By Mark Curriden
Dallas-based MV Transportation has named Lisa Winston its new general counsel, corporate secretary and executive vice president.
MVT, which is one of the largest passenger transportation firms providing paratransit and fixed bus route and shuttle service in the U.S., only moved to Dallas from California in March. But legal industry analysts say the 17,000-employee company could not have selected a better person to be its top lawyer.
Winston is the former corporate secretary and associate general counsel at Energy Future Holdings and TXU Energy, where she had responsibility for general litigation, labor and employment matters, corporate security, corporate compliance and governance.
Winston says her desire to be a lawyer started when she was only eight years old.
“My mom was in law school and I was a book worm and completely enamored with all the law books,” she says. “I would ask my mom all kinds of questions and she tried to explain torts to me.”
After graduating cum laude from Harvard Law School, Winston spent her early years as an associate in the employment law section of a California firm.
In 1994, she accepted a position as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights working for Deval Patrick, who is now the governor of Massachusetts. In that position, she worked with the FBI/ATF task force investigating and eventually prosecuting the arsonists setting southern churches ablaze.
Winston spent most of 1998 and part of 1999 inside the White House as Associate Counsel to President Bill Clinton. She worked on such high profile issues as housing discrimination and police brutality.
In 1999, Winston moved to Dallas, where she became a partner in the employment law section at Winstead. Five years later, she went in-house at TXU.
Winston says her first task is to get a grasp of the legal challenges facing MV Transportation.
“We have litigation across the country, much of it is employment related because we have so many employees,” she says. “Part of my charge is to examine whether we should increase our internal legal capabilities or rely more on outside counsel.”
Winston also has been a leader in diversity in the legal workplace. She is a past recipient of the “Champion of Diversity” award by the Dallas Business Journal.
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