The corporate legal departments at Arcosa, Helmerich & Payne, Jacobs Solutions, SPCA of Texas and Texas Pacific Land and their outside law firms are finalists in three key categories at the 2024 DFW Corporate Counsel Awards. The Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Texas Lawbook announced the finalists for the 2024 DFW awards for Business Litigation of the Year, M&A Deal of the Year and Creative Partnership. These three awards are unique because they celebrate the in-house corporate legal departments and their outside lawyers.
2024 DFW Senior Counsel, Rookie of the Year Finalists Unveiled
Corporate in-house lawyers at American Airlines, Texas Capital Bank and Workrise are on the short list for the 2024 DFW Corporate Counsel of the Year Awards for Senior Counsel of the Year. And attorneys from ECI Software Solutions and Matador Resources are the finalists for DFW Rookie of the Year.
ACC-DFW and Texas Lawbook Select DFW GCs of the Year
The general counsel at Toyota North America, Sandra Phillips, and the GC at the North Texas Tollway Authority, Dena Stroh, have been selected by the Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Texas Lawbook to receive the 2024 DFW Corporate Counsel Awards for General Counsel of the Year for a Large Legal Department and a Governmental/Nonprofit Legal Department respectively.
In addition, ACC-DFW and The Lawbook have named Texas Capital GC Anna Alvarado and FirstService Residential GC LaToyia Pierce Frink as the two finalists for the 2024 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for GC of the Year for a Midsized Legal Department and Caris Life Sciences GC Russ Denton and Momentum GC Robin Everly as finalists for GC of the Year for a Small Legal Department.
ACC-DFW & Texas Lawbook Name Lifetime Achievers: Bridgett Zeterberg, Marita Covarrubias, Derek Lipscombe
Bridgett Zeterberg has been a GC for nearly three decades guiding companies such as Total Wine, Tuesday Morning and now Torrid Holdings “through periods of significant transformation.” For more than 25 years, Marita Covarrubias has been an in-house lawyer and leader at Tenet Healthcare “managing some of the largest employment and general business litigation matters throughout the country.” Derek Lipscombe has been an in-house lawyer focused on labor and employment litigation for 20 years at AAA Texas, JC Penney and Toyota North America.
Zeterberg, Covarrubias and Lipscombe have a new common attribute: the Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Texas Lawbook are honoring them with the 2024 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Texas GC Forum Honors Corporate Legal Leaders of 2024
The Texas General Counsel Forum held its annual Magna Stella Awards dinner in San Antonio Thursday night recognizing nine chief legal officers and senior in-house counsel for their extraordinary achievements and leadership successes. The GC Forum provided The Texas Lawbook exclusive access to its annual meeting and the awards ceremony. More than 350 lawyers from corporate legal departments and law firms attended the event. The recipients included lawyers from Air Liquide, LyondellBasell, PlayPower, Schwab, Sumitomo, Texas Children’s Hospital and XRI Holdings.
Correction: David Starr’s name was mistakenly printed Carr in several references. The Lawbook apologizes for the error.
The NEW Roundtable Turns 10 — A Decade of Making a Difference
Jacobs Deputy GC Chasity Henry founded the NEW Roundtable, a nonprofit that brings together in-house and outside counsel with the mission of promoting the advancement of African American women lawyers. NEW stands for Network of Empowered Women. The organization is celebrating its 10th anniversary this week with a gala. The NEW Roundtable started with Henry and about two dozen other Black women lawyers and has grown to nearly 100 members, including Black women who are in-house counsel, lawyers at law firms or in government service or in academia.
“This broad base enables us to drive impactful connections and career development across various sectors of the legal profession,” Henry said in an interview with The Texas Lawbook. “Our members’ professional achievements across the legal spectrum demonstrate that The NEW Roundtable is not just creating opportunities — it is transforming the legal landscape for Black women attorneys. Through community, mentorship, and strategic alliances, we are reshaping what is possible in the legal profession.”
The Lawbook recently interviewed Henry about the 10th anniversary of the NEW Roundtable, the successes and challenges of the organization and the legal profession regarding diversity and inclusion.
Sonida Selects a New GC: Tabitha Bailey
Dallas-based Sonida Senior Living Corporation has hired former Avantax General Counsel Tabitha Bailey as its new chief legal officer starting Jan. 1.
Apache Names David Bernal New VP of Legal
Bernal succeeds long-time general counsel Anthony Lannie, who retired.
Pedernales Electric Coop Names New GC
A long-time energy industry lawyer with extensive experience practicing before the Texas Public Utility Commission and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has been named the new general counsel at Johnson City-based Pedernales Electric Cooperative.
Match Names former Twitter GC as CLO
Dallas-based Match Group has named former Twitter General Counsel Sean Edgett as its new chief legal officer replacing Jared Sine, who resigned earlier this year to become CLO at GoDaddy.
Duane Morris Bolsters Trial Practice Group with Exxon Mobil Assistant General Counsel
Joseph T. Walsh will work in Duane Morris’ Houston and New York offices and will focus on environmental litigation, products liability, commercial disputes, emergency response and counseling clients on risk management. In between stints at Exxon, Walsh represented Fortune 500 companies at a New Jersey-based law firm where he was a name partner.
Heidelberg Materials North America Names Shonn Brown as GC
Global building materials manufacturer Heidelberg Materials has announced that Kimberly-Clark deputy general counsel Shonn Brown is joining Heidelberg as general counsel and chief compliance officer for its Irving-based North America operations.
The Corporate Client: Sumitomo’s Cindy Dinh is Rookie of the Year
The daughter of Vietnamese refugees, Cindy Dinh was on a proverbial seesaw about going to law school when she did a mock trial for her intro to law class at Rice University on whether a person with limited English proficiency properly waived his Miranda rights.
“This was a topic that spoke to me, since I empathized with how difficult it can be for English-language learners to navigate central aspects of society, including the legal system,” Dinh said. “I spent late nights and weekends on Westlaw and poured myself into this all-consuming project. I concluded that if I was so vested in this mock case, I might as well expend the same time and energy to advocate for others in real life.”
Dinh is now corporate counsel for the U.S. operations of Sumitomo Corporation, a four-centuries-old Japanese global sogo shosha trading giant, where she handled multimillion-dollar M&A deals, oversaw a litigation docket of million-dollar disputes and negotiated master service agreements.
Q&A: Cindy Dinh
Sumitomo’s Cindy Dinh shares what outside counsel need to know about her and her thoughts on DEI and public service.
Travis Torrence’s Road to U.S. Head of Legal for Shell USA
Travis Torrence is the great-great-grandson of slaves who worked on plantations along the River Road in Louisiana — a swath of land between New Orleans and Baton Rouge — just footsteps away from a Shell USA refinery in Convent and just miles away from Shell’s petrochemical plant in Norco. He is the great-grandson of Mississippi sharecroppers. His dad was a truck driver and his mother was a public high school teacher. Three months ago, London-based energy giant Shell named Torrence as its head of legal for its U.S. operations and associate general counsel over global litigation — the first Black person to hold the position.
“My story and my family’s history are not lost on me,” Torrence told The Texas Lawbook in an interview. In this story, Torrence talks family, his days at Shell and the attributes of the outside counsel he seeks to hire.
Exxon Mobil Names Former Fox Lawyer as New GC
Following its pattern of promoting former top federal prosecutors and regulators to leading corporate positions, Exxon Mobil announced Wednesday that former Fox Corporation general counsel and former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeff Taylor, will be the energy giant’s next top lawyer. Exxon Mobil announced Wednesday that Craig Morford, also a former federal prosecutor who has been the company’s general counsel since 2020, will retire on July 1 and that Taylor will be his replacement.
Houston Corporate Counsel Award Winners: Phillips 66, LyondellBasell, First Reserve, McDermott, Cardinal Systems
More than 220 corporate in-house counsel and their outside lawyers gathered last week at the Four Seasons in downtown Houston to recognize more than two-dozen general counsel and senior in-house counsel who achieved extraordinary success during the past year.
Shell’s Hector Pineda: A ‘Change Agent’ for DEI
Hector Pineda is kind of a big deal at Shell. Throughout his nearly three-decade career at one of the world’s largest oil companies, he’s gone from battling a snake wrangler in a West Texas courtroom to handling major projects and commercial transactions to providing strategic advice to top executives and managers leading Shell’s downstream and renewables businesses in the Americas. But no matter how high he climbs in the company, it is his ability to advance others and be a microphone for diverse voices that he is most proud of.
Pineda is one of three finalists for the 2024 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for Diversity and Inclusion, and the winner will be revealed Wednesday at an awards ceremony hosted by the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook.
SilverBow Resources’ Asst. GC Jennifer Cadena Knows How to Win ‘The Litigation Chess Game’
One month before the Texas Supreme Court revived a novel lawsuit SilverBow Resources Operating lodged against Energy Transfer alleging it had interfered with its drilling rights via underground contamination linked to an injection well, Jennifer Cadena was promoted to become the company’s assistant general counsel and senior land manager after three years as senior exploration and production counsel.
She worked alongside outside counsel at Ahmad, Zavitsanos & Mensing to ensure when the McMullen County jury finally got to hear the case, they would agree SilverBow was entitled to damages from Energy Transfer.
When the jury awarded SilverBow $24.5 million in damages in February 2023, it was a hard-fought result eight years in the making.
Virage Capital Asst. GC Leslie Hillendahl is ‘Leading an Industry Constantly In Flux’
Leslie Hillendahl wanted to be a lawyer since the fifth grade, but she faced an obstacle. Her father, a Houston police officer, “was quite adamant about steering me away from a legal career. He insisted that if I were to pursue law, I needed to first obtain what he called a ‘solid’ degree in accounting or finance.”
“While I initially resisted, I now appreciate his guidance, as it ultimately led me to a fulfilling career path that I love,” Hillendahl told The Texas Lawbook. Hillendahl earned degrees in accounting and law and is now the assistant general counsel at Virage Capital Management, a Houston-based litigation funding operation with an estimated $1 billion in assets. During the past two years, she and outside counsel have scored several multimillion-dollar courtroom victories and she currently manages more than $350 million invested in disputes spanning several states. The Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Lawbook have named Hillendahl the winner of the 2024 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for Senior Counsel of the Year for a Small Legal Department.
Kristina McQuaid of Phillips 66: A Reluctant Lawyer in a Purposeful Career
In her role as senior counsel at Phillips 66, Kristina McQuaid is asked to do more than M&A. Much more.
“At first, I did not want to be a lawyer. I really enjoyed math and wanted to be a stockbroker,” she says.
Now she finds herself nominated as a 2024 finalist for Senior Counsel of the Year for a Large Legal Department by the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook.