Neil R. Aaronson is the CEO of Hilco Real Estate in Northbrook, Ill., where he has nearly 13 years of merger, acquisition, disposition, investment and general deal-making experience and has been instrumental in the successful completion of over $4 billion in transactions. Prior to becoming CEO, he served for more than two years as an more than Vice-President of Hilco Trading, Hilco Real Estate’s parent company. While at Cendant Corp, he oversaw all merger, acquisition and investment activity for the company’s hotel and timeshare businesses as senior vice president (SVP) of business development and SVP of strategic development for its Timeshare Resort Group. He also served as an associate investment banker for ING Barings, where he handled the analysis and negotiations of acquisitions, divestitures and financings for several public and private companies. Mr. Aaronson received his Bachelor of Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and his J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Marc Abrams is a partner and chair of the Business Reorganization and Restructuring Department of Wilkie Farr & Gallagher LLP in New York. He served on the firm’s Executive Committee from 2002-07 and has extensive experience representing creditors’ committees and groups, investors, DIP lenders, general partners and other parties in interest. Mr. Abrams has been ranked in the top tier in 2008 in Chambers USA and Chambers Global for leading individuals specializing in bankruptcy/restructuring law in the nation. He is also listed in Expert Guides – The Best of the Best, The K&A Restructuring Register – America’s Top 100, The Best Lawyers in America from 1995-2008 and the World’s Leading Insolvency and Restructuring Lawyers from 1999-2008. He has participated in the strategic planning conference of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York and is a certified mediator for the U.S. Bankruptcy Courts for the Southern District of New York and the District of Delaware. Mr. Abrams received his J.D. cum laude from Widener University in 1978 and his B.A. cum laude from Villanova University in 1975.
Diana G. Adams is the U.S. Trustee for Region 2 in New York, covering the Districts of Connecticut, New York and Vermont. After clerking for two years for Hon. Cecelia H. Goetz, Ms. Adams became an associate in the bankruptcy department of a New York law firm and later joined a New York bankruptcy boutique, where she primarily represented secured creditors in workouts. Before becoming acting U.S. Trustee in April 2006 and U.S. Trustee in June 2007, she was with the Office of the U.S. Trustee for 15 years and was an Assistant U.S. Trustee in the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York. for 10 years. Ms. Adams received her B.A. magna cum laude from Boston University and her J.D. from New York University School of Law.
Philip D. Anker is a partner with WilmerHale’s Litigation/Controversy Department and vice-chair of its Bankruptcy and Financial Restructuring Practice Group in New York. A member of the firm’s Bankruptcy and Creditor Rights Litigation and the Complex Commercial Litigation Practice Groups, he joined the firm in 1983. Mr. Anker is an experienced bankruptcy litigator and counselor who has practiced for more than 18 years. He has been selected as one of the “Best Lawyers” in the areas of bankruptcy and creditor-debtor rights law in The Best Lawyers in America from 2005-09. Mr. Anker has represented debtors, chapter 11 trustees, creditors’ committees, secured creditors, debtor-in-possession lenders, unsecured creditors, equityholders, investors, purchasers of companies and assets in bankruptcy and defendants in complex bankruptcy-related litigation. Mr. Anker also has substantial experience in out-of-court workouts and forbearance agreements. In addition, he has represented several national credit card issuers and other creditors in the defense of consumer bankruptcy class action litigation. Mr. Anker previously served as co-chair of the Debtor Practice Subcommittee of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Committee of the American Bar Association Section of Litigation. He is a member of ABI and is a frequent speaker and panelist, and he has authored articles on issues of bankruptcy and related law.
R. Glen Ayers, Jr.is a shareholder at Langley & Banack, Inc. in San Antonio, Texas, where he frequently litigates in the federal bankruptcy courts, and has represented debtors in all chapters, including chapter 9, creditors, committees and other parties in interest in large and small cases. Mr. Ayers served as U.S. Bankruptcy Judge, Western District of Texas, from 1985-1988, and was Chief Judge from 1986-1988. When appointed to the bench, he was a professor at St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio. Mr. Ayers had previously served on the faculty of the Law School at the University of Mississippi and as a visiting assistant professor of history at Coastal Carolina College. Mr. Ayers also has several published works. He received his masters from the University of North Carolina, his J.D. summa cum laude from the University of South Carolina School of Law and his LL.M. from Harvard Law School.
David G. Baker is a solo practitioner in Boston, where his practice is almost exclusively bankruptcy cases, with an emphasis on consumer protection and mortgage foreclosure/predatory lending defense. After admission to the bar in 1996, he was the first person to serve as special counsel to the standing chapter 13 trustee. In 2006, Mr. Baker was admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court, becoming the first graduate of Massachusetts School of Law, and the first bankruptcy practitioner from Massachusetts in 20 years, to argue before the Supreme Court. He is a member of the Boston and Massachusetts Bar Associations, ABI and the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys (NACBA), and has presented seminars for the Boston Bar Association, ABI, NACBA and Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education. He annually sits as a judge for the High School Mock Trials sponsored by the Massachusetts Bar Association. He received his Bachelor of Music from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and his M.A. from New York University. After working as a professional musician for a number of years, he received his J.D. from Massachusetts School of Law at Andover, where he served on the law review.
Corinne Ball is co-head of Jones Day’s restructuring and reorganization practice in New York and also organizes the firm’s global restructuring practice. She has 30 years of experience in business finance and restructuring with a focus on complex corporate reorganizations and distress acquisitions, chapter 11 proceedings, restructuring and recapitalization out of court. Ms. Ball leads the firm’s efforts on distress M&A, and is also the featured “Distress M&A” columnist for the New York Law Journal. She is a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy, a winner of this year’s TMA International Deal of the Year for the restructuring of Dana Corp., and is listed in The Best Lawyers in America and New York Super Lawyers. In 2008, she was honored with the “International Turnaround Company of the Year” Award, and in 2006, Turnarounds & Workouts named her one of the 12 “Outstanding Restructuring Lawyers.” She is also listed in The Lawdragon 500, The International Who’s Who of Insolvency & Restructuring Lawyers 2006, The International Who’s Who of Business Lawyers 2006 and Chambers USA. In addition, she is an official observer to the Drafting Committee on Business Trust Act of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. Ms. Ball is a member of ABI, the ABA Business Bankruptcy Committee, INSOL, the Advisory Committee on Corporate and Securities Law for the Practising Law Institute and the Association of the Bar of the City of New York is Bankruptcy & Corporate Reorganization Committee. She is also a qualified and active mediator for the U.S. Bankruptcy Courts of the Southern District of New York. Ms. Ball is a contributing author to the treatise Reorganizing Failing Businesses, recently published by the American Bar Association. She earned her B.A. magna cum laude at Williams College, where she was elected Phi Beta Kappa, and her J.D. with honors at The George Washington University.
Steve Ballantine is the bankruptcy product development manager at Thomson West Reuters, in Saint Paul, Minn. He has been with West for the past 10 years in a variety of positions supporting the West bankruptcy product line. Prior to joining West, Mr. Ballantine practiced bankruptcy law for 17 years in private practice, focusing primarily on consumer bankruptcy law.
Marc Baum is a managing director and the general counsel and chief compliance officer of Ramius LLC in New York. Previously, Mr. Baum was the principal of Solel Group, focusing on managing and implementing change across the legal, regulatory, compliance and operations areas of regulated financial services firms. Before Solel, Mr. Baum was the chief operating officer, general counsel and chief compliance officer for the Seaport Group, specializing in trading and brokering the capital structure of stressed and distressed companies among distressed and high-yield institutional investors. He has also practiced capital markets law at J.P. Morgan Securities, Nomura, Merrill Lynch and Salomon Brothers. Mr. Baum is a frequent speaker on hedge fund topics and is an active member of the Managed Funds Association, where he serves on the steering committees for the Hedge Fund Advisory Committee and the General Counsels’ Forum. He is also a director of The NASDAQ Stock Market Educational Foundation Inc. Mr. Baum received his B.A. magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1980 in government and history, earned his M.Sc. focusing on international history from 1918-1946 from the London School of Economics in 1981, and received his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School in 1984.
Sharon Maria Beausoleil-Mayer is an attorney at Fulbright & Jaworski LLP in Houston, where she focuses her practice on bankruptcy, advising clients on creditors’ rights and business reorganization issues. She represents international oil and gas, chemical and energy companies in cases across the nation. Prior to joining the firm, she served as a judicial law clerk for two years to Hon. Wesley Steen, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge of the Southern District of Texas. Ms. Beausoleil-Mayer has authored many articles for various journals, and is a frequent speaker. She received her B.A. with honors from the University of California and her J.D. from the Texas College of Law.
Alane A. Becket is a managing partner at Malvern, Pa.-based Becket & Lee LLP, where she specializes in representating of creditors in bankruptcy matters, primarily consumer lenders and debt purchasers. She is admitted to practice in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and has represented creditors and debt purchasers in commercial and bankruptcy matters and Fair Dept Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) defense. Ms. Becket is a member of the Conferences of Chapter 13 Trustees, Bankruptcy Trustees, Consumer Bankers, DBA International, Retail Collection Attorneys and ABI, serving as a contributing editor for the ABI Journal’s Consumer Corner and Last in Line columns, editor of ABI’s Consumer Committee’s electronic newsletter and an advisor to the Consumer Education Center on ABIWorld. She has written and lectured extensively on consumer collection and bankruptcy practices, and, most recently, on the effect of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 on unsecured creditors. Ms. Becket graduated from Pennsylvania State University and Widener University School of Law.
Lorie R. Beers is a managing partner with KPMG Corporate Finance LLC in New York, where she serves as the managing director of the Special Situations Advisory Group and is responsible for providing both in- and out-of-court M&A, corporate finance and restructuring advisory services to underperforming companies, debtors, creditors, creditors’ committees, equity-holders and other constituents. Ms. Beers has more than 19 years of corporate restructuring and insolvency experience and has represented clients in the fields of apparel, building materials, business services, food and beverage, and gaming and real estate, among others. Prior to joining KPMG, she was the director of business development for Gordian Group LLC, where she was responsible for the firm’s client acquisition, marketing activities and relationship management. Before that, Ms. Beers held positions as the chief operating officer of STC Associates and as a partner in the bankruptcy and insolvency practice of Kasowitz, Benson, Torres and Friedman LLP. She is a member of the Turnaround Management Association and ABI, and helped develop ABI’s annual Complex Financial Restructuring Program. Ms. Beers has been quoted in various national and regional publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones, Bloomberg, Corporate Finance Week, The American Lawyer and Turnarounds and Workouts. She is also the author of “Preparing the Distressed Company for Sale,” which appeared in the ABI Journal. She received her B.A. from Dickinson College and her J.D. from the University of Pittsburgh.
Kirk B. Burkley is a supervising partner with the Bernstein law firm’s Bankruptcy and Restructuring practice group in Pittsburgh, where he concentrates his practice in the areas of bankruptcy, financial restructuring and creditors’ rights. He is experienced in representing secured and unsecured creditors in bankruptcy and workout situations, including the representation of numerous unsecuredcreditors’ committees, equipment lessors and commercial landlords. Mr. Burkley has been named a “Pennsylvania Rising Star” by Philadelphia Magazine since 2005. He frequently appears before theU.S. District Courts for the Western, Middle and Eastern Districts of Pennsylvania, as well as the Pennsylvania state courts.
Steven M. Berman is a partner in the Tampa offices of Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick, LLP, specializing in the firm’s bankruptcy and creditors’ rights practice group. Mr. Berman has more than 18 years of bankruptcy experience and has focused his practice as a business bankruptcy litigator representing creditors, trustees, committees and business entities litigating disputes in bankruptcy court. Mr. Berman received his B.S. in Multinational Business Operations from Florida State University, and received his J.D. from the University of Florida Levin College of Law, where he continues to guest lecture. He is Board Certified by the American Board of Certification in both Creditors’ Rights Law and Business Bankruptcy Law and is a member of both the Florida and California Bars. Mr. Berman is a member of ABI, is the Special Projects/Task Force Leader for ABI’s Public Companies and Claims Trading Committee, and is a member of ABI’s Southwest Regional Conference Planning Board. He is also a member of the Tampa Bay Bankruptcy Bar Association, Southwest Florida Bankruptcy Professionals Association and San Diego Bankruptcy Forum.
Ian Connor Bifferato is the managing director at Bifferato Gentilotti LLC in Wilmington, Del., where he and his team focus their practice on commercial disputes, secured lender disputes, general corporate litigation, perforce litigation and creditors’ rights issues. Experienced as lead counsel in complex litigation, Mr. Bifferato often teams with out-of-state lawyers who need access to Delaware’s courts.
Matthew Bordwin is a managing director at KPMG Corporate Finance LLC in Long Island, N.Y., where he heads up the firm’s real estate services team as a U.S. co-group head and concentrates his practice on valuation, marketing and disposition of all real estate portfolios for healthy and distressed companies. Mr. Bordwin is a frequent speaker on industry topics, has written an article published in Real Estate Weekly, has been featured in articles in Fortune magazine and National Real Estate Investor magazine and has been quoted numerous times as an expert in the real estate industry by numerous national publications. Prior to joining KPMG, he was executive vice president at Keen Consultants for 11 years. Mr. Bordwin earned his B.A. at Tufts University and his J.D. at the Fordham University School of Law.
C.R. “Chip” Bowles, Jr. is a member of the law firm of Greenebaum Doll & McDonald PLLC in Louisville, Ky., where he concentrates his practice in the areas of bankruptcy law, distressed asset sales, professional compensation, representation of nonattorney professionals and debtor and creditor rights. Prior to serving as law clerk to the Hon. Henry H. Dickinson, he was an associate with the law firm of Porter, Wright, Morris and Author in Cincinnati. Mr. Bowles is a director of ABI and is a contributing editor to ABI Journal’s Straight & Narrow column. He was also chair of ABI’s Chapter 11 Professional Fee Study and formerly served as cochair of ABI’s Professional Compensation Committee. Mr. Bowles lectures and writes extensively on bankruptcy law and is co‑author of “The Sale of the Century or a Fraud on Creditors?: The Fiduciary Duty of Trustees and Debtors‑in‑Possession in Relation to the ‘Sale’ of a Debtor’s Assets in Bankruptcy,” 28 U. Mem. L. Rev. 781 (Spring 1998); “Has the DIP’s Attorney Become the Ultimate Creditors’ Lawyer in Bankruptcy Reorganization Cases?,” ABI L. Rev. (Summer 1997); and “What the Bankruptcy Code Giveth, Congress Taketh Away: The Dischargeability of Domestic Obligations After the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1994,” 34 Journal of Family Law 521 (1996). He is the past editor of The Broken Bench and Bar, the newsletter of the Kentucky Bar Association’s Bankruptcy Section.
William “Bill” A. Brandt, Jr. is president and CEO of Development Specialists, Inc. in Chicago. He was the principal author of the amendment to the Bankruptcy Code that permits the election of trustees in chapter 11 cases, as well as several amendments enacted into law in the 2005 overhaul of the nation’s bankruptcy laws. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of Loyola University Chicago, the National Advisory Board for the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley and is currently serving as chair of the Illinois Finance Authority by appointment of the governor and confirmation by the Illinois State Senate.
Jo Ann J. Brighton is Of Counsel at K&L Gates in Charlotte, N.C., where she is a member of the Financial Services Department – Financial Restructuring Group and practices primarily in the areas of bankruptcy, workouts and secured lending. She was inducted as a Fellow in the American College of Bankruptcy in March 2008, is certified in Business Bankruptcy by the American Board of Certification and is a frequent author and lecturer on bankruptcy related topics. Ms. Brighton also sits on ABI’s Board of Directors, is past co-chair of its Business Reorganization Committee and serves on its Editorial Board and Advisory Board for its Law Review. She has been named a “North Carolina SuperLawyer” and one of the “Top 25 Women in Business in Charlotte” by the Charlotte Business Journal.
Howard B. Brownstein is a principal of NachmanHaysBrownstein, Inc. in Narbeth, Pa., where he has specialized in turnaround management for more than 15 years. In addition to leading turnaround assignments for NHB’s clients, Mr. Brownstein has principal responsibility for the firm’s transactional activities and for the marketing of its services to clients. He has led client assignments in many industries from advising senior management to fulfilling a senior management role. Mr. Brownstein has served as financial advisor to debtors and to lenders and creditor committees in bankruptcy proceedings, and as a litigation expert in several cases. Prior to joining NHB, Mr. Brownstein was managing director of Enprotech Corp. and CEO and COO of The Stone Group. Prior to becoming a turnaround management consultant, he also served on the board of a regional bank and founded a metals trading firm. Mr. Brownstein is a Certified Turnaround Professional (CTP) and serves on several professional boards including ABI. He has authored more than 30 articles and has served on the editorial board, of the Journal of Corporate Renewal, and currently serves as a contributing editor of ABI Journal. He received his B.S. and B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and the College of Arts and Sciences and is a graduate of Harvard University, where he obtained his J.D. and M.B.A.
Hon. Samuel L. Bufford has served since 1985 as a bankruptcy judge in Los Angeles, in the Central District of California. During this time, he has overseen approximately 100,000 bankruptcy cases, including more than 2,500 chapter 11 cases. He frequently teaches seminars, and has led more than 25 across the globe. Judge Bufford has spent several terms teaching at Harvard and Ohio State, among others. He earned his J.D. from the University of Michigan, where he was an editor of the Michigan Law Review and of the Journal of Law Reform. In addition, he holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Texas and was a philosophy professor for nearly 10 years. He has authored two books and numerous law review articles and has had more than 80 published opinions.
Thomas M. Cambern is a managing director and head of the Special Situations Group in the Corporate and Investment Bank at Wachovia Securities, LLC in Charlotte, N.C., where he is responsible for the active management of the distressed loan and security portfolios and for providing advisory services on restructuring matters throughout the bank. His duties include directing recovery strategies in numerous out-of-court and chapter 11 matters ranging from debt restructurings, debt-to-equity conversions, loan sales and rescue financings. Mr. Cambern also manages a portfolio of post-reorganization securities. During his 25-year career, he has managed turnarounds across an array of industries including health care, textiles, retail, airlines, media and telecom, insurance, manufacturing and forest products. He joined Wachovia via its predecessor First Union Securities in 1996 and previously worked at Chase Manhattan Bank and its predecessors Chemical Bank and Manufacturers Hanover Trust. Mr. Cambern received his B.A. in economics from the College of William and Mary and his M.B.A. from the Darden School at the University of Virginia.
Hon. Kevin J. Carey is Chief U.S. Bankruptcy Judge for the District of Delaware in Wilmington, where he has served since Dec. 9, 2005. He previously served as a U.S. Bankruptcy Judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, appointed on Jan. 25, 2001. Judge Carey began his legal career as law clerk to Bankruptcy Judge Thomas M. Twardowski, then served as clerk of court of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. He is a former partner and member of the Financial Services Department of Fox, Rothschild, O’Brien & Frankel LLP, where he represented financial institutions, corporate creditors, landlords and debtors in bankruptcy, workouts and financing >matters. Judge Carey currently serves as co-president of the Delaware Bankruptcy Inn of Court and is a member of the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges, ABI and the Turnaround Management Association. He is also a contributing author to the Collier Forms Manual. Judge Carey received his B.A. from Pennsylvania State University and his J.D. from Villanova University School of Law, and presently sits on the Villanova Law Alumni Association’s Board of Advisors.
Candace C. Carlyon is a managing shareholder at Shea & Carlyon, Ltd. in Las Vegas. She is chair of the Nevada Bar Association’s Bankruptcy Section, co-chair of ABI’s Southwest Bankruptcy Conference and a member of the Southern Nevada Association of Bankruptcy Attorneys and the Nevada chapter of the American Inns of Court. She serves on the Executive Committee and is chair of the Standards Committee of the American Board of Certification, and is certified as a Commercial Bankruptcy Specialist. A frequent author and lecturer on topics of interest to lenders and insolvency professionals, Ms. Carlyon received her B.A. magna cum laude from Loyola Marymount University and her J. D. magna cum laude from Pepperdine University School of Law.
Scott Cleland is president of Precursor LLC, a techcom industry research and consulting firm in McLean, Va. He is also chairman of Netcompetition.org, a pro-competition e-forum funded by broadband telecom, cable and wireless companies. Mr. Cleland also previously founded The Precursor Group Inc.
Jacob C. Cohn is a member of Cozen O’Connor in Philadelphia, where he is a trial and appellate litigator and has represented clients in many bankruptcy cases and other creditors’ rights matters for more than 20 years. He also represents insurers in many pending and recently-concluded asbestos bankruptcies and has written extensively on related topics, co-authoring “The Need for Transparency Between the Tort System and Section 524(g) Asbestos Trusts,” 17 J. Bankr. L. & Prac. 257 (Issue No. 2, April 2008), and “Unraveling the Gordian Knot of Asymptomatic Asbestos Claimants: Statutory, Precedential and Policy Reasons Why Unimpaired Asbestos Claimants Cannot Recover in Bankruptcy,” Mealey’s Asbestos Bankruptcy Report (May 12, 2004.) Mr. Cohn is admitted in Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey and received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and his J.D. cum laude from the University of Pittsburgh.
James Connor is a managing director of BBK in Southfield, Mich., and has more than 30 years experience in lean manufacturing, restructuring and bankruptcy. Before BBK, Mr. Connor served as president and CEO of Newcor, an automotive and heavy-truck parts supplier. As CEO, he initiated a new mission statement that outlined guiding principles, implemented a more effective manufacturing system, reduced headcount by 25 percent, implemented lean manufacturing, consolidated two manufacturing operations and managed a restructuring process through chapter 11. During his career at Newcor, he moved the company from the NASDAQ to the AMEX. Before that, he was vice president of operations and CFO at Rockwell Medical Technologies, president of Glacier Vandervell Inc. and vice president and a member of the Office of the President of JP Industries Inc. Mr. Connor has a B.S. from Lawrence Technological University and is a Certified Public Accountant for the State of Michigan.
Philip S. Corwin is a partner at Butera & Andrews in Washington, D.C., where his practice focuses on the law of electronic commerce, digital media and the domain name system, as well as financial services and bankruptcy. An active member of ABA, he is chair of its Business Law Section’s Committee on Legislation, vice-chair of its Financial Services Integration Committee of the Torts and Insurance Practice Section (TIPS) and co-chair of TIPS’ Investment, Financial Services and Taxation Committee. He is also the Washington liaison for the Science and Technology Section and the legislative reporter for the Business Law Section’s Cyberspace Law Committee. Prior to joining Butera & Andrews, Mr. Corwin served as director and counsel of operations for retail banking and risk management for the ABA and directed ABA’s bankruptcy reform effort. He was also responsible for overseeing federal legislative and regulatory efforts for wholesale and retail payments systems, bankcards, consumer disclosure and compliance, coinage, bank insurance activities, money laundering, student lending and environmental liability. From 1981-85, Mr. Corwin served as legislative counsel to the Independent Bankers Association of America, and from 1976-81 he held professional staff positions at the U.S. Senate. He is a member of the Bars of the District of Columbia and Massachusetts, and is admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. Corwin received his B.A. in government from Cornell University’s College of Arts and Sciences and his J.D. from Boston College Law School.
Roberta A. DeAngelis serves as the Acting U.S. Trustee for Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania (Region 3) and until June 30, 2008, served as the Acting General Counsel for the Executive Office for U.S. Trustees. Immediately prior to her position as Acting General Counsel, she served as the Acting U.S, Trustee for Region Three. She joined the U.S. Trustee Program in July 1999 as the Assistant U.S. Trustee for the District of New Jersey, and from 2001-02 she served as the Assistant U.S. Trustee for the District of Delaware, where she was instrumental in opening the Wilmington, Del. office for the U.S. Trustee Program. Prior to her tenure with the Office of the U.S. Trustee, Ms. DeAngelis was a partner in the law firm of Fox Rothschild LLP in New Jersey, where she practiced in its creditors’ rights department. She was a bankruptcy practitioner in private practice for approximately 20 years, having started her career in a bankruptcy boutique firm representing business and consumer debtors, trustees and creditors’ committees. Ms. DeAngelis is a former trustee of the New Jersey State Bar Association, former president of the Mercer County Bar Association and a former chair of a District Ethics Committee of the Supreme Court of New Jersey.
William Q. Derrough is a managing director and co-head of the Recapitalization and Restructuring Group of Moelis & Co. in New York, where he focuses on recapitalizations, restructurings, financing and corporate advisories and has led more than 50 transactions representing more than $60 billion in transaction value. Mr. Derrough also serves as co-head of Jefferies & Co.’s New York office. Prior to joining Jefferies, he was a principal with the San Francisco-based private investment firm of Doyle & Boissiere, where he was responsible for identifying and executing controlling equity investments in underperforming companies and assisting them in their operational turnarounds. From 1991-97, Mr. Derrough was in Los Angeles and New York with Chanin and Co., most recently as senior vice president, specializing in restructurings, recapitalizations and distressed M&A. He is an ABI director, Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy, member of the International Insolvency Institute and director of Lambda Legal, and has served as faculty for seminars and conferences of the Federal Judicial Center, National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges, ABI, regional bar associations and various industry associations. Mr. Derrough is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley.
Chris Dickerson is a partner with Skadden in its Corporate Restructuring Group Chicagooffice, where his practice includes the representation of a variety of clients in complex businessreorganizations, debt restructurings and insolvency matters, including companies experiencing financial difficulties, purchasers of and investors in distressed companies, and lenders to and creditorsof such companies. Mr. Dickerson has assisted numerous large corporations both inside and outside of chapter 11, and also assists secured lenders and providers of debtor-in-possession financing. Mr. Dickerson also has had substantial involvement representing bondholders and unsecured creditors’committees. Following graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy, Mr. Dickerson was a naval flight officer in the U.S. Navy for 11 years and assigned to the staff of Carrier Air Wing Two and the Secretary of the Navy’s Office of Legislative Affairs.
C. Edward Dobbs is a partner at Parker, Hudson, Rainer & Dobbs LLP in Atlanta, where he is head of the firm’s commercial practice group (which includes commercial lending, bankruptcy and workouts). He is the author of two books (one on enforcement of security interests under the UCC and another on chapter 11 reorganizations) and has authored numerous law review articles on commercial law subjects, including most recently “Negotiating Points in Second Lien Financing Transactions,” (DePaul & Commercial Law Journal 189 (2006)), and has contributed a chapter entitled “Debt Subordinations” to the Matthew Bender treatise Asset‑Based Lending. Mr. Dobbs is a Fellow, a past president and board member of the American College of Commercial Finance Lawyers, a Fellow in the American College of Bankruptcy, a former adjunct professor of law at Emory University Law School, president of the Atlanta chapter of TMA, past-president and current board member of the Southeastern Bankruptcy Law Institute and past chair of the Bankruptcy Law Section of the State Bar of Georgia. He is a Fellow of the Georgia Bar Foundation, member of the Founders Leadership Council of the CFA Education Foundation and past chair of the creditors’ rights and syndications subcommittees of the ABA Section of Business Law. He has been listed in The Best Lawyers in America each year since 1989 and in Chambers USA since 2003. Mr. Dobbs was named as one of the top 10 “Georgia Super Lawyers” in Atlanta Magazine in 2004 and as one of the top 100 Super Lawyers in Georgia from 2005-09. Moreover, he has been listed in Georgia Trend magazine each year since 2004 as one of Georgia’s leading practitioners. He is a graduate of Davidson College and earned his J.D. from Vanderbilt University School of Law, where he served as articles editors of The Vanderbilt Law Review and was a member of Order of the Coif.
Thomas J. Donnelly is executive director for UBS - Investment Bank in Stamford, Conn., where he heads Impaired Loan Management for the Americas. Prior to joining UBS, Mr. Donnelly headed the workout group for GE Capital Commercial Finance and spent 17 years in the workout group for First Union and its predecessors First Fidelity and Fidelity Bank. He started as a loan officer in the group and worked his way up to senior vice president, responsible for the workout department supporting Connecticut and New York as well as the bank’s loan sale program. Mr. Donnelly has more than 25 years of loan workout experience and has worked out loans to a wide variety of industries and loan structures. He is a member of the Connecticut TMA Chapter and has previously served on its board. Mr. Donnelly has an M.B.A. in finance.
Hon. Dennis R. Dow is a U.S. Bankruptcy Judge for the Western District of Missouri in Kansas City, appointed on Nov. 10, 2003, by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. Prior to taking the bench, Judge Dow was a partner with the firm of Shook, Hardy & Bacon LLP, where he represented trustees in chapter 7 cases involving significant assets, individual and corporate debtors in proceedings under chapter 7 and 11, and secured, unsecured and priority creditors and lessors in chapter 7, 11, 12 and 13 cases. He also tried numerous adversary proceedings and contested matters, including preference actions, objections to discharge, dischargeability complaints and objections to confirmation of chapter 11 plans. Judge Dow has authored or co-authored several articles, including “ERISA-Related Claims in Bankruptcy,” Journal of Bankruptcy Law and Practice Vol. 3, No. 1 (Nov/Dec 1993); “‘Rent to Own’ Agreements in Bankruptcy: Sales or Leases?,” ABI Law Review Vol. 2, No. 1 (Spring 1994); and “Gramm-Leach-Bliley and the Bankruptcy/Collection Attorney,” Norton Bankruptcy Law Advisor (Feb. 2002). He is a member of the Missouri Bar and the Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association, as well as ABI’s Board of Directors. Judge Dow has been listed in The Best Lawyers in America in the area of bankruptcy law since 1995. He received his B.A. with honors from the University of Wyoming and his J.D. from Washburn University School of Law, where he was notes editor of the Washburn Law Journal.
John M. Duck is a partner in the transactions and corporate advisory services practice group of Adams and Reese LLP in New Orleans, where his practice is concentrated in complex corporate restructuring matters in both bankruptcy and nonbankruptcy contexts. Mr. Duck advises and represents clients in connection with the acquisition and disposition of corporate assets and in commercial lending matters, including debtor-in-possession financing transactions. He has represented a wide variety of parties in commercial chapter 11 bankruptcy, including pre-bankruptcy and debtor-in-possession lenders, creditors’ and creditor committees’, debtors, purchasers, lessors, franchisors and other constituent parties in the restructuring process. Mr. Duck is an active member of American Bar Association, Federal Bar Association and ABI, and he is a Fellow of the Louisiana Bar Foundation. He has been honored in New Orleans CityBusiness magazine’s “Leaders in Law” and the New Orleans Pro Bono Project’s Honor Roll, and he is consistently listed among The Best Lawyers in America and Chambers USA. His publications include “Economic Crisis—What Should Creditors Expect This Coming Year in Bankruptcy Court,” Louisiana Bankers Association, November 2008, and he co-authored “Credit Crisis, Housing Slumps and Economic Slowdown—What Client’s and Lawyers Should Expect This Coming Year in Bankruptcy Court,” Louisiana SuperLawyers. He received his B.S. from the University of Southern Mississippi and his J.D. from Tulane University Law School.
Sarah Sumner Duggan is a senior vice-president in the Healthcare Finance Group of Capmark Finance Inc. in Horsham, Pa, where she has served as the senior lender in the Senior Housing and Healthcare Finance group. Ms. Duggan currently is the manager of the portfolio and is responsible for the ongoing monitoring and management of more than $3.5 Billion in health care assets. She served on the National Investment Center (NIC) Board of Directors for more than 10 years, the NIC Executive Committee for seven years and as NIC Board Chair in 2006.
Kenneth H. Eckstein is a partner at Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP in New York, where he is co-chairman of the firm’s 35-attorney Corporate Restructuring and Bankruptcy Department and has played a prominent role in many of the largest and most complex chapter 11 reorganization cases and out-of-court workouts over the past 28 years. Mr. Eckstein regularly represents a wide range of lending and other financial institutions and distressed investors in chapter 11 cases, workouts and out-of-court restructurings. He has been recognized as one of The Best Lawyers in America 2004-08, in Chambers USA’s Leading Lawyers for Business 2003-08 and a New York Super Lawyer from 2006-present. Mr. Eckstein is a member of the New York City Bar Association, the American Bar Association and ABI. He earned his B.A. cum laude at the University of Pennsylvania and his J.D. at the New York University School of Law, where he was research editor for the Journal of International Law and Politics. Mr. Eckstein clerked for John J. Galgay of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Ramona D. Elliott is general counsel for the Executive Office for U.S. Trustees in Washington, D.C. Prior to rejoining the Department of Justice in 2007, Ms. Elliott served for six years as counsel for bankruptcy and redress for the Bureau of Consumer Protection of the Federal Trade Commission, where she represented the FTC in bankruptcy and collection matters before district and bankruptcy courts. Before joining the FTC in 2001, Ms. Elliott served for seven years as a trial attorney and Acting Assistant U.S. Trustee with the U.S. Trustee Program, handling cases before bankruptcy courts in Florida, Puerto Rico and Maryland. In the private sector, she was an associate at Whiteford, Taylor & Preston in Baltimore, where she concentrated her practice in the areas of bankruptcy reorganizations and workouts, representing debtors, lenders, creditors’ committees and trustees. Ms. Elliott graduated from Emory University School of Law, where she served as the Recent Developments Editor of the Bankruptcy Developments Journal.
Ford Elsaesser is senior partner with Elsaesser, Jarzabek, Anderson, Marks, Elliott & McHugh, Chtd. in Sandpoint, Idaho, where he primarily practices in bankruptcy and corporate law, serving as receiver, trustee, expert witness and examiner in state and federal cases. He is admitted to the Idaho State Bar, the U.S. District Court for Idaho, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. Elsaesser is an adjunct professor at St. John’s University School of Law and the University of Idaho Law School and is a former ABI president. He received his B.A. from Goddard College and his J.D. from the University of Idaho Law School.
Barry S. Engel is the founding principal of the Colorado-based law firm of Engel & Reiman PC in Denver, and president emeritus, former Americas Branch Chair and a Fellow of the Offshore Institute, a multidisciplinary professional body based in the Isle of Man, British Isles. Mr. Engel is the lead author of the Asset Protection Planning Guide, (2d Ed., 2005) and the founder of Shore To Shore magazine, the official publication of the Offshore Institute. Mr. Engel has lectured on asset-protection planning and integrated estate planning to hundreds of programs both domestically and abroad, and was the consulting editor of The International Offshore and Financial Centres Handbook. He also served as the consulting editor of The Offshore Institute Membership Directory & Analysis from 1996-2000 and he wrote a regular column, “Shores,” while he served on the Editorial Advisory Board of Conspectus Current, a professional publication for planners. An expert witness in a number of litigation cases involving trusts, Mr. Engel has acted as a consultant to a number of offshore jurisdictions and was a co-author of the asset-protection trust law as enacted by the Parliament of the Cook Islands in 1989. He received his B.S. magna cum laude in business with an accounting emphasis from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1976 and his J.D. with honors from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law in 1979.
Sander L. Esserman is a founding partner and shareholder at Stutzman, Bromberg, Esserman and Plifka in Dallas, where he specializes in financial reorganizations and disputes, including lead counsel to debtors, secured creditors, trustees, indenture trustees and various creditors’ committees. He is an adjunct professor at the Southern Methodist University School of Law. Mr. Esserman has authored articles for the Southwestern Law Journal, the SMU Law Review, the Annual Survey of Texas Law and the New York University Annual Survey of American Law, and is also a contributing author to many publications. Mr. Esserman earned his B.A. cum laude at DePauw University, where he was the Omicron Delta Epsilon honorary for economics and a recipient of the Gold Key Award, and his J.D. at the Southern Methodist University School of Law, where he was the student editor for the Human Rights Law Journal and made the Dean’s List.
Hon. Joan N. Feeney has been a U.S. Bankruptcy Judge for the District of Massachusetts in Boston since 1992, serving as Chief Judge from 2002-06. Judge Feeney is also a member of the First Circuit Bankruptcy Appellate Panel. Prior to her appointment, she was a partner in the Boston law firm Hanify & King, P.C. and career law clerk to Hon. James N. Gabriel, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge for the District of Massachusetts. Judge Feeney is a member of the International Judicial Relations Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States, sits on ABI’s Board of Directors, is a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy and was a member of the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges’s Board of Governors from 2002-05, and currently serves on several NCBJ committees. From 2003-07, Judge Feeney was the First Circuit representative to the Bankruptcy Judges Advisory Group to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. She is co-chair of the Massachusetts Local Bankruptcy Rules Committee and the M. Ellen Carpenter Financial Literacy Project, a joint venture of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Massachusetts and the Boston Bar Association. A frequent panelist and lecturer on bankruptcy law topics throughout the country, Judge Feeney is the co-author of West’s Bankruptcy Law Manual. In 2005, Judge Feeney received the Boston Bar Association’s Haskell Cohn Award for Distinguished Judicial Service. Judge Feeney is a graduate of Connecticut College and Suffolk University Law School.
David A. Fiegel is a director of auction sales and services in North America at GoIndustry USA in Owings Mills, Md. Mr. Fiegel has more than 20 years in the auction business and has served as project manager and director of operations overseeing the day-to-day activities relating to commercial, industrial machinery and equipment and real estate sales. He has conducted or been involved in the coordination of countless machinery and equipment and real estate sales, both private and public;involving the sale of commercial and industrial property and equipment across the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia and Central America. Mr. Fiegel is a licensed real estate broker and auctioneer in many states, and is a certified equipment appraiser. His main industry focus and area of expertise is machine tools, metal fabrication, plastics and injection moulding, food processing and packaging (including beverage/bottling), pharmaceutical and wood-related products. Mr. Fiegel is the immediate past-president for the Upstate New York Chapter of the Turnaround Management Association (TMA), immediate past chair of the Presidents Council of TMA International and serves on the TMA International Board of Directors. He is a graduate of SUNY and the Certified Auctioneers Institute at Indiana University, Bloomington.
Robert M. Fishman is co-chair of the Bankruptcy, Reorganization and Creditors Rights practice at Shaw Gussis in Chicago, where his practice concentrates on debtor-creditor relations and insolvency and bankruptcy, representing a wide range of clients in business cases throughout the United States. He has extensive experience in all aspects of bankruptcy cases, including significant representation of trustees, debtors-in-possession, creditors’ and equity committees, secured and unsecured creditors and purchasers of assets and litigants in bankruptcy adversary proceedings. Additionally, he has experience in informal out-of-court workouts, receiverships and assignments for the benefit of creditors. Mr. Fishman has represented clients in numerous industries, including health care, telecommunications, manufacturing, real estate, retail, transportation, agriculture and financial services, and on behalf of both plaintiffs and defendants has analyzed, drafted and litigated numerous cases seeking the avoidance of preferential transfers and fraudulent conveyances. Mr. Fishman has been a member of ABI since 1986 and has served as its vice-president of education (1992-96) and president (1997-98) and chair (1999-2000) of its board of directors. He was elected a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy in 1998 and currently serves on its Board of Regents as the representative of the Seventh Circuit. Mr. Fishman received his B.A. from the University of Illinois and his J.D. from the George Washington University School of Law.
Edward M. Flint is a partner with Silverman Acampora LLP in Jerico, N.Y., where he represents purchasers and sellers of assets and businesses, owners in the restructuring of their businesses, debtors, creditors’ committees and chapter 11 bankruptcy trustees, and has broad experience in the representation of lenders, borrowers and landlords in commercial and real estate loan workouts and bankruptcy matters. He is active in local civic and charitable organizations, including the Long Island Association. Mr. Flint was the Editor-in-Chief of the Buffalo Law Review. He has frequently lectured and authored articles on issues arising under the Bankruptcy Code and New York State Debtor and Creditor Law. Mr. Flint is a past chair of the Banking, Commercial and Corporation Law Committee of the Suffolk County Bar Association.
Roger Frankel is a partner at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP in Washington, D.C., and chairman of its Restructuring Group. He has practiced in the areas of business reorganization and creditors’ rights since 1972, with an emphasis on complex legal transactions. Mr. Frankel represents major companies, fiduciaries, and financial institutions in debt restructuring and reorganization matters ranging from out-of-court workouts to proceedings. He represents secured and unsecured creditors, fiduciaries and other significant parties in chapter 11 cases, and has extensive experience representing public and private companies in connection with chapter 11 cases, including clients in the financial services, real estate, manufacturing, distribution, energy, telecommunications and service industries. Recently, he has been actively involved in the liquidity crisis affecting financial institutions, advising significant counter-parties with respect to their exposure to troubled financial institutions. Mr. Frankel serves on the advisory board for ABI’s annual Views from the Bench program and has appeared on the PBS news program “Nightly Business Report.” He is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia, the Third and Fifth Circuit Courts of Appeals and the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. He is also a member of both the Maryland and District of Columbia Bar Associations. Mr. Frankel has been recognized in Best Lawyers in America, Chambers USA ‑America’s Leading Business Lawyers and in Legal Media Group’s Expert Guide to the World’s Leading Insolvency and Restructuring Lawyers, as well as in Washingtonian magazine as one of “Washington’s Top Bankruptcy Lawyers.” He received his B.A. in 1968 from Brandeis University and his J.D. with honors from George Washington University Law School in 1971.
Jonathan P. Friedland is a partner and chairs the Restructuring & Insolvency Group at Levenfeld Pearlstein, LLC in Chicago, where he concentrates his practice in the areas of financial and operational restructurings, including out-of-court workouts and chapter 11 reorganizations and representation of buyers and sellers of distressed assets. He also represents nondistressed private companies in various aspects of their legal affairs. Mr. Friedland’s debtor representations have included both restructurings and liquidations of companies in a wide array of industries. He has also represented secured and unsecured creditors both inside and outside of chapter 11 proceedings. He regularly advises boards of directors and senior management with respect to a wide range of issues, including fiduciary duty concerns, structuring issues, negotiations with creditors, buy/sell transactions, DIP financing, chapter 11 entrance protocols and chapter 11 exit strategies. Mr. Friedland has litigated and negotiated preference, fraudulent conveyance, equitable subordination, substantive consolidation and confirmation issues to successful conclusion. Mr. Friedland was selected as an “Illinois Super Lawyer” by Chicago Magazine. He is also A/V rated and received a “superb” rating by AVVO. Mr. Friedland is also an executive editor of the ABI Journal. He received his J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and his B.S. from State University of New York at Albany magna cum laude after three years of study.
Robert C. Furr is a partner with Furr and Cohen, P.A. in Boca Raton, Fla., and serves as a panel trustee for the U.S. Department of Justice in the Southern District of Florida, where he oversees approximately 2,000 cases per year. He is regularly appointed as a chapter 11 trustee and has been designated as the chapter 12 trustee in the Southern District. Mr. Furr has represented creditors, debtors and trustees in bankruptcy proceedings for more than 30 years, and has represented numerous businesses in chapter 7 liquidation and chapter 11 reorganization as well as individuals in complex chapter 7 and 11 proceedings. From 2000-05, he was the editor of NABTalk, the journal of National Association of Bankruptcy Trustees (NABT), and has served on NABT’s board since 2000 and is currently its president. Mr. Furr has been president of the Bankruptcy Trustees Association for the Southern District of Florida for 15 years and he is serving on the board of directors of the American Board of Certification. He regularly lectures to national professional organizations on issues of bankruptcy, creditors’ rights and remedies, and is admitted and licensed to practice law in Georgia, Florida and all federal courts in Florida and the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. In 1983, Mr. Furr became a Board Certified Civil Trial Lawyer by the Florida Bar, and in 1994, he was certified as a Consumer Bankruptcy Lawyer and a Business Bankruptcy Lawyer by the American Board of Certification. He has tried numerous contested matters in bankruptcy proceedings including all types of adversary proceedings. Rated “AV” in Martindale Hubbell, Mr. Furr is listed in Best Lawyers in America and Super Lawyers in Florida. He received his J.D. from Emory University in 1975.
Donald L. Gaffney is a partner in the law firm of Snell & Wilmer L.L.P. in its Phoenix office. He is a member of standing committees and subcommittees of the American Bar Association and the Commercial Panel of the American Arbitration Association. Mr. Gaffney is admitted to the Arizona bar, the Ninth and Tenth Circuit Courts of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court. He has twice been chairman of the State Bar of Arizona Bankruptcy Section and has served as an adjunct professor and guest lecturer at Arizona State University’s Law School and Business School. Mr. Gaffney has been lead counsel in several international insolvency and fraud cases and has appeared as an expert on bankruptcy law in both the United States and Canada. He has recently served as an attorney representative to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judicial Conference. In 2006, he was the first privacy ombudsman appointed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court system. The author of numerous articles, he received his B.A. from Austin College as an Austin Scholar and his J.D. with honors from the University of Texas Law School, where he was an editor of the Texas Law Review.
O. Max Gardner III is the chief executive officer and vice president of litigation for Gardner & Botes, PLLC in Shelby, N.C., where he currently limits his practice to consumer bankruptcy cases and all consumer claims arising from those cases. He has been a featured speaker for years for bankruptcy bar groups and associations throughout the United States and has personally been a presenter at more than 200 such seminars. In October 2008, Mr. Gardner co-founded the Ultimate Litigation Boot Camp, where he has trained more than 300 consumer bankruptcy lawyers with his copyrighted “Bankruptcy Litigation Model.” strongHe was named the Outstanding Consumer Lawyer of 2004 by the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys (NACBA) and has been elected five times as a member of the “Legal Elite” of North Carolina lawyers by Business North Carolina magazine. He is the only consumer lawyer who has been named as a North Carolina “Super Lawyer” for three consecutive years by Law & Politics and the Charlotte Magazine. Mr. Gardner is a long-time member of NACBA, the National Association of Consumer Advocates (NACA), the North Carolina Bar Association and the North Carolina State Bar. Hestrong received his undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and graduated with high honors from the UNC School of Law, where he was a member of the North Carolina Law Review, president of the Student Bar Foundation, named the “Outstanding Law School Graduate of 1974” and elected to the Order of the Coif.
Jeffrey K. Garfinkle is a shareholder and head of Buchalter Nemer’s Insolvency and Bank and Finance Practice Groups in Irvine, Calif., where his practice encompasses the representation of secured creditors, creditors’ committees, unsecured creditors, debtors and other parties in a variety of bankruptcy and restructuring cases, including out of court workouts, throughout the United States. From 1991-2003, Mr. Garfinkle was an associate then senior counsel with Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison LLP. From 1990-91, he served as law clerk to Hon. Louise DeCarl Adler, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge for the Southern District of California. Mr. Garfinkle received his B.A. from the University of Florida in 1987 and his J.D. in 1990 from Emory University School of Law.
Leonard H. Gerson practices bankruptcy law in New York and has represented a wide variety of clients in chapter 11, including class-action plaintiffs, telecommunication companies, restaurant holding companies, retailers, manufacturers, developers and lenders. Mr. Gerson was lead counsel for Pamela Hood before the U.S. Supreme Court in the precedent-setting Eleventh Amendment case, Tennessee Student Assistance Corp. v. Hood, 541 U.S. 440 (2004). Previously, Mr. Gerson wrote numerous articles and argued and filed amicus curiae briefs in circuit courts of appeal-throughout the United States in which he challenged the application of the Seminole Tribe doctrine in bankruptcy. Mr. Gerson has served as a panelist in numerous conferences and Continuing Legal Education panels, including the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges.
U.S. Representative Louie Gohmert is a Congressman for the First District of Texas in Tyler, Texas, having been first sworn in on Jan. 4, 2005. Now into his third term, Rep. Gohmert is assigned to theHouse Committees on Judiciary, Resources and Small Business. Rep. Gohmert is the only former judge on the Judiciary Committee. The Congressman was named Ranking Member of the Judiciary subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security and the Judiciary subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims. Prior to his congressional election, Rep. Gohmert servedthree terms as district judge in Smith County, Texas. During his tenure on the bench, Rep. Gohmert gained national and international attention for some of his innovative rulings and was later appointed by Texas Gov. Rick Perry to complete a term as Chief Justice of the Twelfth Court of Appeals. He is also a former captain in the U.S. Army. He received his undergraduate degree from Texas A&M University, where he was class president and served as a brigade commander of the Corps of Cadets, and his J.D. from Baylor School of Law, where he was class president.
H. Jason Gold is the chair of Wiley Rein’s Bankruptcy & Financial Restructuring Practice. He has more than 25 years of experience counseling clients on restructuring and insolvency matters, and in recent years, he has focused on major telecommunications, retail, real estate and aviation cases. He has also served as a bankruptcy trustee for more than 20 years and has liquidated or participated in the restructure of dozens of businesses. Mr. Gold leads a group of bankruptcy lawyers that is called upon by all types of clients in chapter 11 cases and other insolvency-related restructurings or liquidations. He has been named a “Top Bankruptcy Lawyer” by Washingtonian magazine and recognized as one of “The Best Lawyers in America” for bankruptcy and creditor-debtor rights law.
Israel Goldowitz is chief counsel of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, where his work focuses on ERISA Title IV and bankruptcy practice. He began his career with the United Mine Workers of America Health of Retirement Funds, where he rose to deputy general counsel. His publications include articles on choice of law in bankruptcy in the Norton Bankruptcy Adviser and ABI Journal, a chapter on withdrawal liability in J. Zanglein & S. Stabile, ERISA Litigation (BNA 3d ed. 2008), and an article on distress terminations for the ABI Pension Committee newsletter. Mr. Goldowitz has spoken before the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans, the University of Texas Bankruptcy Conference, the William T. O’Neill Great Lakes Regional Bankruptcy Conference, the Sixth Circuit Judicial Conference and ABI’s Winter Leadership Conference, among others. He is a Fellow in the American College of Employee Benefits Counsel, and co-teaches “ERISA: Plan Termination and Withdrawal Liability” as an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. He earned his B.A. from Boston University and his J.D. from George Washington University.
Michael H. Goldstein is a shareholder with Greenberg Traurig, LLP in Santa Monica, Calif. He has more than 20 years of experience in representing debtors, sponsors, bondholders, creditors, committees and purchasers of distressed assets. His representations have spanned a variety of industries, including chemicals, finance, health care, hospitality, high-tech printing, real estate, retail and technology. Admitted to practice in California, he is a member of the American Bar Association, Los Angeles County Bar Association, Turnaround Management Association and ABI and is a board member of the Association of Insolvency and Restructuring Advisors (ARA). Mr. Goldstein is a contributing author to Collier on Bankruptcy, “Chapter 9-Adjustment of Debts of a Municipality,” and author of “Res Judicata Strikes Twice,” 21-8 ABI Journal (October 2002). An active participant in chapter 11-related conferences, including panels at the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges, ABI, AIRA and the International Council of Shopping Centers, Mr. Goldstein has lectured on second-lien debt, subprime lending, conflicts of interest, litigating confirmation issues, valuation, expert testimony, compensation of professionals and executory contracts in retail chapter 11 cases. He was listed in Southern California Super Lawyers magazine from 2005-08 and The Best Lawyers in America from 2005-09. Mr. Goldstein received his B.S. magna cum laude from Franklin and Marshall College and his J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School.
David A. Gozdecki is a managing director of GE Capital in its Restructuring Financing Group in Chicago, specializing in providing financing in turnaround and restructuring situations to midsize and large companies in the U.S. and Canadian markets. He has approximately 25 years of business experience with 20 years of financial experience in the area of lending to companies in financial distress. Industry experience encompasses, but not limited to, various manufacturing industries, automotive, steel and forging operations, tool & die, injection molding, pulp & paper, consumer products, service industries, retail, health care, technology, contractors, catalog/mail order, distribution and transportation. Prior to joining GE Capital, Mr. Gozdecki was employed by ABN AMRO/LaSalle Business Credit, Fleet Capital Corp., The Northern Trust Corp., Brunswick Corp. and USG Corp. He received his B.S. in accounting from Indiana University and his J.D. from John Marshall Law School and is a certified public accountant.
Lisa Sommers Gretchko is a partner at the firm of Howard & Howard Attorneys PC in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., where she concentrates her practice in creditors’ rights and commercial litigation. She has represented nearly every constituency in bankruptcy courts around the country, including secured creditors, unsecured creditors’ committees, landlords, licensors of intellectual property, business debtors and trustees, and has litigated many bankruptcy related issues. She also has lectured extensively for many organizations on various creditors’ rights issues. In addition, Ms. Gretchko was an associate editor of the University of Detroit’s Journal of Urban Law. As a recent adjunct professor at Wayne State University Law School, she taught bankruptcy law and creditors’ rights. She received her B.A. with honors from the University of Michigan and her J.D. cum laude from the University of Detroit, where she was awarded the National Order of the Barrister and elected to the Justice Frank Murphy Honor Society.
Hon. Kevin Gross has been a judge for the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware in Wilmington, Del., since March 2006. Before joining the bankruptcy court, he practiced general litigation with particular emphasis on the representation of shareholders and later developed his practice toward bankruptcy as he served as director of Rosenthal, Monhait & Goddess PA in Wilmington, Del., in 1985. He has most recently served as ombudsman for the U.S. District Court from 1977-2006 and was a member of the Board of Professional Responsibility of Delaware Supreme Court from 2005-06. He was also the chairperson of the Advisory Committee for the U.S. District Court of Delaware from 1995-2005. Judge Gross’ honors include Best Lawyers of America membership and the first annual Caleb R. Layton III Service Award by the district court in 1996. He received his Bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Delaware in 1974 and received his Master’s degree in 1977 at Washington College of Law of American University, where he was a member of the law review.
Cathy Rae Hershcopf is a partner in the bankruptcy and restructuring practice of Cooley Godward Kronish LLP in New York, where she concentrates on debtor and creditor’s rights in chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings and out-of-court restructurings and workouts. She focuses on representing buyers and sellers of real estate, inventory, intellectual property and other assets in distressed situations, and extraordinary depth representing committees of unsecured creditors in retail cases nationwide. Over the past several years, Ms. Hershcopf has represented unsecured creditors’ committees in some of the most significant retail chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings throughout the country.
Steven L. Higgs is the principal of Steven L. Higgs, P.C. in Roanoke, Va., where he specializes in bankruptcy (limited to representing creditors), creditors’ rights, civil litigation and real estate. Mr. Higgs is a frequent speaker for Virginia CLE and is a contributing author to five Virginia Lawyers Practice Handbooks: Bankruptcy Practice in Virginia (2004, Supp. 2005), Debt Collection for Virginia Lawyers ‑A Systematic Approach (3d Ed. 2007), Enforcement of Liens and Judgments in Virginia (5th Ed. 2004, Supp. 2006), Virginia Foreclosure Practice (1999, Supp. 2001) and The Virginia Lawyer—A Deskbook for Practitioners (2004, Supp. 2004). He is the author or co-author of more than 75 articles, seminar outlines or book chapters on bankruptcy law, creditors’ rights law, legal ethics and real estate foreclosures. Mr. Higgs is Board Certified by the American Board of Certification in both Creditors’ Rights Law and in Consumer Bankruptcy Law. He is a past president of the Roanoke Bar Association and is a member of the American Bar Association, the Virginia State Bar and ABI. He received his B.A. from Washington & Lee University in 1980 and his J.D. in 1983 from the T.C. Williams School of Law, University of Richmond.
Henry E. Hildebrand, III has served as standing trustee for chapter 13 matters in the Middle District of Tennessee in Nashville since 1982 and as standing chapter 12 trustee for that district since 1986. He also is Of Counsel to the Nashville law firm of Lassiter, Tidwell, Davis, Keller & Hogan, PLLC. A Fellow and education committee board member of the American College of Bankruptcy, Mr. Hildebrand is Board Certified in consumer bankruptcy law by the American Board of Certification. He is chair of the Legislative and Legal Affairs Committee for the National Association of Chapter 13 Trustees (NACTT) and serves on its board of directors for its NACTT Academy for Consumer Bankruptcy Education, Inc. Since 1991, Mr. Hildebrand has served as case notes author for The Quarterly, a newsletter dealing with consumer bankruptcy issues and chapter 13 practice, and he is a regular contributor to the ABI Journal. An adjunct faculty member for the Nashville School of Law and St. Johns University School of Law, Mr. Hildebrand graduated from Vanderbilt University and received his J.D. from the National Law Center of George Washington University.
Hon. Jeffery Paul Hopkins is a U.S. Bankruptcy Judge for the Southern District of Ohio in Cincinnati, appointed in April 1996. He previously served as a law clerk in the Ohio Court of Appeals and practiced law at Squire, Sanders & Dempsey. He has also been an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio and an adjunct professor at U.C. College of Law, and was appointed by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist to the Federal Judicial Center’s Advisory Committee on Bankruptcy Judge Education in 2003 and the Advisory Committee on Bankruptcy Rules in 2007. Judge Hopkins is a member of the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges and sits on ABI’s Board of Directors. He received his A.B. from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, in 1982 and his J.D. from Ohio State University’s Michael E. Moritz College of Law in 1985.
Hon. Barbara J. Houser is the Chief U.S. Bankruptcy Judge in the Northern District of Texas in Dallas. Upon graduation from law school, she joined Locke, Purnell, Boren, Laney & Neeley in Dallas and became a shareholder in 1985. Judge Houser joined Sheinfeld, Maley & Kay PC in 1988 as the shareholder in charge of the Dallas office and remained there until she was sworn in as a bankruptcy judge on Jan. 20, 2000. She was elected a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy in 1994 and currently sits on its Board of Directors, and was elected to membership in the National Bankruptcy Conference in 1996 and currently serves as a member of its Executive Committee. Judge Houser has recently been named President-Elect of the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges, with her term commencing Fall 2008. Lecturing and publishing frequently on corporate restructuring and insolvency law, she is a visiting professor of law at the Dedman School of Law at Southern Methodist University, where she teaches creditors’ rights. Judge Houser is a contributing author to Collier on Bankruptcy (15th Ed.) and the Collier Bankruptcy Manual (3rd Ed.), and the National Law Journal named her one of the 50 most influential women lawyers in America in 1998. She received her J.D. from Southern Methodist University’s law school in 1978.
Prof. Margaret Howard is the Law Alumni Association Professor of Law at Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Va. She has also served on the faculties of Vanderbilt and St. Louis Universities, and has visited at Duke, Emory, UNC and Washington University. During the spring of 2001, Prof. Howard was the Bruce W. Nichols Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School, and in the fall of 2005 she was the Charles E. Tweedy, Jr. Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Alabama. Prof. Howard served as ABI’s resident scholar in the spring of 2004. A member of the Order of the Coif and the American Law Institute, she is a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy and is listed in Who’s Who of American Women. One of her articles, “Shifting Risk and Fixing Blame: The Vexing Problem of Credit Card Obligations in Bankruptcy,” 75 Am. Bankr. L.J. 63 (2001), won the Editors’ Prize for the best article published in the Journal in that year and she has written chapters in two treatises: “Bankruptcy and the Real Estate Lessor” in Bankruptcy Reorganization (Hendel, Hillinger & Queenan, eds.), and “Exemptions” in Norton Bankruptcy Law and Practice. Prof. Howard is a former vice-chair of the ABA Business Bankruptcy Committee’s Avoiding Powers Subcommittee, and is past chair of the section on Creditors’ and Debtors’ Rights of the Association of American Law Schools. She has served on the faculties of the American Board of Certification and the Association of Certified Turnaround Professionals. Prof. Howard also serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Bankruptcy Law and Practice and has recently completed terms on the editorial boards of The Business Lawyer and the American Bankruptcy Law Journal. She is a peer reviewer for the ABLJ and currently serves on ABI’s Board of Directors. Prof. Howard received her undergraduate degree from Duke University, her J.D. and M.S.W. from Washington University in St. Louis and her LL.M. from Yale Law School.
Hon. Kevin R. Huennekens was appointed as a U.S. Bankruptcy Judge for the Eastern District of Virginia in Richmond on Sept. 11, 2006. Prior to his appointment, Judge Huennekens was a partner with the firm of Kutak Rock LLP. He also served as a panel trustee for the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Virginia (1988-2006). He is the co-editor of Virginia CLE Publication Bankruptcy Practice in Virginia (2004). Judge Huennekens is a fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy and a member of the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges and ABI. He was also recognized in Who’s Who Legal USA: Insolvency & Restructuring and The International Who’s Who of Insolvency and Restructuring in 2006 and was listed in the Best Lawyers in America from 1995 to 2006. He is a planning committee member of the Annual Mid-Atlantic Institute on Bankruptcy and Reorganization Practice and has also been a speaker at Virginia CLE courses on basic and advanced bankruptcy. He received his B.A. from the College of William & Mary and his J.D. from the Marshall-Wythe School of Law at the College of William & Mary, where he was a member of the Order of the Coif and the Law Review. He has also been an adjunct professor of law at the College of William & Mary Marshall-Wythe School of Law.
Oliver I. Ireland is a partner in the Financial Services Practice Group of Morrison & Foerster’s Washington, D.C., office, where he focuses primarily on retail financial services including electronic commerce and compliance with Federal Reserve regulations. His practice also includes all types of payment transactions, including compliance with NACHA rules, bank regulatory issues and other aspects of financial markets such as margin lending. Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Ireland served as associate general counsel of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, vice president and associate general counsel of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and attorney for the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Mr. Ireland has been named one of Washington’s top banking and privacy lawyers by the Washingtonian magazine (2004) and he is listed in The Best Lawyers in America (2006-09) and Washington DC Super Lawyers (2008) as a leader in the field of banking law. He was named a leading lawyer in financial services law in the Chambers USA Guide to America’s Leading Business Lawyers (2006-08).
Hon. Laurel M. Isicoff is a U.S. Bankruptcy Judge for the Southern District of Florida in Miami
and is the first woman to be named to the post. Previously, she was a partner with the Miami law firm
Kozyak Tropin & Throckmorton, where she has specialized in bankruptcy law, distressed property workouts, commercial mortgage foreclosures and commercial landlord/tenant litigation. Judge Isicoff earned her law degree from the University of Miami School of Law with honors in 1982. She was admitted to the Florida Bar in 1982, and has practiced bankruptcy law in Florida since 1984. Judge Isicoff is a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy, and in 2005 was named in the Best Lawyers in America. Chambers USA has also listed her in “America’s Leading Lawyers for Business.” She has served as president of the Bankruptcy Bar Association of the Southern District of Florida and director of the Florida Association of Women Lawyers, and she is an active member of the American Bar Association, ABI, the University of Miami School of Law Center for Ethics and Public Service, the Cuban American Bar Association and the Gwen S. Cherry Black Women Lawyers Association.
Gary S. Jacobson is a shareholder of Herold and Haines, P.A. in Warren, N.J., where he has represented debtors in possession, creditors committees, secured creditors, trustees and landlords in numerous bankruptcy cases in New Jersey, New York and Delaware. He acts as attorney for individual creditors in prosecuting their claims in insolvency cases and defending against complaints alleging preferential payment and fraudulent transfer. Since 1997, Mr. Jacobson has served as a panel chapter 7 trustee in the Newark and Trenton vicinages of New Jersey, and was president of the New Jersey Bankruptcy Trustees Association. Prior to joining Herold and Haines, Mr. Jacobson served as a Special Assistant Attorney General investigating corruption in New York City, and was a partner of a New Jersey bankruptcy boutique and of a national law firm based in its New York and New Jersey offices. He is a graduate of Wesleyan University and Northwestern University School of Law.
Laura Davis Jones is a name and managing partner of Pachulski Stang Ziehl & Jones LLP in Wilmington, Del., where she has represented numerous debtors, creditors’ committees, bank groups, acquirers and other significant constituencies in national chapter 11 cases and workout proceedings. She lectures at national bankruptcy and litigation seminars, and has authored numerous articles. Ms. Jones is regularly listed in The American Lawyer, the “Best Lawyers in Delaware,” “Delaware Super Lawyers,” Chambers USA America’s “Leading Lawyers for Business,” the K&A Restructuring Register and the International Who’s Who of Insolvency and Restructuring Lawyers, and holds a Martindale-Hubbell AV peer rating. Ms. Jones is a contributing author to ABI’s Business Bankruptcy Acquisitions. She is a graduate of University of Delaware and received her J.D. from Dickinson School of Law, where she was on the board of editors and served as a business manager for the Dickinson Law Review, as well as the Appellate Moot Court Board.
Eve H. Karasik is a senior shareholder of Stutman Treister & Glatt in Los Angeles, where she focuses on the representation of operating debtors in chapter 11 cases, as well as creditor and equity committees, in venues throughout the country. Ms. Karasik is the author of “A Normative Analysis of Disclosure, Privacy, and Computers: The State Cases,” 10 Computer/L.J. 603, 1990, and is a member of ABI, the State Bar of California’s Business Law Section of its Insolvency Law Committee, the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s Commercial Law and Bankruptcy Section, the International Women’s Insolvency and Restructuring Confederation (IWIRC), the Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles and California Women Lawyers. Ms. Karasik received her B.A. in history in 1984 with high honors from the University of California, Berkeley and her J.D. in 1991 from the University of Southern California, where she was admitted to the Order of the Coif. In addition, she served as the managing editor of the University of Southern California Computer Law and Major Tax Planning journals.
Stephen M. Karbelk is the president and founder of National Commercial Auctioneers in Tulsa, Okla., a national auction company that focuses exclusively on the sale of commercial real estate at auction. For the past 18 years, Mr. Karbelk has been involved in the sale of all types of commercial property, including motels and hotels, office buildings, industrial and manufacturing facilities, multifamily complexes, shopping centers, development land, office/retail/warehouse condominiums, gas stations and c-stores, bank branches, restaurants, marinas, car wash and oil lube service centers, assisted living facilities, churches, car dealerships and many other special-purpose commercial properties. He has also sold various types of commercial assets involved in complex sale situations, such as intellectual property, commercial equipment, receivables and the sale and assignment of commercial leases in bankruptcy and reorganization. He holds the Certified Auctioneers Institute designation and the Accredited Auctioneer of Real Estate designation. Mr. Karbelk is also the current president of the TMA – Oklahoma Chapter and a past president of the TMA – Chesapeake Chapter. Mr. Karbelk graduated from George Mason University and serves as an instructor at the Worldwide College of Auctioneering.
George Kase is with Marlin Equity Partners in El Segundo Hills, Calif., where he is focused on consumer products, retail and service businesses. Prior to joining Marlin Equity Partners, he was a management consultant for McKinsey & Co., where he worked with clients on various strategic issues, including acquisition strategy and due diligence, corporate strategy, sales and marketing, and operations and organization. Previously, Mr. Kase was an investment banker with CIBC Oppenheimer, focused on mergers and acquisitions. He received his B.A. in economics from UCLA, where he was an Academic-All American, and his M.B.A. from Stanford University.
Peter S. Kaufman has been managing director of Gordian Group, LLC in New York since 1990 and is president and head of Gordian’s Restructuring and Distressed M&A practice. Previously he was at First Boston Corp., where he was a founding member of its Distressed Securities Group. He has more than 25 years of experience in the business of solving complex financial challenges as an investment banker and attorney. Mr. Kaufman co-authored the leading book in the field, Distressed Investment Banking: To the Abyss and Back, published in 2005 by Beard Books LLC and available through the ABI Bookstore at www.abiworld.org/abistore. He is also co-author of “The Role of the Investment Banker” chapter in ABI’s Bankruptcy Business Acquisitions, LexMed Publishing, 1998, which details various strategies and tactics used in distressed situations, and “Trading in the Distressed Market,” Investing in Bankruptcies and Turnarounds, Harper Collins Publishers, 1991. Mr. Kaufman is the founding co-chair of ABI’s Investment Banking Committee. He is also a contributing editor for the ABI Journal’s Straight & Narrow column and has consistently been named one of the 10 leading national investment bankers in financial restructurings by The Deal magazine. Mr. Kaufman is NASD-licensed in the Series 7, 24 and 63. He received his B.A.s with honors in history and art history from Yale College and received his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he was in the top 25 percent of his class.
J. Drexel Knight is a principal at Parkway Capital Investors, LLC in Towson, Md. Prior to establishing Parkway Capital Investors in 2000, he was the Mid-Atlantic Credit Products Executive for the Bank of America, and before that he held numerous executive positions in various subsidiaries of MNC Financial. Mr. Knight presently serves on the AD Subsidiary, LLC, Mercy Health Services and The CollegeBound Foundation. He received his B.S. from the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia.
Larry Lattig is a senior managing director and executive vice president with Mesirow Financial Consulting LLC in Dallas and has more than 11 years of experience advising creditors’ committees in bankruptcies, lenders in workout situations, companies and creditors in liquidations, buyers and sellers in mergers and acquisition transactions, and parties in financing and financial transactions. Previously, Mr. Lattig served in corporate executive positions including treasurer, chief financial officer, vice president of mergers and acquisitions, vice president of strategic marketing, vice president of investor relations, and chief operating officer, president and CEO in both private and NYSE-listed public companies. He has also served as chief restructuring officer and/or CEO in a number of public and private companies in both bankruptcy and out-of-court restructurings. Mr. Lattig is a recognized expert in the retail industry and has written in several industry publications and been a featured speaker at several industry conferences. He has also been a frequent speaker on treasury, high-technology, consumer finance, retail, corporate governance and the obligations of officers and directors in troubled companies.
H. Kenneth Lefoldt, Jr. is a shareholder in the firm of Lefoldt & Co., P.A., CPAs in Ridgeland, Miss., where he is a Certified Public Accountant, Certified Fraud Examiner and a Certified Insolvency and Restructuring Advisor. Mr. Lefoldt is a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy, serves as a chapter 11 trustee and is past president of the Association of Insolvency and Restructuring Advisors (2000-02). He has lectured on various financial-related bankruptcy topics at seminars sponsored by the Mississippi College School of Law, Association of Insolvency and Restructuring Advisors, Central California Bankruptcy Association, ABI and the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges. Mr. Lefoldt has served as an adjunct professor at the Millsaps College School of Business and has been included in the Best Lawyers in America Directory of Experts. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Notre Dame in accounting and his M.B.A. from Loyola University in New Orleans.
Robert L. LeHane is Special Counsel at Kelley Drye & Warren LLP in New York, where his practice focuses on corporate restructuring, creditors’ rights and landlord representation in retail bankruptcy cases. Mr. LeHane regularly represents owners and management companies of shopping centers in retail bankruptcy cases, secured and unsecured creditors, creditors’ committees and lenders, within and outside the bankruptcy context. He has extensive experience representing shopping center landlords with multiple leases in retail bankruptcy cases across the United States. Over the past five years, Mr. LeHane has taken a lead role protecting landlord rights throughout the bankruptcy process by ensuring debtor compliance with leases and the Bankruptcy Code in connection with debtor-in-possession financing, lease auctions and chapter 11 reorganization plans, defending claim objections and participating in creditors’ committees on behalf of landlords. He is a member of ABI, where he writes for the ABI Journal, the International Council of Shopping Centers, the American Bar Association and the Federal Bar Council. He earned his B.A. at the State University of New York, University at Albany and his J.D. at the University at Buffalo School of Law.
Joel H. Levitin is a partner in the bankruptcy and restructuring group at Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP in New York, where he represents distressed companies, acquirers of such companies, agents and lenders as well as trustees, boards of directors and equity sponsors in corporate restructurings and reorganizations, both in and out of court. Mr. Levitin is an active member of ABI, where he served on the board of directors and as a committee chair for several years, and the Licensing Executives Society, where he co-chaired the IP/Bankruptcy Committee. He is a member of the Turnaround Management Association and served on the board of directors of the American Board of Certification. Mr. Levitin was a member of the Committee on Bankruptcy and Corporate Reorganization of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York and its working Subcommittee on Professional Disinterestedness. From 1993-96, he was an adjunct professor at Temple University School of Law, where he lectured on all aspects of corporate reorganization in chapter 11. Mr. Levitin earned his A.B. with distinction magna cum laude from Duke University and his J.D. with honors from the University of Chicago Law School. He served as a law clerk to the Hon. Norma L. Shapiro of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
David Lincicum is a staff attorney with the Division of Privacy and Identity Protection in Washington, D.C., a component of the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the Federal Trade Commission with responsibility for federal statutes and regulations that pertain to information security and consumer privacy. Mr. Lincicum graduated from the University of Southern California Law School, subsequently clerking for Hon. Judge A. Wallace Tashima at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Following his clerkship, he became an associate at Sidley Austin LLP in Los Angeles, specializing in consumer class actions. Later, he joined the Federal Trade Commission, where his work focuses primarily on identity theft and the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
William N. Lobel is the managing partner at the Lobel Firm in Newport Beach, Calif., where he focuses his practice on bankruptcy, reorganization and creditors’ rights, representation of borrowers in connection with informal (out-of-court) financial restructuring and debtors-in-possession in chapter 11 cases. Mr. Lobel also represents trustees and creditors’ committees in complex chapter 11 and chapter 7 cases. Mr. Lobel’s past representations have also included representation of clients in the real estate, hospitality, technology, health care, entertainment and food service industries. Mr. Lobel has been recognized as a leading bankruptcy/restructuring lawyer by Chambers & Partners in its 2008 Chambers USA Leading Lawyers for Business Guide and was selected for inclusion in Southern California “Super Lawyers” by Los Angeles Magazine in 2006-08. Mr. Lobel has also been selected for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America for 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009 of bankruptcy and creditor-debtor rights law. Mr. Lobel is a frequent lecturer and panel member. He is a founder and past president of the Orange County Bankruptcy Forum and the California Bankruptcy Forum. In 1999, Mr. Lobel was the recipient of the First Annual Peter M. Elliot award, given to honor his “Outstanding Scholarship, Ethics and Service to the Orange County Bankruptcy Community.” In 1998, Mr. Lobel was an adjunct professor at the University of Miami Law School and is presently a lecturer in the area of real estate bankruptcy at the University of Southern California Law School. In 2005, he became a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy. In 2006, Mr. Lobel became a member of the Dean’s Counsel of Chapman Law School. He earned both his B.A. and J.D. cum laude at the University of Miami, where he was secretary to his law school class, served as an associate editor of the University of Miami Law Review, executive editor of the law school yearbook, Amicus Curie and was elected to the Bar and Gavel and Wig and Robe honorary societies.
T. Michael Logan is the managing director of Suntrust Bank’s Special Assets Group in Atlanta, where he leads the section that handles the corporate and commercial distressed loans within SunTrust’s portfolio. Prior to assuming responsibility for his current group, he headed up the Global Trade Solutions Group, which included Trade Finance, Trade Solutions and International Correspondent Banking and Receivables Capital Management (the bank’s factoring company). Previously, he managed the Corporate Special Assets Group. He also has worked at First National Bank in St. Louis and as a turnaround management consultant. Mr. Logan previously served as a national director for both the Bank Association for Finance and Trade and the Turnaround Management Association.
Timothy M. Lupinacci is the managing shareholder of the Birmingham, Ala. office of Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, PC. and is a member of the firm’s Bankruptcy and Restructure Practice Group. His practice focuses primarily on the representation of special servicers, banks, financial institutions and asset-based lenders in loan workouts and insolvency, with an emphasis on creative restructuring of problem loans in long-term care and seniors’ housing defaults. Mr. Lupinacci has spoken on creditors’ rights and chapter 11 issues for several organizations and is very active in the American Bar Association. He has been selected for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America since 2004 and Alabama Super Lawyers. Mr. Lupinacci was named by the Birmingham Business Journal as one of Birmingham’s Top 100 Influential Business Leaders (2008) and to its Top 40 Under 40 list (1999). Mr. Lupinacci has published numerous articles on various aspects of bankruptcy law and is a contributing editor to the Norton Bankruptcy Law and Practice 2nd Treatise and the soon-to-be published Norton Bankruptcy Law and Practice 3rd Treatise. He received his B.A. cum laude from the University of Montevallo and his J.D. from Vanderbilt University.
Mark M. Maloney is a partner with King & Spalding in Atlanta and a member of its Financial Restructuring Practice Group. He represents a broad range of clients in litigation matters involving creditors’ rights, bankruptcy, lender liability and other financial and commercial disputes. He has represented debtors, official committees, secured and unsecured creditors and other parties in interest in major chapter 11 bankruptcy cases and other insolvency proceedings in more than 20 states and the District of Columbia. Mr. Maloney also has experience in general commercial litigation and tax litigation and is admitted in both the U.S. Court of Federal Claims and the U.S. Tax Court. He is a frequent lecturer on bankruptcy topics and has served as a faculty member and co-chair for ABI’s Litigation Skills Symposium. His published works have appeared in the Annual Survey of Bankruptcy Law, the Washington & Lee Law Review and Bankruptcy Litigation. Mr. Maloney was listed as one of the top bankruptcy attorneys in the country from 2003-05 by The Deal Magazine, and was selected by his peers as a “Georgia Super Lawyer” for the years of 2004-06 in Atlanta Magazine. Mr. Maloney received his B.B.A. cum laude in banking and finance from the University of Mississippi and his J.D. magna cum laude from Washington & Lee University, where he was senior articles editor on the Washington & Lee Law Review.
Prof. Ronald J. Mann is a professor at Columbia Law School in New York, with previous tenured appointments at Michigan, Texas and Washington University. He is a nationally recognized scholar and teacher in the fields of commercial law and electronic commerce. Following law school, he clerked for Hon. Joseph T. Sneed on the Ninth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals and Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. of the U.S. Supreme Court. After three years in private practice, Prof. Mann joined the Justice Department as an Assistant for the Solicitor General of the United States. He is also a member of the American Law Institute and recently served as the reporter for the amendments to Articles 3 and 4 of the Uniform Commercial Code. His book on the global credit card industry, Charging Ahead: The Growth and Regulation of Payment Card Markets Around the World, was recently published by Cambridge University Press. Prof. Mann has also authored or co-authored two widely used commercial law casebooks: Commercial Transactions: A Systems Approach (with Lynn LoPucki, Elizabeth Warren and Daniel Keating, 2nd ed. 2003) and Payment Systems and Other Financial Transactions: Cases, Materials, and Problems (4th ed. 2008). His textbook Electronic Commerce (3rd ed. 2008) is the first American legal casebook in electronic commerce. He received his J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law, where he graduated first in his class and was the managing editor of the Texas Law Review.
Mark Manski is a managing director with Barclays Capital in New York and heads its workout practice for the Americas. Before joining Barclays Capital, Mr. Manski was founder and president of a consulting firm that specialized in providing strategic, operational, managerial and financial advisory services to stressed companies. Earlier in his career, he headed the workout unit and credit division at IBJ Schroder Bank & Trust Co. Mr. Manski has served on a number of official chapter 11 creditors’ committees and bank steering groups, and has acted as bank agent in several matters. He has served on the board of directors for the Grand Union Co., New World Network International and Tower Records. He has also served as a chief restructuring officer and CEO for a direct mail company and was employed as in-house counsel to a number of organizations. He received his J.D. in 1975.
Kenneth S. Marks is a partner in Susman Godfrey LLP in Houston, where he has represented plaintiffs and defendants in a wide variety of cases, including securities, antitrust, ERISA, RICO, various pollution statutes and the full range of common-law actions. Mr. Marks has served as counsel and lead counsel on behalf of the class in numerous class actions. Mr. Marks graduated from Northwestern University and received his J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law. He was a judicial clerk for the Hon. Will Garwood of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
James T. Markus is the co-founder and manager of Block Markus & Williams LLC in Denver and is certified by the American Board Certification in Business Bankruptcy Law. Mr. Markus specializes in the representation of debtors, secured creditors, lessors, asset purchasers, official committees, and trustees in workouts, restructurings and chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. He is ABI’s Vice President-Education and is a former director of the American Board of Certification, for which he was a former president and chairman. Mr. Markus is a director and president of the Colorado Chapter of the Turnaround Management Association and is a member of the Bankruptcy Subcommittee for the Colorado Bar Association. He is also a Fellow in the American College of Bankruptcy and is admitted to the Colorado and Illinois State Bars. He is the founder and chair of ABI’s Rocky Mountain Bankruptcy Conference and has lectured before the American Bar Association, ABI, Colorado Bar Association, Chicago Bar Association, Equipment Leasing Association, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Savings and Community Lender’s Association and the Turnaround Management Association on creditors’ rights and bankruptcy law issues. Mr. Markus received his B.S.E. in chemical engineering with high honors from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1985 and his J.D. from the University of Michigan School of Law in 1988.
Daryl Martin oversees the valuation division at CONSOR Intellectual Asset Management in La Jolla, Calif. He is responsible for analyzing various types of intellectual property and intangible assets including trademarks, copyrights, patents, trade secrets, domain names, mailing lists and customer databases. With more than 10 years of financial analysis and valuation experience, Mr. Martin has worked on more than 250 valuation projects. His extensive background includes valuing intangible assets for the purposes of loan securitization, acquisitions/mergers, joint ventures, licensing transactions, transfer pricing, bankruptcy filings and litigation support. Mr. Martin is a frequent lecturer and author on a diverse array of intellectual property matters, particularly trademarks and copyrights, and has taught intellectual property valuation and damage calculation techniques to a wide variety of audiences. He has also been called on to calculate damages related to infringement of intellectual property in a multitude of bankruptcy and litigation matters. He is an honors graduate of San Diego State University with his undergraduate degree in business administration and his masters degree in finance.
Jeff J. Marwil is a partner and co-chair in Winston & Strawn’s Restructuring and Insolvency Group in Chicago, where he utilizes his 22 years of experience in the bankruptcy, workout and corporate restructuring area, and has developed a reputation for providing sophisticated strategic advice to upper-tier companies in distress and solving challenging legal and business issues. He concentrates his practice on hedge funds in distress, including hedge fund restructurings, wind-downs and liquidations. Mr. Marwil represents the hedge funds, the managers/advisers and sophisticated fund-of-fund and pension plan investors in hedge fund restructurings, wind-downs and complex litigation matters. He recently served as lead fund counsel for a complex of several alternative strategy funds seeking to restructure in the midst of the current unprecedented market conditions. Mr. Marwil also represented some of the largest investor creditors in the attempted restructuring, and now wind-down, of a multibillion dollar on-shore and off-shore affiliated group of multi-strategy hedge funds. He received his B.A. from the University of Michigan and his J.D. from DePaul University College of Law, where he was a member of the Law Review.
Robert McCarrickis the senior managing director of GE Healthcare Financial Services in Bethesda, Md., where he is responsible for the corporate finance business within GE Healthcare Financial services. He has helped achieve significant growth within the leveraged finance and asset based markets by increasing product penetration, expanding into new markets and through new product offerings.
Harvey R. Miller is a partner in the law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges, LLP in New York, where he had been a member of the firm’s management committee for more than 25 years and created and developed the firm’s Business Finance & Restructuring department specializing in reorganizing distressed business entities. From September 2002 to March 2007, he was a managing director and vice chairman of Greenhill & Co. Mr. Miller serves as adjunct professor of law at New York University Law School, and is a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School and lecturer in law at Columbia University School of Law. A member of Columbia University School of Law’s Board of Visitors and Dean’s Council, he is also a member of the National Bankruptcy Conference, a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy, a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and a trustee of the Committee on Economic Development. He received his B.A. from Brooklyn College in 1954 and his J.D. from Columbia University in 1959.
Thomas A. Morrow is a managing director at AlixPartners LLP in Southfield, Mich., where his work has focused on helping companies improve profitability through better management of their cash flow, cost structure and human resources. He provides expertise in financial, operational and business analysis, loan workouts and restructurings, and creditor negotiations. Prior to joining AlixPartners, he was with Wendy’s International, where he was responsible for franchisee restructurings. Mr. Morrow’s restructuring engagements include BHM Technologies, Pacific Lumber, Dura Corp., Dana Corp. and Core-Mark International. A Certified Insolvency and Restructuring Advisor and a Certified Turnaround Professional, Mr. Morrow serves on the board of the Association of Insolvency and Restructuring Advisors, the advisory board for ABI’s Central States Bankruptcy Workshop, and as co-chair of ABI’s Professional Compensation Committee. He is also a frequent speaker on restructuring topics and has published several articles in the ABI Journal. Mr. Morrow holds a B.B.A. with distinction from the University of Michigan and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago.
Hon. C. Ray Mullins is a U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge for the Northern District of Georgia in Atlanta, appointed by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals on Feb. 29, 2000. Previously he had served as an instructor in the Management Department of Bowling Green State University’s School of Business Administration from 1977-82. In 1982, he joined the Toledo, Ohio, firm of Cooper, Straub, Walinski & Cramer, focusing primarily on civil litigation. From 1984-86, Judge Mullins also taught trial practice as an adjunct professor of law at the University of Toledo College of Law. In 1987, he joined Kilpatrick & Cody (now Kilpatrick Stockton LLP) in Atlanta and became a partner in 1993. He practiced in the firm’s Financial Restructuring Group, specializing in chapter 11 bankruptcy matters. From 1995-2000, he also served as a member of the Trustee Panel for the Northern District of Georgia. He is a Fellow in the American College of Bankruptcy, as well as a member of ABI and the Association of Insolvency & Restructuring Advisors. Judge Mullins is a frequent speaker at various professional conferences, seminars and workshops around the country. He obtained his B.S. and M.B.A. from Bowling Green State University, and he graduated magna cum laude from the University of Toledo College of Law, where he was a member of the Law Review and the Order of the Coif.
Harold B. Murphy is a shareholder at Hanify & King in Boston, where he concentrates his practice on bankruptcy and financial restructuring. He specializes in bankruptcy and commercial law, including the representation of debtors, creditors’ committees, trustees and creditors in chapter 11 reorganizations and chapter 7 liquidations. He has served as chapter 7 and 11 trustee, counsel and examiner in numerous liquidation and reorganization cases. He has had considerable experience in the areas of commercial finance and litigation and matters involving secured lending, mergers and acquisitions and the Uniform Commercial Code. Mr. Murphy joined Hanify & King in 1984 and is the founder and director of the firm’s Bankruptcy and Financial Restructuring Group. Mr. Murphy served as a law clerk to the U.S. Trustee, Districts of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and the Hon. Thomas W. Lawless, Chief Judge of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Boston. He is a member of ABI, TMA and the American, Boston and Massachusetts Bar Associations, and is listed in The Best Lawyers in America and Chambers USA, and was elected to the American College of Bankruptcy. Mr. Murphy earned his A.B. cum laude at Harvard College and his J.D. at Suffolk University Law School.
Patrick M. O’Keefe is founder of O’Keefe & Associates Consulting in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., a boutique financial consulting firm specializing in debt restructuring, turnaround consulting, refinancing solutions, due-diligence support, valuation and litigation support. He is a former partner at Deloitte & Touche and Conway MacKenzie & Dunleavy. Mr. O’Keefe has been an operating chapter 11 trustee as well as a court-appointed receiver, and has been approved by the U.S. Department of Justice to act as a chapter 11 operating trustee. He is a frequent guest lecturer and writer, recently quoted in the Wall Street Journal and frequently quoted on television and radio on the automotive, real estate and retail industries. He is a member of and has served on the board of many professional organizations, including the Detroit Chapter of the Turnaround Management Association and the International Turnaround Management Association. A recipient of numerous awards, he received the 2008 Cleary University – Friedt Business Medal of Honor Award and the 2007 Manufacturing Business to Business Award - M&A Advisor. His designations include Certified Turnaround Professional (CTP), Accredited in Business Valuation (ABV), Certified in Financial Forensics (CFF) and Business Valuator Accredited in Litigation (BVAL). Mr. O’Keefe received his B.A. cum laude in accounting from Michigan State University and his M.B.A. with a concentration in finance from Wayne State University.
Hon. Robert C. Pate is an attorney in Corpus Christi, Texas, as well as a mediator and arbitrator of complex business and personal-injury cases in the areas of oil and gas and corporate law, debt restructuring, bankruptcy and business. He has been a court-appointed expert requested to review numerous mechanic’s and materialman’s liens filings in a large oil and gas case. He has also been involved in asbestos litigation and served as presiding judge of several district courts. He is a member of the Texas, American and Nueces County Bar Associations, the Bar of the U.S. District Courts for the Southern and Western Districts of Texas, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the U.S. Tax Court and the U.S. Supreme Court. He is also a Fellow of the Texas Bar Foundation and the American Bar Foundation. A Certified Public Accountant, Judge Pate is a member of the Texas Society of Certified Public Accountants and is also a member of the ADR Standing Committee of the State Bar of Texas. He received his B.A. and Master of Professional Accounting degree from the University of Texas at Austin, and his J.D. from Southern Methodist University.
Hon. James M. Peck was appointed as a U.S. Bankruptcy Judge for the Southern District of New York on Jan. 10, 2006, in New York. Following law school, Judge Peck joined the Philadelphia law firm of Duane Morris LLP and in 1980, became a partner in the firm’s Reorganization and Finance practice group. In 1990, Judge Peck joined the firm of Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP in New York as co-head of the firm’s bankruptcy and reorganization practice, where he had a varied business reorganization and bankruptcy litigation practice, remaining a partner there until his appointment as a bankruptcy judge. Judge Peck has written and lectured extensively on business bankruptcy topics, has participated in conferences organized by many associations including ABI and is a guest lecturer on distressed investing at Columbia Business School. He moderated a panel on the global financial crisis at the 2008 annual meeting of the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges and has taught chapter 11 concepts to foreign judges under the auspices of the Commercial Law Development Program of the U.S. Department of Commerce. Judge Peck currently serves on the Board of Governors of the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges, is a member of the Steering Committee of the Zaretzky Roundtable at Brooklyn Law School and is judicial chair of ABI’s New York City Bankruptcy Conference. He is also a member of the International Insolvency Institute and the World Bank’s Insolvency and Creditors’ Rights Task Force. Judge Peck received his B.A. from Dartmouth College and his J.D. from New York University School of Law.
Scott Peltz is a managing director of RSM McGladrey’s Financial Advisory Services Practice in Chicago and chairman of National Corporate Recovery Practice. He has more than 29 years of experience as a financial advisor in bankruptcy and litigation matters where he has provided services to debtors, lenders and creditors’ committees. Prior to joining RSM McGladrey, Mr. Peltz was a partner in a major Chicago accounting firm and has been appointed as trustee of both publicly-held and private companies. He has served as both a consulting and testifying expert in fraudulent transfer, fraud contract disputes and contested confirmation for both federal and state case matters. He is actively involved in many organizations, including the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, Illinois CPA Society, INSOL, ABI, Association of Insolvency Accountants and Turnaround Management Association. He received his B.S. in accounting from the University of Illinois.
Andrea J. Pincus is a member of the Financial Industry Group of Reed Smith LLP in New York, practicing in the areas of commercial restructuring and bankruptcy, as well as derivatives and structured products and related disputes. She represents hedge funds, banks and other institutional investors, bondholders and indenture trustees, as well as ad hoc and official committees, secured creditors, governmental entities, private individuals and debtors-in-possession. Her bankruptcy practice includes all aspects of chapter 11 cases, as well as out-of-court workouts involving private and publicly held companies. In addition, Ms. Pincus represents hedge funds, banks and other financial institutions in connection with investing or trading strategies, structured debt and derivative transactions based on ISDA documentation, with a focus on credit default swaps and valuation disputes. She also has extensive litigation experience in federal and state courts in actions for breach of fiduciary duty, director and officer liability, breach of contract, fraud and international commercial disputes. A former trial attorney with the Legal Aid Society’s Criminal Defense Division, she is admitted to practice in the U.S. District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York. Ms. Pincus is a co-chair of ABI’s Public Companies and Claims Trading Committee and is the Philanthropy Committee Chair of 100 Women in Hedge Funds and a member of its Governance Committee, and she has been quoted on “BBC Newsnight,” Financial Times and Time magazine. She received her B.A. magna cum laude in American studies with honors from Yale College in 1987, and her J.D. from New York University School of Law in 1991, where she was a Root Tilden Snow Scholar.
Travis B. Plunkett directs federal legislative and regulatory efforts for the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) in Washington, D.C., where he focuses primarily on financial services issues for CFA, including credit reporting, bankruptcy, credit counseling, consumer privacy and insurance. CFA is a nonprofit association of 300 organizations that advances the consumer interest through research, advocacy and education. Mr. Plunkett’s responsibilities include testifying before congressional committees, analyzing the impact of pending legislation on consumers and drafting legislative proposals. He is frequently quoted by the news media throughout the country and has written a number of consumer reports and guides. The Hill newspaper ranked Mr. Plunkett as one of Washington’s “top lobbyists” in 2004, 2006, 2007 and 2008. He previously served as the New York State Legislative Representative for the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) and the Associate Legislative Director of the New York Public Interest Research Group. He also served with the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command. He received a B.A. from the University of Denver.
Alex J. Pollock has been a resident fellow at American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., since 2004, focusing on financial policy issues, including government-sponsored enterprises, retirement finance, housing finance, corporate governance and accounting standards. He has written extensively on the housing bubble and bust and is the author of the one-page mortgage disclosure proposal. Previously, Mr. Pollack spent 35 years in banking, including 12 years as president and chief executive officer of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago, while also writing numerous articles on financial systems and management. He is a director of Allied Capital Corporation, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the Great Lakes Higher Education Corporation, the International Union for Housing Finance and chairman of the board of the Great Books Foundation. Mr. Pollock is a graduate of Williams College, University of Chicago and Princeton University.
Jeffrey N. Pomerantz is a partner at Pachulski Stang Ziehl & Jones LLP in Los Angeles, where his practice includes representing companies and creditors’ committees in complex in- and out-of-court financial restructurings and is generally focused on middle-market companies with annual revenues ranging from $25 million - $300 million. Mr. Pomerantz is a member of ABI’s Executive Committee and serves as co-chair of its annual Southwest Bankruptcy Conference. He is the author of “The Bare Necessities of Critical Vendor Motions—It’s a Jungle Out There,” 13 Journal of Bankruptcy Law & Practice (2004), and has lectured or been a panelist in the ABI, Los Angeles Bankruptcy Forum, Financial Lawyers Conference and Credit Managers Association. He holds an AV Peer Rating, is admitted to practice in California and is a graduate of New York University (1986, Phi Beta Kappa), where he also received his J.D. (1989, Order of the Coif).
Prof. Katherine M. Porter is an associate professor of law at the University of Iowa College of Law in Iowa City, Iowa. Her scholarship focuses on consumer credit issues, including mortgages, credit cards and bankruptcy, and has been published in the Cornell Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Texas Law Review and the ABI Journal. She is an investigator in the Consumer Bankruptcy Project, an ongoing study of consumer debtors, and a co-principal investigator in the Mortgage Study, which examines mortgage servicing in bankruptcy cases. Prof. Porter has testified several times before Congress and made national media appearances on ABC Nightline, The Today Show and National Public Radio, and in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and Newsweek. She is a regular contributor to Credit Slips, a blog about credit and bankruptcy. Before entering academia, Prof. Porter practiced debtor-creditor law at Stoel Rives LLP in Portland, Ore., and served as a law clerk to the Hon. Richard Sheppard Arnold of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. She earned her B.A. in American Studies from Yale University and her J.D. from Harvard Law School.
Leslie Rahl is the founder and president of Capital Market Risk Advisors (CMRA) in New York, where she provides consulting and litigation support services to major U.S. and international financial services companies and institutional investors. Ms. Rahl spent 19 years at Citibank, including nine years as co-head of Citibank’s Derivatives Group in North America. She launched its caps and collars business in 1983 as an extension of the proprietary options arbitrage portfolio she ran and was at the forefront in the development of the swaps and derivatives business. Ms. Rahl is the author of Hedge Fund Transparency: Unraveling the Complex and Controversial Debate, published in March 2003 by Risk Books, and the editor of Risk Budgeting a New Approach to Investing, published in November 2000 by Risk Books. Her articles have appeared in a wide range of publications, and she is a frequent speaker at conferences and symposia. Ms. Rahl was named one of the “Top 50 Women in Finance” by Euromoney in 1997 and was profiled in both the fifth and tenth anniversary issues of Risk Magazine. She was also listed in “Who’s Who in Derivatives” by Risk Magazine and was profiled in Fortune magazine’s “On the Rise” and Institutional Investor’s “The Next Generation of Financial Leaders.” Ms. Rahl sits on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) and the International Association of Financial Engineers (IAFE). She is a member of the Hedge Fund Committee of the Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA). She was a director of the International Swaps Dealers Association (ISDA) for five years, chaired the IAFE’s Investor Risk Committee (IRC) and is a former Director of Fannie Mae, the MIT Investment Management Company and the New York State Common Retirement Board. Ms. Rahl is a co-founder of the High Water Women Foundation and was on the Board of 100 Women in Hedge Funds, chairing its Philanthropy Committee. She received her S.B. in computer science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1971 and her M.B.A. from the Sloan School at MIT in 1972.
John Rao is an attorney with the National Consumer Law Center Inc. in Boston, focusing on consumer credit and bankruptcy issues, and has served as a panelist and instructor at numerous bankruptcy and consumer law trainings and conferences. He is a contributing author and editor of NCLC’s Consumer Bankruptcy Law and Practice, co-author of NCLC’s Foreclosures, author of Bankruptcy Basics, Guide to Surviving Debt and NCLC Reports: Bankruptcy and Foreclosures Edition, and contributing author to NCLC’s Student Loan Law. He is also a contributing author to Collier on Bankruptcy and the Collier Bankruptcy Practice Guide. Mr. Rao serves as a member of the federal Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Bankruptcy Rules, appointed by Chief Justice John Roberts in 2006. He is a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy, secretary for the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys and a former ABI Board Member. Mr. Rao is a graduate of Boston University and received his J.D. in 1982 from the University of California (Hastings).
Prof. Nancy B. Rapoport is the Gordon & Silver, Ltd. Professor at the William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Prior to starting her academic career, she clerked for Hon. Joseph T. Sneed on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and then practiced law (primarily bankruptcy law) with Morrison & Foerster in San Francisco from 1986-1991. Ms. Rapoport’s academic career commenced at The Ohio State University College of Law in 1991, and she moved from assistant professor to associate professor to associate dean for student affairs and professor in 1998. She served as dean of the University of Nebraska College of Law from 1998-2000. She then served as dean and professor of law at the University of Houston Law Center from July 2000-May 2006 and as professor of law from June 2006-June 2007, when she left to join the faculty at Boyd. Her specialties are bankruptcy ethics and ethics in governance. Ms. Rapoport has taught contracts, sales (Article 2), bankruptcy, chapter 11 reorganization, legal writing, contract drafting and professional responsibility. She is co-author of Enron: Corporate Fiascos and Their Implications (Foundation Press 2004) and Enron and Other Corporate Fiascos: The Corporate Scandal Reader (Foundation Press 2d ed. 2008). Ms. Rapoport is admitted to the bars of the states of California, Ohio, Nebraska, Texas and Nevada and to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2001, she was elected to membership in the American Law Institute, and in 2002, she received a Distinguished Alumna Award from Rice University. Ms. Rapoport is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and the American College of Bankruptcy. She received her B.A. summa cum laude from Rice University in 1982 and her J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1985.
Steven L. Rayman is the principal with the law firm of Rayman & Stone in Kalamazoo, Mich., where his practice is limited to bankruptcy, insolvency and reorganization matters. He is a frequent lecturer and writer in the field of bankruptcy and reorganization and is Board certified by the American Board of Certification in both Business and Consumer Bankruptcy Law. Mr. Rayman is a past chair of the Bankruptcy Steering Committee for the Federal Bar Association of West Michigan and is the co-founder of the Western Michigan Bankruptcy Pro Bono program. He is also active in legislative affairs, having recently chaired the State of Michigan House of Representatives’ Blue Ribbon Advisory Committee to the House Civil and Judiciary Committee and being integral in the passage of the new Michigan exemptions (which have, at this writing, been declared unconstitutional by two bankruptcy judges).
Charles C. Reardon is a director in Houlihan Lokey’s Washington, D.C. office, where he is a member of the Financial Restructuring Group and leads the firm’s Mid-Atlantic Distressed Mergers & Acquisitions practice. In 2004, he was named one of the nation’s top debtor investment bankers by Bankruptcy Insider. Before joining Houlihan Lokey, Mr. Reardon was a managing director with Liberty Capital Group, where he supervised corporate reorganizations, M&A activities and property development. He also served as counsel at Westerman Ball Ederer Miller & Sharfstein, where he advised clients involved with distressedbusinesses and workout, recapitalization and bankruptcy issues. Before that, he was an executive vice-president with Mardon Associates, a family-owned holding company that acquired and operated under-performing middle-market companies, where he frequently served as the acting CEO or COO of Mardon’s portfolio companies. Prior to Mardon, he was a lawyer with Lane & Mittendorf (now Windels Marx Lane & Mittendorf), specializing in corporate, securities, banking and real estate law, representing multinational entities and financial institutions. Mr. Reardon speaks frequently on financing and M&A topics and has presented “Buying and Selling the Troubled Company” to the New York Bar Association and other audiences. He has participated in numerous panels and seminars hosted by ABI and other national financial institutions and law firms. He is registered with FINRA (formerly the NASD) as a General Securities Representative (Series 7 and 63). Mr. Reardon received his B.A., with highest distinction, from the University of Virginia, where he was an Echols Scholar. He earned his J.D. from Yale Law School.
David M. Reeder is the head of the bankruptcy and financial restructuring practice group at Hoffman Polland & Furman PLLC in New York. He has practiced for more than 20 years in the areas of bankruptcy, business reorganization and bankruptcy litigation. His clients include companies reorganizing under chapter 11, trustees, asset acquirers, creditors and litigants. He is an honors graduate of Drake University Law School and was a member of the Drake University Law Review. He has written and lectured extensively on bankruptcy-related topics, and is a contributing editor to Norton on Bankruptcy. He is the education director of ABI’s International Committee.
Steven J. Reisman is a partner at Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle LLP in New York City,where he co-chairs the firm’s Restructuring and Insolvency Group. He has handled a wide range of domestic and international matters involving bankruptcy, restructuring and creditors’ rights and has represented clients in all facets of bankruptcy cases as well as insolvency issues in business transactions and out-of-court restructurings. Mr. Reisman has also represented various hedge funds, private-equity firms and distressed-debt investors with respect to their investments in companies and in restructuring the indebtedness of companies in insolvency matters. He has also worked on several cross-border insolvency proceedings and was recently appointed by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York as a Special Representative for 360networks in a missing-funds investigation. Mr. Reisman has been selected as a leader in the bankruptcy field by Chambers USA, by Super Lawyers as one of the top 5 percent of Manhattan lawyers and one of the top 12 “Outstanding Restructuring Lawyers” for 2008 by the Turnarounds and Workouts publication. He received his B.S. magna cum laude from the State University of New York at Oneonta and his J.D. with honors from St. John’s University School of Law.
M. Freddie Reissis a senior managing director in FTI’s Corporate Finance practice in Los Angeles, where he is the national bankruptcy litigation leader of company-side practice. With 25 years of experience in strategic planning, cash management, liquidation analysis, covenant negotiations, forensic accounting and valuation, he has also acted as a fiduciary and chief restructuring officer. He specializes in advising on bankruptcies, reorganizations and business restructurings and in providing expert-witness testimony for underperforming companies. Mr. Reiss’ industry experience includes real estate, manufacturing, health care, entertainment, retail, financial services, municipalities, natural resources, and nonprofit and government services. He has provided expert testimony on insolvency, fraudulent transfers, cash collateral, debtor-in-possession lending claims and damages matters. Prior to joining FTI, Mr. Reiss was a partner and west region leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he co-founded the Business Restructuring Services practice. He has given presentations and speeches on various topics for 18 years as well as authored articles and chapters in financial publications. Mr. Reiss is a certified public accountant in New York and California, a certified insolvency and restructuring advisor and a certified turnaround professional. He is a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy and a member of the Los Angeles Bankruptcy Forum, ABI, Association of Insolvency and Restructuring Advisors and the Turnaround Management Association. Mr. Reiss received his B.B.A. from City College of New York’s Bernard Baruch School of Business and his M.B.A. from City University of New York’s Baruch College.
Hon. Steven W. Rhodes is Chief Bankruptcy Judge for the Eastern District of Michigan in Detroit. From 1997-2004, he also served on the Bankruptcy Appellate Panel of the Sixth Circuit, the last three years as chief judge. Judge Rhodes was appointed to a new four-year term on the BAP beginning on Jan. 1, 2008. He has served as an adjunct professor at the University of Michigan Law School teaching bankruptcy law, and is a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy. His publications include The Ethical Obligations of a Chapter 7 Trustee, 80 Am. Bankr. L.J. 147 (2006); An Empirical Study of Consumer Bankruptcy Papers, 73 Am. Bankr. L.J. 653 (Summer 1999); and Eight Statutory Causes of Delay and Expense in Chapter 11 Cases, 67 Am. Bankr. L.J. 287 (Summer 1993). He presently serves as ABI’s Vice President-Research Grants. Judge Rhodes received his undergraduate degree from Purdue University and his law degree from the University of Michigan Law School.
Hon. Linda B. Riegle was appointed to a 14-year term of office as a bankruptcy judge for the District of Nevada in January 1988 in Las Vegas, and was reappointed to a second 14-year term commencing in January 2002. She served as the chief bankruptcy judge for the District of Nevada from July 1993 until October 1999. Prior to her appointment to the bench, Judge Riegle practiced commercial and bankruptcy law at Lionel Sawyer & Collins in Las Vegas, and became its first female partner in 1983. She has served on many professional organizations including ABI, the Ninth Circuit Fairness Committee, the District of Nevada Rules Committee and the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges. Judge Riegle has had many speaking engagements, including ABI and the Norton Institute. She is the author of the articles “Discharge Litigation” and “What Makes Judges Happy in the Courtroom: Exploding a Few Myths,” and co-author of “Advising Debtors with Criminal Concerns,” all of which have been published by Matthew Bender in its four-volume series Representing Debtors in Bankruptcy. Judge Riegle has also served as a consulting editor of Norton Bankruptcy Law and Practice. She received her B.S. in political science from Shepherd College and her master’s degree from the Graduate School of Public Affairs of the State University of New York at Albany. Judge Riegle obtained her J.D. from Albany Law School and was a member of its law review during her second and third years.
Debra Ann Riley is a partner with Allen Matkins Leck Gamble Mallory & Natsis LLP in San Diego, where she has extensive experience representing debtors, private-equity funds, lenders, institutional investors and creditors’ committees in complex chapter 11 proceedings. Ms. Riley has been involved in the purchase and sale of millions of dollars of distressed assets, and her experience covers a wide array of industries, including real estate, subprime lending, manufacturing, dietary supplements and health care. Prior to joining Allen Matkins in 2001, Ms. Riley was a partner at the law firm of McDermott Will & Emery, where she was involved in many prominent and complex bankruptcy cases and workouts. Before practicing law, Ms. Riley was a certified public accountant in Connecticut and maintained an audit and consulting practice with a predecessor to Ernst & Young. She is a frequent lecturer at industry conferences and has authored many publications. Ms. Riley clerked for Hon. Peter W. Bowie, a U.S. Bankruptcy Judge in the Southern District of California, and obtained herB.S. from Quinnipiac University, her M.B.A. from the University of Hartford and her J.D. from the University of San Diego School of Law.
Charles F. Rosen is an attorney with the Law Offices of A. Lavar Taylor in Santa Ana, Calif., where he works on tax collection and tax controversies, bankruptcy and receivership taxation. While working for the IRS, Mr. Rosen was a member of the Los Angeles and Laguna Niguel District’s Instructor Panels, and he also authored and edited numerous in-house training manuals and portions of the Internal Revenue Manual, which later became IRM 5700, dealing with tax liens, collateral, summons, jeopardy and terminations, offers and bankruptcy. A frequent lecturer on bankruptcy tax issues and IRS tax-collection matters, he has authored several published articles on the subject of taxes and bankruptcy, and his articles have also appeared in the “Cracking the Code” section of the ABI Web site. Mr. Rosen was an adjunct professor of law at Western State University for three years and is a member and has served on committees of several professional organizations. He was the 2005 recipient of the Hon. Peter M. Elliott Memorial Award for distinguished scholarship, ethics and service to the Orange County bankruptcy community. Mr. Rosen received his B.A. in history from the California State University, Northridge and his J.D. from Western State University, College of Law in Fullerton, California.
Robert J. Rosenberg is a member of the law firm of Latham & Watkins in New York and was formerly global co-head of the firm’s insolvency practice group. He is a member of the Bankruptcy Rules Committee of the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware and has served as official American Bar Association Advisor to the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws in its project to draft the Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act. He sits on the Advisory Board of ABI’s Views from the Bench program and is a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy, a director of the Turnaround Management Association (New York), a director of the International Insolvency Institute, a director of ABI and a member of the Practicing Law Institute’s Bankruptcy Law Advisory Committee. Mr. Rosenberg has been named among the top attorneys in the United States in several publications, including the 2007 Lawdragon “500 Leading Lawyers in America,” Chambers Global and Chambers USA. A prolific author, Mr. Rosenberg’s articles and books include “Intercorporate Guarantees and the Law of Fraudulent Conveyances: Lender Beware,” 125 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 235 (1976). He is also author of the single-volume treatise Collier Lending Institutions and the Bankruptcy Code and a co-author of Matthew Bender’s Collier Forms Manual (2d edition) and Collier Bankruptcy Practice Guide. Mr. Rosenberg is qualified to practice before the New York bar. He was an adjunct professor at New York University School of Law, where he taught bankruptcy reorganization and business planning. Mr. Rosenberg was also formerly an adjunct professor at Rutgers Law School and an assistant professor at Ohio State University School of Law. He received his B.A. from Columbia University and his J.D. from Harvard University cum laude.
Joel W. Ruderman is an assistant chief counsel in the Office of Chief Counsel of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) in Washington, D.C., where his work focuses on bankruptcy law, commercial litigation and ERISA Title IV. Immediately prior to joining PBGC, Mr. Ruderman worked in the bankruptcy section of the Washington D.C. office of Swidler Berlin Shereff and Friedman, LLP. During the course of his career, he has represented numerous debtors, creditors and bankruptcy trustees in various bankruptcy and commercial litigation matters. He received his B.S. in accounting from the University of Maryland (1991) and his J.D. magna cum laude from the University of Baltimore School of Law (1995).
Hon. Barry Russell serves as chief judge emeritus on the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Central District of California in Los Angeles. Appointed a U.S. Bankruptcy Judge in 1974, he served as Chief Judge from Jan. 2003 to Dec. 2006, later serving on the Bankruptcy Appellate Panel and becoming the Chief Judge from September 1999 to December 2001. Judge Russell has been a member of the faculty of the Federal Judicial Center in Washington, D.C., since 1977, and frequently lectures to bankruptcy judges throughout the U.S. He has been the author of West’s Bankruptcy Evidence Manual since August 1987 and is the recipient of many honors and awards, including the American Bar Association’s “Franklin N. Flaschner Judicial Award” as the outstanding judge in the U.S. in a trial court of special jurisdiction in 1987, the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s “Dispute Resolution Services’ Emil Gumpert Judicial ADR” award in December 2000 and the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s “Outstanding Jurist Award” in May 2004, and on Oct. 14, 2008, Judge Russell was awarded the “Lifetime Achievement Award” by the Association of Insolvency and Restructuring Advisors (AIRA), in the Bankruptcy and Restructuring Field. Judge Russell received both his B.S. in engineering and his J.D. from UCLA.
Luis Salazar is a shareholder and attorney with Greenberg Traurig in Miami, where he counsels diverse clients, guiding them through difficult and crisis situations including bet-the-company litigation, surviving severe financial distress and restructuring billions of dollars in debt. As a member of the firm’s Latin American and Caribbean Practice Groups, Mr. Salazar has led the chapter 11 reorganization efforts of numerous reorganizations, workouts and financial negotiations on behalf of clients in the real estate, aviation, money-wiring, food service, import-export and entertainment fields. He currently serves as co-chair of ABI’s International Insolvency Committee. In addition to advising clients on cross-border insolvency and litigation matters, Mr. Salazar is a noted expert in the area of Latin American data privacy laws. Described as one of South Florida’s “legal elite” by Miami’s Daily Business Review, he was selected “Best of the Bar” by the South Florida Business Journal in 2003, a “Legal Elite” by Florida Trend Magazine from 2004-06 and a “Superlawyer” from 2006-08. Mr. Salazar was also listed in The Best Lawyers in America, 2007 and 2008 editions, and Chambers & Partners USA Guide, 2007-2008 edition. He is one of the most widely published authors in the areas of bankruptcy and crisis management and is a noted authority on the fiduciary duties of directors and officers and defending management against deepening insolvency claims. A seasoned trial attorney, Mr. Salazar has tried more than 100 discrete matters in federal and state courts throughout the country on behalf of plaintiffs, defendants, debtors and creditors in a wide variety of actions.
Thomas J. Salerno is a partner with Squire, Sanders & Dempsey L.L.P. in Phoenix, where he leads its Reorganization and Restructuring Group and is co-chair of the firm’s International Insolvency Practice Group. A frequent author of articles in both national and international journals, he recently co-wrote ABI’s updated Pre‑bankruptcy Planning for the Commercial Reorganization: A Brief Guide for the CEO, CFO/COO, General Counsel and Tax Advisor, Second Edition. Mr. Salerno was a faculty member of the National Institute for Trial Advocacy’s first bankruptcy advocacy trial program, and is a regular teacher at the annual symposium Problems in Bankruptcy Litigation and Advocacy held at Emory University School of Law in Atlanta. He is a contributor to Norton Bankruptcy Law & Practice and the ABI Journal. Mr. Salerno is a past director of ABI and the American Board of Certification and co-chairman of ABI’s Subcommittee on Uniformity in Professional Fees in Bankruptcy. He is a member of the faculty for McGeorge School of Law’s International Law Program, and has taught International Commercial Arbitration in both London and Salzburg. Mr. Salerno has been included in The Best Lawyers in America and Turnarounds & Workouts and is a Fellow in the American College of Bankruptcy. Mr. Salerno received his B.A. summa cum laude from Rutgers University and his J.D. cum laude from Notre Dame Law School, where he served as an editor of the Notre Dame Law Review.
Anthony H.N. Schnelling is a managing director and founding member of Bridge Associates LLC in New York. Prior to founding Bridge Associates, Mr. Schnelling was active as a corporate executive in the international specialty chemicals industry, a commercial banker with Morgan Guaranty Trust Company of New York, an investment banker with Warburg Paribas Becker in New York and an insolvency attorney with Stroock & Stroock & Lavan in New York. He is ABI’s Vice President Development and is a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy. A frequent guest lecturer on topics relating to troubled company turnarounds, workouts and bankruptcies, he is also an adjunct professor at Fordham University School of Law and has taught at Columbia University’s School ofBusiness and the Jones Graduate School at Rice University. Mr. Schnelling received his a B.A. in history from Swarthmore College, his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and his J.D. cum laude from the Fordham University School of Law.
Steven A. Schwaber is an attorney at law in San Marino, Calif., where his practice is limited to representation of creditors, debtors and third parties in bankruptcy matters and workouts and in all proceedings before bankruptcy courts. Mr. Schwaber serves as an expert witness in bankruptcy matters and as an arbitrator and mediator in state and federal courts. He is Board Certified in Business Bankruptcy Law by the American Board of Certification and serves as trustee in chapter 11 and 7 bankruptcy cases. In 2005, Mr. Schwaber was appointed to the Central District of California Bankruptcy Court Legislation Implementation Task Force. He serves on many professional committees and was named by Los Angeles magazine as a “Southern California Superlawyer” in 2007-08. He is also an associate editor for the ABI Journal. Mr. Schwaber is the author of the “Itemization of Costs and Expenses” chapter of ABI’s Getting Paid: Retention and Compensation in Bankruptcy Cases: A Guide for Non‑attorney Professionals published in 2005. He received his B.A. from the University of California at Los Angeles and his J.D. from Loyola University of Los Angeles, where he was the treasurer of Phi Alpha Delta.
Karen B. Shaer is Executive Vice President and General Counsel at Garden City Group in Melville, N.Y., where she focuses on litigation, class action and bankruptcy. She also handles ethical issues, consulting with companies, law firms and financial advisors. Relevant client engagements have included the Federal Mogul, AC&S, Flintkote and Muralo cases. While serving as general counsel at American Family Enterprises (a subsidiary of Time Inc.), Ms. Shaer was an advisor to the CEO/ president and the board of directors. She also managed a chapter 11 reorganization as well as all litigation and alternative dispute resolutions, encompassing defense of multi-state attorneys general actions and more than 60 major state and federal individual and class actions. Prior to joining American Family Enterprises in 1998, she served with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York, where her positions included deputy chief of the Criminal Division and Assistant U.S. Attorney. Ms. Shaer is a member of ABI and the American and New York City Bar Associations. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Yale University, she was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar at Columbia Law School, where she earned her J.D.
Ronald J. Silverman is a partner at Bingham McCutchen LLP in New York, where he represents financial institutions and commercial enterprises in complex financial and commercial transactions, creditors’ rights matters and litigation throughout the United States and abroad. Mr. Silverman has extensive experience in a wide range of transactions and creditors’ rights matters, including international restructurings, debtor-in-possession financing, aviation and project finance restructurings, distressed mergers and acquisitions, out-of-court workouts, reorganization and liquidation proceedings and related litigation. He has been an adjunct professor at the University of Connecticut School of Law and is a frequent speaker and author for various journals. For the last three years he has been noted as one of the Best Lawyers in America and is recognized by Turnarounds & Workouts as a 2006 Outstanding Young Restructuring Lawyer. In 2007 he was included in the Expert Guides to the World’s Leading Insolvency & Restructuring Lawyers.
Timothy G. Skillman is a principal of Corporate Advisory and Restructuring Services in Grant Thornton’s LLP’s recovery and reorganization practice in Los Angeles. With more than 20 years of experience in working with financially and operationally troubled companies, Mr. Skillman has specialized in developing and implementing viable turnaround strategies for manufacturing, distribution and financial services companies. His areas of expertise include managing cash flow, operations and employee relations within the company, and managing relationships with key external constituents during the transition. An advisor to creditors, debtors and stakeholders in numerous bankruptcy proceedings in the United States, Canada and Europe, Mr. Skillman has held several key management positions in his turnaround consulting career including chief executive officer of Ditech.com, chief operating officer of Mortgage Corp. of America and chief restructuring officer of Performance Transportation Services, and he is a past member of the board of directors of the Association of Certified Turnaround Professionals. He received both his Bachelor’s degree in urban economics geography and his Master’s degree in corporate finance and marketing from the University of Michigan.
William K. Snyder is a managing partner with CRG Partners in Dallas, where he has executive and entrepreneurial experience spanning more than 25 years and has restructured, managed and guided a multitude of companies in a wide variety of industries. As a broadly experienced interim executive and advisor who has participated in the restructuring of more than 60 companies, Mr. Snyder was president of his own financial consulting company, The Snyder Co., where he managed family investments that included operating companies, limited partnerships and securities. Additionally, he has been principal in a variety of different companies, held positions in increasing responsibility for global bottling companies in the United States and has served as an interim-officer/examiner in more than 16 bankruptcies. He is a frequent speaker and presenter on a wide range of turnaround topics. He received his B.S. cum laude in computer science from Texas A&M University, with postgraduate studies at Corpus Christi State University.
Gigi B. Sohn is president and co-founder of Public Knowledge, a nonprofit organization that addresses the public’s stake in the convergence of communications policy and intellectual property law based in Washington, D.C. She serves as PK’s chief strategist and fundraiser, and she has appeared on numerous television and radio programs, including the “Today Show,” “The McNeil-Lehrer Report,” C-SPAN’s Washington Journal and National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” and “Morning Edition.” She is a Non-Resident Fellow at the University of Southern California Annenberg Centerand a Senior Fellow at the University of Melbourne Faculty of Law Graduate Studies Program in Australia. She has also been an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University. Ms. Sohn has served as a project specialist in the Ford Foundation’s Media, Arts and Culture unit and as executive director of the Media Access Project, a public interest law firm that represents citizens’ rights before the FCC and the courts. In 1997, President Clinton appointed her to serve as a member of his Advisory Committee on the Public Interest Obligations of Digital Television Broadcasters, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation gave her its Internet “Pioneer” Award in 2006. Ms. Sohn serves on the board of the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference (TPRC) and Broadcasters’ Child Development Center (BCDC), and she is a member of the advisory board of the Future of Music Coalition. She also served on the District of Columbia Bar Board of Governors from 1997-2000. Ms. Sohn received her B.S. in broadcasting and film summa cum laude from the Boston University College of Communication and her J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Kelly Beaudin Stapleton was appointed by Attorney General Ashcroft as the U.S. Trustee for Region 3 in January 2005. Prior to her appointment, she was in private practice from 1997 to 2005, and began her legal career in 1995 as an Assistant District Attorney for the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office. Ms. Stapleton is a member of the Pennsylvania, New York and Connecticut bars. She serves ABI as co-chair of its Court Administration Committee and sits on its Mid-Atlantic Advisory Board, and she serves on the Pennsylvania Bar Association’s Executive Council and is the co-vice chair of its Women in the Profession. Ms. Stapleton also serves on the Steering Committee for the Third Circuit Judicial Conference and the Editorial Board of the New Jersey Bankruptcy Manual. She is a member of the NABT Liaison Committee and she continues to lecture extensively and teach continuing legal education courses for the Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey Bar Associations. Ms. Stapleton received her B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles and her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center.
Edward Stenger is a managing partner with AlixPartners LLP in New York , where his expertise concentrates on developing solutions in complex corporate restructurings and reorganizations for troubled companies. Mr. Stenger has served as advisor to senior management and boards of directors, guiding them through workout negotiations and developing comprehensive turnaround strategies, including organizational change, capacity rationalization and divestitures. He provides interim management to companies requiring experience in defining and implementing turnaround programs. A Certified Insolvency and Restructuring Accountant and CPA, Mr. Stenger has presented professional papers and published articles about restructuring and the financial and accounting aspects of successful reorganizations. He is also a co-author of the Financial Handbook for Bankruptcy Professionals, 2d, West Publishing Co. (1996). Mr. Stenger graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a Bachelor’s degree in business administration.
David B. Stratton co-chairs Pepper Hamilton LLP’s Business Restructuring and Bankruptcy Practice Group and is the managing partner of the firm’s Wilmington, Del., office. He has nearly 30 years of experience representing debtors, creditors’ committees, secured and individual creditors, and parties-in-interest in major corporate bankruptcy cases. He also serves as a court-appointed mediator in the bankruptcy and district courts in Delaware. Mr. Stratton serves on various committees of both the Delaware and American Bar Associations, and is also a contributing editor of the ABI Journal’s News at 11 column. He has been recognized as one of Delaware’s leading bankruptcy practitioners in the 2004-08 editions of Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business and is listed in The Best Lawyers in America.
Paul G. Swanson is a partner in the Oshkosh, Wis. law firm of Steinhilber, Swanson, Mares, >Marone & McDermott, where his practice is almost entirely limited to bankruptcy law focusing on representation of debtors in chapter 7, 11 and 12 and as a chapter 7 panel trustee. Mr. Swanson is a past-president of the National Association of Bankruptcy Trustees, chair of the Board of Directors of the Bankruptcy Section of the State Bar of Wisconsin, member of the Board of Directors of the Eastern District of Wisconsin Federal Bar Association, former chair of the State Bar of Wisconsin Continuing Education Committee and a vice-chair of the American Bar Association General Practice Bankruptcy Committee. He has lectured extensively on bankruptcy-related topics for the State Bar of Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin Law School, ABI and the National Advocacy Center for the U.S. Department of Justice among others. Mr. Swanson has been a panel trustee for 24 years and is a member of the State Bar of Wisconsin, ABA, ABI, National Association of Bankruptcy Trustees and National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys. He is Board Certified by the American Board of Certification in both consumer and business bankruptcy, receiving his initial certification in 1993. Mr. Swanson received his undergraduate degree in accounting from the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh and his J.D. from the University of Wisconsin Law School.
Brian I. Swett is a partner in Winston & Strawn’s restructuring and insolvency practice in Chicago and has represented a broad range of parties in complex bankruptcy and workout matters. He represents senior secured lenders and other creditors, companies (including debtors-in-possession), shareholders, investors, sellers and purchasers in restructurings, both in and out of court. These representations have involved federal, district and bankruptcy court proceedings and appeals across the country. His experience includes a range of debtor-in-possession bankruptcy financing and cash-collateral matters in a wide range of industries. Mr. Swett has structured facilities that provide liquidity and accommodate an extremely broad array of pre-bankruptcy capital structures. He is an active member of ABI and has published articles in the ABI Journal, and he spoke at ABI’s Winter Leadership Conference in December 2006 on the topic of PBGC liens. Mr. Swett received a B.A. in International Relations in 1992 from Johns Hopkins University, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He received an M.A. in international relations with honors in oral examinations from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in 1993. In 1996, he received a J.D. from the New York University School of Law, where he served as a staff editor of the Journal of International Law and Politics.
Sheryl L. Toby serves as the co-chair of Dykema Gossett PLLC’s Bankruptcy and Corporate Restructuring Group in Detroit, where she is a bankruptcy and restructuring attorney with more than 20 years in the field. Her practice has included representation of a wide range of clients including manufacturing, retail, health care, real estate, financial institutions and creditors’ committees, and she has extensive experience in addressing problems associated with critical-supplier issues. A frequent national speaker and consultant, Ms. Toby serves on ABI’s Board of Directors (Education Committee, 2008-10), was co-chair of ABI’s Commercial Fraud Task Force Committee (2007-08) and program chair of ABI’s Central States Bankruptcy Workshop (2004-08). She is founder and former chair of the Michigan Network – International Women’s Insolvency/ Restructuring Confederation Member (local chapter) and vice chair for the Use and Disposition of Property Subcommittee of the Business Bankruptcy Committee of the American Bar Association. Also an advisory committee member for the U.S. Bankruptcy Court Eastern District of Michigan (1997-98), she was named Best Lawyer in America by Woodward/White (2007-09), “Michigan Super Lawyer” in Bankruptcy & Creditor/Debtor Rights by Law & Politics (2007-08) and was selected to Crain’s Detroit Business “40 Under 40” list.
Michael J. Venditto is a partner in Reed Smith’s New York office and a member of its Commercial Restructuring & Bankruptcy Group. He has represented clients in chapter 11 cases around the country involving businesses in a variety of industries such as financial services, telecommunications, retailing, manufacturing, food processing and entertainment. He also taught bankruptcy law as an adjunct associate professor of law at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law for 10 years. His comments on bankruptcy issues have appeared in such outlets as The New York Times. He is a member of ABI and the New York State Bar Association, and he is admitted to the First and Second Circuit Courts of Appeals, the U.S. District Courts for the Southern, Eastern, Western and Northern Districts of New York, the U.S. Court of International Trade and the U.S. Tax Court. Mr. Venditto received his B.A. magna cum laude from St. John’s University and his J.D. from Cornell University.
S. Margie Venus is Of Counsel at Strong Pipkin Bissell & Ledyard, LLP in Houston, where she focuses her practice on bankruptcy, corporate restructuring, creditors’ rights and insolvency matters with an emphasis on creditor committees, debtors and equity-holder representations, in complex cases in and out of chapter 11. Ms. Venus has also represented investors, sellers and acquirers of distressed assets.In addition, she has represented numerous corporate debtors in various industries, including energy, chemical manufacturing, retail and restaurant. Prior to joining Strong Pipkin, Ms. Venus was a partner at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP in Houston. Before working in a firm, she was a judicial law clerk to Hon. R. F. Wheless Jr., chief judge of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of Texas. She was formerly a legislative clerk and staff assistant to Hon. John G. Tower, of the U.S. Senate, from 1979-1984. She received her B.A. from Rice University and her J.D. from the University of Houston Law Center.
Donald F. Walton is the U.S. Trustee for Region 21, serving Georgia, Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S.Virgin Islands. Prior to serving as a trustee, Mr. Walton clerked for the Hon. James C. Hill of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia and the U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals. After completion of his judicial clerkship, Mr. Walton practiced law in Atlanta until he was appointed as Assistant U.S. Trustee in 1987. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, at which time he received a commission in the United States Navy Reserve and served three years active duty. He attended the University of Georgia School of Law where he received his J.D. cum laude.
Prof. G. Ray Warner is a professor of law and the director of the LL.M. program at St. John’s University School of Law in New York. He is also of counsel to Greenberg Traurig LLP. Prior to joining the St. John’s faculty, Prof. Warner was the William P. Boreland Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law. He has served as an ABI Robert M. Zinman Resident Scholar and has published numerous articles in the bankruptcy, commercial law and consumer law areas. Prof. Warner is an editor of ABI Delaware & Third Circuit Decisions Update, has served as a contributing author to Cavitch, Business Organizations and was a regular contributor to the ABI Journal, founding the Lien on Me column. He is a multiple recipient of law school teaching awards and is a frequent seminar speaker. Prof. Warner is a member of the American Board of Certification’s Board of Directors and is a former chair and founder. He is also a former ABI secretary and director, and is a Fellow in the American College of Bankruptcy, a founding member of the International Insolvency Institute and the chair of the Association of American Law Schools’ section on post-graduate legal education. He serves as co-advisor to the ABI Law Review and helps supervise the Chief Judge Conrad B. Duberstein National Bankruptcy Memorial Moot Court Competition, both of which are co-sponsored by St. John’s and ABI. Prof. Warner holds an LL.M. in corporation law from New York University School of Law, a J.D. cum laude from Northwestern University School of Law and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Emory University, where he was Phi Beta Kappa.
Hon. Eugene R. Wedoffhas served as a bankruptcy judge in the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago for 20 years and as chief judge from 2002-07. After graduating from law school, Judge Wedoff became a partner and member of the executive committee at the Chicago law firm of Jenner & Block. As co-chair of ABI’s Consumer Bankruptcy Committee, Judge Wedoff prepared analyses of bankruptcy reform legislation and testified concerning the legislation before the House Subcommittee on Commercial & Administrative Law. For his work in this area, Judge Wedoff received a special award from ABI. He has served on the Advisory Committee on Bankruptcy Rules, and he was a member of the working group that drafted the means test forms adopted by the Judicial Conference for the implementation of BAPCPA. Judge Wedoff’s article, “Means Testing in the New §707(b),” was published by the American Bankruptcy Law Journal. He also drafted the model chapter 13 plan currently used in the Northern District of Illinois. Judge Wedoff is the author of the chapter on professional employment in Queenan, Hendel and Hillinger, Chapter 11 Theory and Practice (LRP Publications, 1994) and has been an associate editor of The American Bankruptcy Law Journal. He is currently serving as ABI’s Vice President-Communication & Information Technology and as secretary of the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges. He is a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy and a member of the National Bankruptcy Conference. Judge Wedoff is a frequent lecturer, having presented papers on a variety of consumer and business issues, and is a member of the Federal Judicial Center’s Committee on Bankruptcy Judge Education. In 1995, Judge Wedoff received the Excellence in Education Award from the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges. He graduated from the college and law school of the University of Chicago.
Brady C. Williamson is a constitutional and corporate litigator with Godfrey & Kahn SC’s Business, Finance and Restructuring Practice Group in Madison, Wis., where his bankruptcy work has focused on the representation of secured creditors, committees and debtors in chapter 11 proceedings. He has successfully represented clients in federal and state appellate courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court has decided a series of bankruptcy cases in which Mr. Williamson and the firm have filed amicus briefs. In 1996, he was appointed by the President to chair the National Bankruptcy Review Commission, which submitted its 1,300-page report to Congress, the Chief Justice and the President on Oct. 20, 1997. Mr. Williamson is also a member of the National Bankruptcy Conference and the American College of Bankruptcy. A 1975 graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center, he has taught periodically at the University of Wisconsin Law School for more than 20 years.
Dr. Mark Zandi is chief economist and cofounder of Moody’s Economy.com in West Chester, Pa., where he directs the company’s research and consulting activities. Moody’s Economy.com, a division of Moody’s Analytics, provides economic research and consulting services to businesses, governments and other institutions. Dr. Zandi’s research interests include macro, financial and regional economics. His recent research has studied the determinants of mortgage foreclosure and personal bankruptcy, analyzed the economic impact of various tax and government spending policies and assessed the appropriate policy response to bubbles in asset markets. He also conducts regular briefings on the economy. Dr. Zandi is quoted often in national and global publications, is frequently interviewed by major news media outlets and is the author of Financial Shock, an exposé of the subprime financial crisis. Dr. Zandi received his B.S. from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania, where he did his research with Gerard Adams and Nobel laureate Lawrence Klein.
Hon. Gregg W. Zive was sworn in as a U.S. Bankruptcy Judge for the District of Nevada on Jan. 23, 1995 in Reno and served as Chief Judge from Oct. 1, 1999-Sept. 30, 2008. Judge Zive chaired the Ninth Circuit Conference of Chief Bankruptcy Judges from Oct. 2005-Sept. 2006. He was admitted to the bars of California, Nevada and the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior to taking the bench, Judge Zive practiced as a general civil litigator in the areas of commercial, contract, real property and employment-relations law and is admitted to the bars of California and Nevada. He is a Fellow of The American College of Bankruptcy and is also a member of the Washoe County Bar Association (president, 1992-93), National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges (president-elect 2007-08; Board of Governors (1999-2001); Board of Directors, NCBJ Endowment for Education and Education Committee for 2006 Annual Conference), ABI (Board of Directors 2008-present), State Bar of Nevada Advisory Commission on Law Related Education and the Ninth Circuit Public Information and Community Outreach Committee. Judge Zive has completed a three-year term as a member of the Ninth Circuit Standing Committee on ADR. He has been a trustee of the Access to Justice Foundation of Washoe County, Nev., and is a Master Emeritus in the Bruce R. Thompson Chapter of the American Inns of Court. Judge Zive has taught and been a presenter at numerous seminars regarding various bankruptcy-related topics as well as civil procedure, evidence, real property, employment law and trial techniques, and has published articles relating to those topics. After graduating from the University of Nevada with a B.A. in journalism, and he graduated magna cum laude from the University of Notre Dame Law School, where he was a member and an editor of the law review.
Sharyn B. Zuch is of counsel in the Litigation Department of Wiggin and Dana, LLP, in Hartford, Conn., where she concentrates her practice on commercial matters involving all aspects of bankruptcy, insolvency, receiverships, complex collections, loan restructuring and workouts. Ms. Zuch frequently represents nursing home operators, secured and unsecured creditors, landlords and purchasers in receiverships, bankruptcies and out-of-court dissolutions. She currently advises several hospitals, nursing homes and other health care providers in commercial collections, bankruptcy and insolvency matters. Before joining Wiggin and Dana, LLP, Ms. Zuch was a litigation partner in the Florida law firm of Shackleford, Farrior, Stallings & Evans, P.A. She was a member of ABI’s Director Liability panel at its 16th Annual Northeast Conference in 2006, is a founding co-chair and member of the Connecticut Network of The International Women’s Insolvency and Restructuring Confederation (IWIRC) and a member of the Executive Committee of the Commercial Law & Bankruptcy Section of the Connecticut Bar Association. Ms. Zuch was formerly the secretary to and a master in the Ferguson-White Chapter of the American Inns of Court. She was the founding editor of the Quarterly Report, the newsletter of the Business Law Section of the Florida Bar, and has lectured and written extensively about bankruptcy, insolvency and the litigation of business disputes. She received her B.S. in economics with distinction from Cornell University and her J.D. from the University of Chicago.
