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GCs/Corp. Legal Depts.

Remembering Clarence Brown – General Counsel, Leader, Husband, Father, Friend, Fashion Guru

Clarence and Shonn Brown were married for 21 years and became one of the power couples of corporate law in Texas. He was the GC of Kronos Worldwide. She is the deputy GC of Kimberly-Clark Corporation, a multinational personal care products maker. Last Friday, Clarence Brown died from complications from a head injury. He was 52. But the impact he had was immeasurable. The Texas Lawbook has an in-depth report.

Mark Curriden

Frost Bank Names New GC

Frost Bank clearly has a thing for lawyers at Haynes and Boone. The Texas bank has named former Haynes and Boone litigator C.E. Rhodes, who also practiced at Akin Gump and Baker Hughes, to be its new general counsel and corporate secretary. The Texas Lawbook has details.

Mark Curriden

Texas Capital GC Heads to a New Bank

Kelly Rentzel, former general counsel at Texas Capital, has a new job: general counsel of First Foundation Inc. The emerging California-founded financial services firm is moving to Dallas, and they've tagged Rentzel to help them grow. Natalie Posgate reports.

Natalie Posgate

Big Winners at DFW Corporate Counsel Awards: Match, American Airlines, Chuck E. Cheese, Methodist Health, Toyota, Southwest Airlines and Susan G. Komen

In the first major in-person legal event since the advent of the pandemic, the DFW Chapter of the Association of Corporate Counsel and The Texas Lawbook gathered with some of the top legal talent in Texas at the George W. Bush Institute to honor the best in-house work during an exceptionally difficult year. The Lawbook's founder Mark Curriden has all the results of the 2020 DFW Corporate Counsel Awards.

And be sure to Click Here to check out our gallery of the event.

Mark Curriden

Kate Hayashi Helps American Airlines Navigate an Extraordinary Year

American Airlines Associate GC Kate Hayashi has faced some challenges during the past 25 years – TWA’s bankruptcy, TWA’s acquisition by American Airlines, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that involved two American jetliners, American’s bankruptcy and restructuring and American’s merger with U.S. Airways. But 2020 was a year unlike any other. But those challenges are why she is one of the most experienced lawyers in the airline industry today.

Mark Curriden

Zix’s Noah Webster and ‘Magical Creativity’

While most companies battened down the hatches in 2020 in order to weather the Covid-19 pandemic, Dallas-based global cloud-based cybersecurity and productivity solutions company Zix Corporation went searching for opportunities. “We decided that the most resilient businesses continue to grow and continue to build to grow, even under difficult or unusual situations,” said Zix Noah Webster CLO. Last July, Zix discovered the perfect acquisition opportunity – an Israeli-owned company called CloudAlly that focuses on cloud-based data backup and recovery for businesses.

Mark Curriden

Jason Shyung: Keeping Southwest in the Air During Turbulent Times

Southwest Airlines attorney Jason Shyung remembers his first trial. He met his client - the owner of a small Sherman construction company being wrongly sued by an employee - only two weeks prior to trial. "He could have lost everything," Shyung said. But Shyung and another young lawyer prevailed in federal court. Six years later, Southwest Airlines called on Shyung in its own potentially devastating crisis, and the young lawyer again prevailed. This is his story.

Mark Curriden

Meredith Bjorck and Her ‘Super Powers’

Meredith Bjorck had a seat at the executive table at HMS for five years and she made the most of it. She resolved all significant existing litigation within the first two years. The company's revenue increased more than 30%, net income climbed more than 300% and the company’s stock price climbed more than 200%. Last winter, in the middle of Covid, Bjork led the deal team in the $3.4 billion sale of HMS. But what a five years it was.

Mark Curriden

From Hippies and Shetland Ponies to Fritos and Class Action Wins – PepsiCo’s Leanne Oliver’s Lifetime of Achievement

From developing and implementing a cutting-edge medical leave policy and creating a groundbreaking management training program on sexual harassment to winning major class action lawsuits and leading strategic corporate acquisitions, PepsiCo Foods North America GC Leanne Oliver has spent the past 25 years having an enormous impact on the company’s 300,000 workers and the Texas legal community.

“Leanne has brought enormous value to the company and to the entire legal profession," said former PepsiCo GC Larry Thompson. “No one really knows PepsiCo as well as Leanne.”

Mark Curriden

Arash Mostafavipour, New CLO at Tabani Group

The commercial real estate-focused Tabani Group has hired a new chief legal officer – former Capital One financial services division chief counsel Arash Mostafavipour. “I love deal-making and they are always doing deals and looking at new deals,” Mostafavipour said. “It is a fast-moving and acquisitive operation.”

Mark Curriden

Jim Phillips Helps Keep PMG “Growing and Successful” in the Covid Era

Less than two years ago, Fort Worth-based PMG hired Jim Phillips to create and build its legal department from scratch. He now supports all agency business units, which signs more than 200 media and real estate contracts a month. At age 34, Phillips regularly finds himself across the proverbial table from lawyers at Google, Apple and Facebook negotiating digital ad contracts in one of the fast-evolving business models in the economy. And he established procedures to ensure compliance with data privacy and FTC regulations - all during "an extraordinarily challenging year.”

Mark Curriden

CEC’s David Deck Already Had a Full Plate, then Came Covid-19 and Chapter 11

David Deck’s list of job responsibilities as vice president of legal and compliance at CEC Entertainment was pretty extensive pre-Covid-19. He supervised the litigation docket, oversaw labor and employment issues, handled franchising, contracts with suppliers, intellectual property and compliance issues for Chuck E. Cheese and Peter Piper Pizza restaurants. When the pandemic hit, Deck put together a database that tracks the latest federal, state and local regulations and health standards for the jurisdictions of CEC’s 741 restaurants. – a massive project that he undertook without being asked."[David] lives, bleeds and breathes for this company," said CEC GC Rudy Rodriguez.

Mark Curriden

Elizabeth Ramirez-Washka: Fostering DEI Values at the Boy Scouts

Elizabeth Ramirez was 11 when her grandmother suffered a serious slip-and-fall injury while working as a custodian. Her grandmother spoke no English. No lawyer would take her case because they didn't speak Spanish and couldn't understand what happened. "I knew at that moment that I wanted to be an attorney so I could help others,” Ramirez-Washka said. Four decades later, she is the associate GC with the Boys Scouts of America and making a huge difference.

Mark Curriden

Dennis Reinhold, Aventiv Help Prisoners During Covid Connect with Their Loved Ones

Many lawyers and corporate general counsel have Covid-19 pandemic experiences, but none have the story that Dennis Reinhold does. As GC of Aventiv Technologies for 15 years, Reinhold led more than 20 M&A deals that transformed the business into the premier prison and jail communications and technology company, which has quintupled in size. But in 2020, he played a critical role in allowing tens of thousands of families across the U.S. have much needed remote contact with their incarcerated relatives. And he helped pioneer a program that reduces recidivism and crime.

Mark Curriden

Komen GC Eunice Nakamura – ‘Wired to Be a Lawyer’

For the past year, Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation GC Eunice Nakamura has led a team of lawyers from law firms such as DLA Piper in fundamentally restructuring Komen through a series of 61 corporate transactions that brings Komen affiliates around the U.S. under the HQ's full control.

Mark Curriden

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