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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.
Here are the 2024 Magna Stella Award winners:
Major Transaction of 2024 — LyondellBasell’s Emily Korinek
LyondellBasell Industries Lead Counsel for Strategic Acquisitions Emily Korinek led the Houston based corporation in the $700 million sale of its ethylene oxide and derivatives (EO&D) business and associated production facilities located in Bayport, Texas, to INEOS Americas.
Because of the deal’s complexity, the transaction took more than a year to negotiate before finally closing in May 2024.
King & Spalding partner Jonathan Newton, who was outside counsel for LyondellBasell on the transaction, said the deal “would not have happened without Emily’s steady leadership.”
“Due to the commingled nature of the EO&D business with the other businesses of LyondellBasell, the transaction necessitated a complex set of steps to disentangle it and be ready to [sell] to INEOS,” Newton wrote in nominating Korinek for the Magna Stella Award. “That included necessitating Emily to not only serve as lead legal negotiator for LyondellBasell with INEOS, an international conglomerate, but also work as a central point of contact for an internal team of in-house lawyers, all of which was needed due to the complexity of the assets being sold and the number of different constituencies at LyondellBasell that were involved with the business.”
“Emily led the charge and managed numerous divisions of the business to ensure that each and every contract and asset was properly allocated, including by bifurcating and renegotiating dozens of commingled contracts,” Newton wrote.
A graduate of Rice University and Stanford Law School, Korinek practiced law at Wachtell Lipton in New York and then moved to Houston to be an associate at Latham & Watkins. In 2017, she went in-house to LyondellBasell.
In accepting the Magan Stella Award for Major Transaction, Korinek praised King & Spalding for its hard work on the deal.
“This was a get-to-know-you transaction,” Korinek said. “I threw King & Spalding in the deep-end, and they delivered. I am a worrier at heart, and Jonathan worried for me.”
Major Litigation of 2024 — XRI Holdings GC Virginia Huston Kadlick
In 2020, a co-founder of Houston-based XRI Holdings, Gregory Holifield, defaulted on a secured promissory note with XRI, which is the largest water recycling and management firm operating in the Permian Basin. XRI is a portfolio company of Morgan Stanley Energy Partners.
After multiple efforts to reach a settlement agreement failed, XRI General Counsel Virginia “Ginny” Kadlick engaged Sidley Austin to implement “a strict foreclosure” of Holifield’s pledged units. Before that could happen, the co-founder “unlawfully transferred and encumbered his units with XRI to facilitate a second loan with a third-party,” according to court documents. The third party, mezzanine lender Assurance, sued XRI in 2021 seeking to invalidate the strict foreclosure by XRI.
While defending against the Assurance litigation in a Texas court, XRI sued Holifield and Assurance in the Delaware Court of Chancery seeking a declaration that the transfer was void from the outset, allowing XRI to return to court in Texas and argue that they had properly proceeded against the co-founder as the lawful owner of the units. XRI and the third party settled the Texas action.
The Delaware judge ruled that the co-founder’s transfer of units violated the “no transfer provision” of the company LLC agreement and that the transfer was void. The chancellor, however, did not rule on XRI’s efforts to recoup $4.1 million it spent litigating against the cofounder or the third party.
In September 2023, the Delaware Supreme Court affirmed the chancery court’s ruling that the transfer was void but reversed the lower court’s decision that XRI’s claims for breach of contract damages and recoupment of legal expenses were not preserved pending appeal.
On remand, the chancery court awarded XRI $6 million.
In a separate but related action, Holifield sued XRI and its board members in New York state court alleging deceptive foreclosure.
“Ginny’s leadership in overseeing and navigating the legal nuances, staffing — including multiple firms and local counsel in New York, Delaware and Texas — and accumulating legal fees for these complicated cases was remarkable,” Sidley Austin partner Angela Zambrano wrote in nominating Kadlick for the Magna Stella Award. “She masterfully advocated for the interests of XRI in tandem with those of [Morgan Stanley Energy Partners] in every facet of this complex litigation. And she seamlessly coordinated and directed the legal strategy of these overlapping yet distinct cases in front of an array of seasoned judges.”
A 2010 graduate of the South Texas College of Law, Kadlick has served as in-house counsel at several energy companies, including Blue Ridge Mountain Resources and FQ Energy Services.
“Ginny’s family has been in the oil and gas business for six generations dating back to the early drillers in Pennsylvania,” Zambrano, co-managing partner of Sidley’s Dallas office, wrote about Kadlick. “Her family’s deep roots in the geology, engineering and geophysics aspects of the industry drew her to the field, where she has forged her own impressive path.”
Senior Managing Counsel for a Small Legal Department — Sumitomo’s Kacy Menefee
In 2023, executives at Sumitomo Corporation informed Kacy Menefee, who at the time was the company’s managing counsel, of a major transaction that required her immediate attention.
As a senior lawyer for one of the world’s largest integrated trading corporations, Menefee handles the legal needs of 35 Sumitomo subsidiaries.
The need for Menefee to immediately focus on a completely new project with little notice was not unusual. A 2005 graduate of the Thurgood Marshall School of Law, Menefee called Jones Walker partner Cindy Muller to work with her on due diligence and on completing the transaction.
“Simply put, Kacy is a brilliant lawyer, an accomplished leader and a skilled administrator,” Muller wrote in nominating Menefee for the Magna Stella Award. “Her personal warmth and collegiality are balanced with a deep drive to help her team perform at the highest levels possible. Throw in enough technology knowledge to qualify her as a process-and-methods ‘nerd’ and — quite frankly — you have an unstoppable combination.”
Menefee has spent her entire 18-year career as an in-house lawyer, working 13 years as chief compliance officer for a privately held oil and gas company and as managing attorney from 2019 to 2024 at Sumitomo.
During her five years at Sumitomo, Menefee developed and implemented a wide range of standardized processes that help ensure that such urgencies are prevented and, where unavoidable, handled quickly and efficiently. She helped create standardized approaches to address common legal issues and integrated technology solutions into her team’s workflow.
For public service, Menefee serves as vice chair of the board of Houston reVision, a nonprofit organization dedicated to breaking the cycle of juvenile justice involvement and homelessness among youth in Harris County.
Senior Managing Counsel for a Large Legal Department — Schwab’s Shamoil Shipchandler
Charles Schwab Chief Counsel Shamoil Shipchandler told the 300 corporate lawyers attending the Magna Stella Award dinner Thursday night that he learned three important lessons from his mother. The first two were a love of learning and that there are no strangers, just people you still need to get to know.
“And the third is, when in doubt, bring food and everything will work out,” Shipchandler said.
His mother, Farida Shipchandler, sat in the audience nodding.
Just six years ago, corporate executives and general counsel feared seeing the name Shipchandler on their phone’s caller ID, because he was widely viewed one of the most aggressive enforcement lawyers in Texas history while serving as regional director of the Fort Worth office of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission between 2015 and 2019.
A former federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Texas, Shipchandler left the SEC in 2019 to become a partner at Jones Day in Dallas. In 2021, he joined Schwab as chief counsel for its risk and regulatory group.
In nominating Shipchandler for the Magna Stella Award, Holland & Knight partner Jessica Magee praised Shipchandler for his “dynamic leadership style” — something she knows about first-hand, as she was the SEC’s assistant director of enforcement in Fort Worth.
“Shamoil never expects others to work harder or stay later than he will himself,” Magee wrote. “He empowers others to be [and] become decision-makers and his leading [and] teaching style includes a tolerance for mistake-making and even failure for the greater good of being creative and driving toward better overall outcomes.”
“Shamoil makes an $18 billion dollar revenue-generating company like Schwab considerably more efficient,” she wrote. “He astutely understands the business component of running a complex, legal enterprise. He organizes his teams into reporting segments with appropriate segregation of duties alongside lateral/vertical transparency for members to clearly see where they fit into the overall process and strategy.”
Magee said Shipchandler’s experience as a federal prosecutor and SEC regional director “make him one of the strongest players in the in-house space when it comes to highly regulated financial services firms.”
“His particular skillset as a litigator make him and Schwab a ‘credible litigation threat’ which we think has immediate and long-term benefits in investigations and regulatory inquiries,” Magee wrote.
Shipchandler also serves as an adjunct professor at the SMU Dedman School of Law, where he teaches white collar criminal law, data privacy and cybersecurity.
“I’ve actually never been qualified for any job I have ever had, including this one,” Shipchandler said in accepting the Magna Stella Award. “But I have been fortunate enough to have the support of a great team, and that includes Jessica.”
General Counsel for a Nonprofit/Government — Texas Children’s Afsheen Davis
When it comes to businesses fraught with regulatory, political and litigation risks, step aside lawyers for oil and gas companies or financial institutions.
Meet Texas Children’s Hospital General Counsel Afsheen Sayed Davis.
Davis handles the usual transactional work that comes with being the top lawyer at one of the largest and fastest growing healthcare companies in the U.S. She has closed 18 acquisitions of pediatric physician practices. She oversaw the development and implementation of Texas Children’s most significant recent growth initiative — a new children’s hospital in Austin that opened in early 2024. She leads or guides negotiation support for all commercial managed care agreements, which are critical to the financial viability of a children’s hospital, given the limited funding available from government payment programs.
And Davis plays a critical role in hospital governance, which is especially sensitive since Texas Children’s is the largest pediatric and women’s healthcare provider in the U.S.
Among the hot subject matters on her plate: abortion, end-of-life care and transgender services.
“Afsheen has played a pivotal role in Texas Children’s navigation of the complex legal landscape of the healthcare industry, ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements, and safeguarding the interests of patients, staff and stakeholders,” Norton Rose Fulbright partner Debbi Johnstone wrote in nominating Davis for the Magna Stella Award. “Serving as a general counsel of a major hospital system is a challenging task, particularly of a children’s hospital. Not only is healthcare one of the most regulated industries in our country but, even more than many adult hospitals, children’s hospitals face consistent issues with both government and commercial funding as well as operations. Texas Children’s is a point of care for all children, independent of their financial or citizenship status.”
For example, Davis and Norton Rose Fulbright are working together in Texas Children’s opposition to “an ill-fated procurement process, led by Texas Health and Human Services that could lead to the loss of [Texas Children’s Health Plan’s] contract with the state to continue to provide member services to over 400,000 children under Medicaid/CHIP in Harris and Jefferson counties,” Johnstone wrote.
A 2006 graduate of both the University of Houston Law Center and the University of Texas Health Science Center, where she received a master’s degree in public health, Davis has focused her career on healthcare law. She originally joined Texas Children’s in 2011 as an assistant general counsel and then served as the hospital’s director of compliance and privacy. In 2016, she spent a year as a senior lawyer at MD Anderson Cancer Center. In 2017, she rejoined Texas Children’s as deputy GC and was later promoted to general counsel.
Baker Hostetler partner Lynn Sessons, who also nominated Davis for the Magna Stella Award, said Texas Children’s leaders view Davis as “collaborative in helping the business reach solutions that are in line with the strategic initiatives of a dynamic organization.”
“In the legal community, outside counsel vie to work with Afsheen because she presents opportunities to stretch beyond well-settled approaches to legal matters and address Texas Children’s legal issues with fresh, strategic and novel solutions,” Sessions wrote. “As outside counsel, this allows us to add to the strategic decision making which makes us feel like we are also making a difference.”
“Afsheen is fair; she is smart; she is strategic,” Sessions wrote. “She makes Texas Children’s a better place in the legal support that she provides.”
Johnstone said that Davis, who is South Asian American, “exemplifies the diversity of the Houston community” and actively works with the South Asian Bar Association pro bono women’s group support team.
Davis also served as the University of Houston Law Center alumni group’s representative to the Dean’s Diversity Council. She is a member of the leadership team for Branches, a recently established contemporary worship ministry at St. Luke’s United Methodist Church.
“Working at Texas Children’s is a dream come true for me,” Davis said when accepting the award. “The work we do together truly improves the lives of women and children and families.”
Solo General Counsel of the Year — PlayPower GC David Starr
Very few lawyers have had the breadth of in-house corporate law experience as David Starr.
Starr has served in the corporate legal departments of a commercial airline, a major newspaper media organization, an assisted-living provider and one of the world’s largest dairy processors. Now, he is bringing smiles to children across the globe as the general counsel of a company that makes playground equipment.
“I think one would be hard-pressed to find an in-house lawyer who has had so much success in such different industries,” Seyfarth Shaw managing partner Lorie Almon wrote in nominating Starr for the Magna Stella Award. “Not only were the industries so unique, but they also required David to gain expertise in almost every conceivable area of the law: corporate governance, contracts, employment, regulatory, environmental, international, and more.”
“David is the embodiment of magna stella,” Almon wrote.
A graduate of Duke University School of Law, Starr started his career as an associate in the litigation section at White & Case for five years. In 1994, he moved to Texas to join the legal department at American Airlines. In 2000, he became the deputy general counsel at Belo Corp., the parent company of The Dallas Morning News. In 2014, he became the GC at The LaSalle Group, an assisted living business. In 2017, he became the chief counsel for litigation at Dean Foods.
For the past four and a half years, he has been the GC at DFW-based PlayPower, the world’s largest maker of playground equipment.
“David’s work and time as an in-house lawyer have been extremely meaningful, both to his clients as well as to the community,” Almon wrote. “He worked side by side with award-winning journalists on hard-hitting stories that targeted terrorist organizations, child and domestic abuse, violations of law in the medical industry that impacted children, fraud and more.”
Starr has demonstrated continuous support for public service, including serving as a member of the board of the North Texas Chapter of the Make-A-Wish Foundation and the board of the Dallas chapter of Big Brothers Big Sisters.
Small Legal Department General Counsel of the Year — SRS Distribution’s Dustin Gunderson
Since joining building products distributor SRS Distribution as general counsel in 2019, Dustin Gunderson has completed more than 65 M&A acquisitions and seen the McKinney-based company jump from 300 branch locations with $3 billion in annual revenue to 775 locations with revenues exceeding $10 billion.
Gunderson’s biggest transaction — indeed, one of the largest M&A deals in Texas in 2024 — came in March when Home Depot acquired SRS for $18.25 billion. The deal is expected to close next month. SRS will operate as an independent business unit within Home Depot.
“Dustin Gunderson has been critical in guiding SRS through a period of dynamic transformation and unprecedented growth,” Haynes Boone partner Zach Burnett wrote in nominating Gunderson for the Magna Stella Award. “He leads a lean and agile legal team that follows best practices in order to support the needs and day-to-day operations of business. As general counsel, he is the company’s main source of legal advice and has been a steadying force, guiding SRS through the COVID-19 pandemic and aggressive growth of the company.”
Gunderson graduated from Baylor University in 2000 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration and then earned his law degree at the University of Virginia. He worked at Kirkland & Ellis for five years and Baker Botts for two years.
“Dustin sought a transition that would offer greater personal fulfillment and more direct engagement with business-focused teams,” Burnett wrote. “This journey led to positions of senior counsel and assistant general counsel at various companies, including Ribbon Communications and GameStop.”
Gunderson is on the board of the SRS Raise the Roof Foundation, which champions causes and organizations that support veterans and their families as well as those that address disaster relief and other local community needs.
GC of the Year for Large Legal Department — Chevron Phillips’ Timothy Hill
Timothy Hill has had an extraordinary two-decade-plus run as a lawyer at Chevron Phillips Chemical Company, a joint venture of two energy powerhouses that itself has $20 billion in assets.
The past two years provide an excellent snapshot of Hill’s successes at the Houston-based company.
Hill played a leading role last year in navigating CPChem’s joint ventures with QatarEnergy to build an $8.5 billion integrated polymers facility in Orange, Texas, and a $6 billion integrated polymers facility in Ras Laffan Industrial City in Qatar. He was critical to CPChem celebrating the construction and opening of the world’s largest on-purpose 1-hexene unit in Old Ocean, Texas, in 2023.
“Achieving these three milestones in a single year, in addition to successfully managing day-to-day matters confronting a large corporate legal department, is rarified air that could not have been accomplished without a dynamic legal department, which Tim has built and nurtured through the years,” Jones Walker partner J. Marshall Page III wrote in nominating Hill for the Magna Stella Award.
“Tim epitomizes the highest standards and principles of our profession and also has a unique combination of leadership, innovation and diplomatic skills that make him a remarkable general counsel,” Page wrote.
A graduate of the University of Houston Law Center, Hill practiced litigation at Beirne, Maynard & Parsons in Houston. He co-founded Glidden Partners, where he represented large energy companies involved in bet-the-company litigation.
When he first joined Chevron Phillips two dozen years ago, he served as the assistant GC for corporate compliance and later added dispute resolution and environmental matters to his plate.
In 2009, the company elevated Hill to general counsel, where he has grown the legal department from 20 attorneys to 50.
Whether it is an acquisition, a joint venture or simply a contractual business partnership, lawyers agree that “there is no playbook for these mega-projects.”
“Each involves world class facilities, cutting edge technology and laws of domestic and foreign jurisdictions,” Page wrote. “Tim has helped his company and his team successfully navigate a number of paradigm shifts, from the ongoing digital transformation in the legal industry, to the challenges of operating a business during a pandemic, and the growing role of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) in corporate decision-making, regulatory reporting, and fiduciary responsibility.”
Lifetime Achievement — Air Liquide’s Kevin Feeney
Four lawyers from three different law firms — Bracewell, Cleary Gottlieb, K&L Gates — and three corporate general counsel individually nominated Kevin Feeney, the recently retired chief legal officer at Air Liquide USA, for the Texas General Counsel Forum’s Magna Stella Award for Lifetime Achievement.
A graduate of the University of Texas School of Law, Feeney previously won Magna Stella Awards for GC of a Small Legal Department and Major Transaction.
Feeney retired this summer after more than 28 years with Air Liquide, a French-based multinational corporation that supplies industrial gases and related services to a wide spectrum of business sectors.
“His ability to navigate complex legal landscapes, in high-stakes mergers and acquisitions projects, has been truly remarkable,” Cleary Gottlieb partner Glenn McGrory wrote in nominating Feeney for the award.
K&L Gates partner Michael Nelson said Fenney’s guidance when he was a young associate made a huge difference in his career. He specifically remembered Fenney calling him for help on a complex insurance matter.
“Even though there were more seasoned lawyers in our shop who could have handled the matter, Kevin insisted that I be given the opportunity to run with the matter,” Nelson wrote. “We worked together to craft a resolution that was creative and incredibly well-received by his leadership. At every turn, Kevin made sure to emphasize that I should receive all the credit, even though that was far from the case.”
Nelson said it is “unusual for someone to remain at the same company for so long.”
“The fact that Kevin has remained at the helm of that law department through all of the corporate restructurings is compelling evidence that Kevin is respected not just by his colleagues in the law department, but by the senior leadership of his company,” Nelson wrote.
Bracewell partner Timothy Wilkins has worked with Feeney and Air Liquide on environmental and governance issues for two decades.
“Kevin has helped lead the company through a period of substantial growth and transition, with complexities that are difficult to fully imagine,” Wilkins wrote in nominating Feeney for the honor. “On his watch, major acquisitions have radically changed the company’s U.S. footprint and demanded careful attention to integration and issues of corporate standards and culture. He navigated the COVID-19 pandemic not only as chief legal officer for an employer of over 20,000 employees at over 1,300 locations in the U.S. but for a company that needed to continue safely producing and distributing medical oxygen and other gases to hospital systems and other essential service providers around the country.”