Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
A California-headquartered national restaurant chain that operates Johnny Rockets, Fazoli’s, Twin Peaks and Fatburger filed for Chapter 11 business bankruptcy protection Monday in the Southern District of Texas.
Nur Kara joined the corporate legal department at PepsiCo in January 2024 having never practiced marketing law.
But during the past two years, the native North Texan has played a monumental role in leading the legal efforts for major redesigns and portfolio transformations for more than 15 PepsiCo Foods brands, including top revenue-generating portfolios like Lay’s and Tostitos. Kara’s impact, according to PepsiCo executives, has been extraordinary.
Now the Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Texas Lawbook have named Kara as one of two finalists for the 2025 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for Rookie of the Year.
In this Q&A with The Texas Lawbook, Nur Kara discusses the traits she seeks in outside counsel, what outside counsel need to know when working with her and more.
As a teenager and college student, Chris Blevins watched his father — an accountant turned business entrepreneur — negotiate contracts, do deals with vendors and handle issues with clients and customers.
“I was taking a few business and law-related classes, and I started realizing that the things that frustrated him weren’t about the product or the customers, they were about navigating legal and contractual issues that felt foreign and risky,” Blevins said. “It clicked for me that I could be someone who helped businesses run better by removing the friction and risk around these issues, making things clearer and easier.”
For Blevins, the career strategy paid major dividends in 2025 when he scored some huge successes for Grapevine-based Solo Brands. As such, the Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Lawbook have named Blevins as a finalist for the 2025 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for General Counsel of the Year for a Small Legal Department (two to five attorneys).
In this Q&A with The Texas Lawbook, Chris Blevins discusses the traits he seeks in outside counsel, what outside counsel need to know when working with him and more.
Brad Nitschke’s passion for public service started in his teens at Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas.
“Justice and service have always been important to me, and my time at Jesuit left me deeply convinced that there are real problems hurting real people in the world, and we are called to use our gifts and talents to intervene where we can,” said Nitschke, who officially married his values and passion with his career mission five years ago when he joined the legal team at Parkland Health. Last month, Parkland named Nitschke its interim executive vice president for legal affairs due to his extraordinary successes. And ACC-DFW and The Texas Lawbook are awarding him the 2025 DFW GC of the Year Award for a Non-Profit/Governmental Agency to celebrate his achievements.
In this Q&A with The Texas Lawbook, Brad Nitschke discusses the traits he seeks in outside counsel, what outside counsel need to know when working with him and more.
PepsiCo Foods Deputy General Counsel Adrienne Mosley entered 2025 with a dizzying number of projects on her agenda.
Mosley started the year by leading the company’s $1.2 billion acquisition of the Mexican-American foods company Siete Foods. She guided the legal components of the rebranding and reformation of PepsiCo’s Lay’s and Tostitos brands. She played a leading role in the transformation of the company's North America legal department in the wake of the company combining its North America food and beverage operations. And she supported the overhaul of the law department’s adoption of digital technologies and process optimization. In March, corporate executives promoted Mosley to general counsel of PepsiCo Foods.
“Adrienne stepped into the GC role amid a perfect storm — a major restructure of both the law department and the business, a new executive team and a challenging business environment,” said Phillips Murrah director Leanne Oliver, who is the former PepsiCo Foods GC. “Adrienne provided the calm during the storm.”
In this Q&A with The Texas Lawbook, Adrienne Mosley discusses the traits she seeks in outside counsel, what outside counsel need to know when working with her and more.
Victoria Nwankwo was a freshman at Oklahoma City University when her father died unexpectedly. She calls it a defining moment.
"That experience forged my resilience and shifted my perspective on what constitutes a 'crisis.' I tend to remain calm under professional pressure because I've navigated significant personal adversity,” she said. Two decades later, those hard-learned life experiences have made Nwankwo one of the most creative and successful corporate employment lawyers in North Texas. As senior managing counsel at the cloud storage company Dropbox, Nwankwo last year she guided the company with a $7 billion market cap through a painful global restructuring and downsizing of 20 percent of its global workforce while also leading the business through rapidly evolving political and regulatory landscapes.
Now, she is a finalist for the 2025 DFW Corporate Counsel Awards.
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