyer at Houston Methodist, where she has navigated a rapidly changing legal landscape that includes executive orders affecting employment and HR policies, shifts in immigration law, evolving Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidance, and emerging issues surrounding artificial intelligence in the workplace.
Jackson Walker partner Sang Shin says Marrissa’s life work and volunteerism “reflect a through line” in her life, “from her earliest experiences as a bilingual student to her current leadership roles, of using her skills and lived experience to uplift others.”
Harry Reasoner Pro Bono Advocacy
Dave Louie, LyondellBasell; Sara Keith, Shell USA
After finding a ‘Port in a Storm’ in lawyers after he was in a car wreck as a teenager, LyondellBasell’s Dave Louie strives to provide that same sense of reassurance to the families he serves through his pro bono work.
Houston Volunteer Lawyers records show Dave has assisted with at least 38 cases since 2019. Often the last to leave a clinic, Dave encourages HVL to send him cases that come in outside of clinics, which he then handles on his own time. Most recently, he has focused on supporting HVL’s Family Preparedness Clinics, which help families at risk of separation from their children and property.
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Sara Keith is one of those people who seems to do it all and make it look effortless. At Shell USA, where she serves as senior legal counsel of global litigation, Sara also devotes significant time to pro bono work, mentoring young lawyers and leading service initiatives across Houston’s legal community — including awarding more than $100,000 in grants to 15 Houston-area projects and raising nearly $1.1 million for Houston Volunteer Lawyers as chair of the Houston Bar Foundation in 2025. All while raising two daughters.
Achievement in Diversity and Inclusion
Cisselon Nichols Hurd, Shell USA
For more than three decades, Cisselon Nichols Hurd has set the standard in environmental litigation and in the advancement of equity in the legal profession, her Shell colleagues say. Cisselon has received numerous accolades over the years for those contributions; including receiving two awards in the last two years from the Houston Bar Association: the Advancing Belonging and Cultures Diversity Award and the HBA’s President’s Award for work supporting the Hay Center Committee, a nonprofit serving foster youth transitioning to adulthood.
Cisselon has also helped steer a groundbreaking environmental case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court and remains a cornerstone to the Superfund practice.
Legal Innovation
Vanessa Sutherland and Michael Voutsinas, Phillips 66
Energy company legal departments have a lot on their agendas in 2026, including ever-changing tariffs, turmoil in the Middle East, constant reversals in federal regulatory schemes, and threats of cybersecurity and IP theft.
As companies struggle to manage or keep up, Phillips 66 GC Vanessa Sutherland and Legal Ops Director Michael Voutsinas have dramatically upgraded its entire legal operations team that deals with effective financial management of legal work, technology adoption and usage, outside vendor management, information governance, e-discovery and data analytics to optimize legal services delivery.
Rookie of the Year
Helen Xiang, Castleton Commodities
The Rookie of the Year Award is intended to recognize lawyers who, in a short time, demonstrate outsized influence and leadership. Castleton Commodities International Counsel Helen Xiang has done precisely that.
A year and a half in, her time at CCI has been packed with major accomplishments: including a leading role in CCI’s transformational acquisition of Linden Variable Frequency Transformer in New York City, the revolutionary adoption of CCI’s artificial intelligence platform, and becoming the executive leadership’s “go-to advisor” on the shifting landscapes involving tariffs, taxes and regulatory risks.
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