Class Notes – Spring 2020
Below are the Class Notes as they appeared in the Spring 2020 print edition of The Advocate. If you would like to submit a class note for the next magazine, please email editor@wcl.american.edu.
1960s
Bernard M. Bordenick ’63 retired in 1997 after 32 years with the Atomic Energy/Nuclear Regulatory Commissions and three years of private law practice in Washington, D.C. He now resides in Frederick, Maryland. He served on the county’s Board of Zoning Appeals from 1992 to 1997.
William P. Hise ’66, a speaker at the first law conference held by the International Council of Shopping Centers in 1970, was invited by ICSC to speak again at the 50th Anniversary Law Conference in Orlando, Florida, in October.
Jack Koppelman ’66 retired from a general practice in 2004, including 25 years in Washington, D.C., six years in Colorado, and one year of Immigration Law in Florida while married with two children. In 2004, he and his family moved to Ajijic, Mexico, and returned to Florida in 2010. Instead of law, he now practices shuffleboard, which he says is more fun.
Stillman Rogers ’67 was clerk of Cheshire County Superior Court in New Hampshire for more than 22 years, performing administrative and judicial functions, before retiring in 2001. He was also a travel photographer and writer for a number of publishers, including Frommer and Thomas Cook
Publishing. Destinations covered include New England, the mid-Atlantic states, Canada, and much of Europe, especially Portugal and Spain. He has also served on the Board of the New Hampshire Bar Association and as a member of the U.S. Air Force Academy Board of Visitors. Rogers is actively involved as a travel writer and photographer, farmer, father, and grandfather, and remains a retired member of the New Hampshire Bar.
1970s
Joseph Nackson ’71 works in private practice in Hackensack, New Jersey. Last year, he attended the 50th anniversary of his graduation from Rutgers College. He occasionally runs into Joel Harris ’71 in court in Paterson, New Jersey.
Gil Rothenberg ’75, adjunct professor of law at AUWCL, where he has taught for over 35 years, received the Attorney General’s Mary Lawton Lifetime Achievement Award in October 2019. He retired from the Justice Department in November after 44 years (the last 15 years of which he served as chief of the Tax Division’s Appellate Section). He is also an adjunct professor of law at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School.
Jules Mermelstein ’79 has published his first in a series of justice novels. Justice, Justice Shall You Pursue is about an attorney who pursues justice, even if he has to violate the law to obtain it. The novel is available in paperback and e-book format online bookstores, and can be requested at brick-and-mortar bookstores and libraries. An audiobook is expected out later this year. Visit his website at julesmermelstein.com.
1980s
Jeffrey Jacobovitz ’80 is a partner at Arnall Golden Gregory. He is chair of the firm’s Antitrust Group and recently was appointed vice chair of the ABA’s Antitrust Section’s Compliance and Ethics Committee.
Judith Kunzman Benderson ’82, Washington Women’s Arts Center, was on a panel discussion sponsored by the National Gallery of Art and the D.C. Public Library, with Ray Barker, archivist of special collections/Washingtoniana. She was also featured in Meditations and Epiphanies: Otherworldly Devices in Painting, exhibited at the Betty Mae Kramer Gallery in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Corrine Propas Parver ’82 is a retired partner of Dickstein Shapiro (1997-2004) and practitioner-in-residence and founder of AUWCL’s Health Law and Policy Project (2004-2012). She is a member of the boards of directors of the all-volunteer nonprofit Women Lawyers On Guard Action Network and the Holy Cross Health System Foundation.
Michael John Algeo ’83 retired as judge for the Circuit Court for Montgomery County, Maryland, and now serves as special counsel to the State’s Attorney for Montgomery County. He is a proud adjunct professor in the AUWCL Trial Advocacy Program. Algeo was appointed by Governor Larry Hogan to serve as chairman of the Maryland Racing Commission and continues to serve in that capacity.
Lawrence (Larry) Freedman ’83 is counsel for a Puerto Rico telecommunications company. He co-founded a community based nonprofit, “Community Cares, Community Does,” which provides support and services for children and schools in the region’s poorest and most disadvantaged neighborhoods. Freedman also is a strategic advisor to a startup alternative dispute resolution company.
Cyndi Bleier ’85 is senior vice president and general counsel for Amboy Bank, a $2.4 billion community bank with 12 branches in New York. In 2019, she was voted General Counsel of the Year by NJBIZ for businesses in New Jersey over $500 million.
Michael D. Jankowski ’88 was named to BestLawyers.com’s list of Best Lawyers in America 2020. He was also recognized as a 2019 Wisconsin “Super Lawyer.” A shareholder in Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren’s Corporate Law, Business Reorganization, and Banking and Finance practices, Jankowski specializes in complex corporate bankruptcies, creditors’ rights, workouts, restructurings, troubled transactions, receivership, and commercial transactions.
1990s
Jill (Imgrund) Engle ’90 became the associate dean for academic affairs at Penn State Law in University Park, Pennsylvania, in July 2019. She teaches legal ethics at Penn State Law, and previously directed the law school’s Family Law Clinic and Externships and Public Interest Programs.
Richard L. Nagle ’92 and Travis W. Markley ’07 marked their two-year anniversary of opening TrialHawk Litigation Group in Reston, Virginia, in February. Markley and Nagle focus their practice on complex medical malpractice litigation on behalf of injured patients and their families. In 2019, Markley and Nagle secured nearly $10 million in medical malpractice settlements and judgments.
Connie Lynch ’92 was elected vice president of claims legal at GEICO in February by the GEICO Board of Directors. Lynch has extensive experience in complex litigation, having successfully managed class actions, anti-trust, affirmative fraud and bad faith cases around the country.
Jordan Yeager ’92 was elected to a 10-year term on the Pennsylvania Bucks County Court of Common Pleas. For more on Yeager, see page 28.
David Jaffe ’93 co-authored “Conduct Yourselves Accordingly: Amending Bar Exam Character and Fitness Questions to Promote Lawyer Well-Being” for the ABA Professional Lawyer. Jaffe is Dean of Students at AUWCL, and welcomes input from alumni who wish to strengthen the law student well-being movement. For more information, see story on page 10.
Marianne Merritt Talbot ’93 was named executive vice president of Business Development and Client Service for SCG Legal, an international law firm network founded in 1989 by 30 former state governors, in October 2019. In this role, she designs and delivers training and coaching programs to enhance business development and client service skills of the group’s 140 global member firms and their attorneys. Talbot also is responsible for innovative initiatives, including in the diversity and inclusion and technology arenas.
Renee Callahan ’95, corridors and crossing program senior policy officer for the Center for Large Landscape Conservation, helped produce a documentary featuring the organization’s work to reduce motorist crashes involving wildlife and improve habitat connectivity. Connecting Wild: Restoring Safe Passage tells the story of the decade long effort by the Nevada Department of Transportation and its partners to improve human safety by reconnecting a historic mule deer migration that crosses over both US-93 and I-80 in rural Elko County, Nevada.
Joseph G. Contrera ’95 is associate director of Intellectual Property at Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures in Baltimore. He directs a team of in-house patent counsel that advises faculty and is involved in patent prosecution and litigation. His oldest son is a recent graduate from Notre Dame and is a paralegal in Washington, D.C., who will attend law school next year.
Walter Schaub ’96 received the Paul Douglass award for Government Ethics in November 2019. Schaub serves as a senior advisor to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). He was the director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics from 2013 to July 2017.
Karen Dean ’97 joined Holland & Hart’s Tax Controversy Practice as counsel.
Nicole (Clarke) Foster LL.M. ’97 was appointed deputy dean of Academic and Student Affairs, Faculty of Law at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, in January.
Marcela Huaita LL.M. ’98 was elected vice chair of the MESECVI Committee of Experts on Violence Against Women of the Organization of American States for 2020-21.
Elias Levy LL.M. ’98 was designated consul general of the Republic of Panama in New York by His Excellency Laurentino Cortizo Cohen, president of the Republic. Levy started his duties in New York City, with jurisdiction in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont, in October 2019.
Amy Karpel ’99 became a commissioner of the International Trade Commission in August 2019.
2000s
Dolores Dorsainvil ’00, adjunct professor at AUWCL, was appointed by Maryland Governor Larry Hogan as a judge for the Prince George’s County District Court. Dorsainvil had worked as an assistant disciplinary counsel in D.C., where she investigated and prosecuted cases against lawyers for ethical misconduct for 13 years.
Jennifer M. Saubermann ’02 is wrapping up her tenure as president of the Women’s Bar Association of Massachusetts, a 1,400-member organization committed to the full and equal participation of women in the legal profession. She was recently promoted to general counsel and director of government affairs at the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative and honored as a 2020 “In-House Leader in the Law” by Massachusetts Lawyers
Weekly.
Naomi de Silva Snyder ’02 moved from San Francisco to San Diego and recently welcomed baby number two, Ava-Grace. Her oldest, Xen, is 3 years old.
Anuradha Banerjee ’05 has joined Morgan Stanley in New York as an executive director in Legal and Compliance, where she oversees the firm’s Swap Dealer Compliance program and advises on legal and regulatory matters involving Morgan Stanley’s OTC derivatives business.
Bashar H. Malkawi SJD ’05 serves as legal counsel and director of knowledge management at H.H. Ruler’s Court for the Government of Dubai, Legal Affairs Department. He previously served as legal counsel in the department’s Technical Office and as Dean of the College of Law, University of Sharjah, UAE (2014-2019).
William M. Meyer ’05 was named partner at Skyer & Associates LLP. Meyer joined Skyer in 2012 and was previously a senior attorney.
Roger Lu Phillips ’05 became legal director at the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC) in January, where he spearheads the organization’s efforts in support of Universal Jurisdiction prosecutions of Syrian war criminals. He works with special war crimes units in European states that have undertaken investigation and prosecution of perpetrators of atrocity crimes. He also oversees a team of data analysts identifying open-source evidence of violations, using new technologies developed by SJAC. Roger joined SJAC after having served as a U.N. legal officer for 10 years at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia and previously at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
Jolsna (John) Thomas ’05 won the 2019 Luna Austin Business Advocate of the Year and 2019 NAWIC Austin Women in Construction Award. She is business development manager for all of Texas for Rosendin Electric and served as chair of the South Asian Bar Association of Austin in 2019.
Jonathan A. Forman ’06 was promoted to partner in Baker & Hostetler LLP’s New York office, where he works in the firm’s White Collar, Investigations and Securities Enforcement and Litigation Group.
Amelia Parker ’06, LL.M. ’09, former staff member for the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, was elected to the Knoxville, Tennessee, City Council as an at-large member in November 2019. She was sworn in on Dec. 31, 2019.
Astrid Schmidt-King LL.M. ’06, executive-in-residence and director of the international business program at Loyola University Maryland’s Sellinger School of Business, was named a Bowe fellow in October 2019. She will join the World Trade Center Institute’s fifth cohort of Bowe fellows participating in this year’s Emerging and Developing Global Executives Program.
Ebony Scott ’06 was recently appointed as magistrate judge of the D.C. Superior Court. Her installation ceremony was Feb. 21, 2020.
Meg Hobbins ’07 was promoted from senior attorney to partner at Grossman Young & Hammond, making her the first attorney in GYH history to make partner. Hobbins’ practice focuses on humanitarian and family-based immigration matters before U.S. consulates abroad, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the U.S. immigration courts, the Board of Immigration Appeals, and the federal courts. She also represents clients before INTERPOL to challenge politically motivated Red Notices (requests to law enforcement worldwide to provisionally arrest a person pending legal action).
Kristen Johnson ’07, a transportation attorney at Taylor & Associates, was selected as a 2020 Top Woman to Watch in Transportation by Women in Trucking, the largest U.S. transportation industry group focused on women in the industry.
Travis W. Markley ’07 and Richard L. Nagle ’92 marked their two-year anniversary of opening TrialHawk Litigation Group in Reston, Virginia, in February. Markley and Nagle focus their practice on complex medical malpractice litigation on behalf of injured patients and their families. In 2019, Markley and Nagle secured nearly $10 million in medical malpractice
settlements and judgments.
Juan Sempertegui ’07, assistant general counsel and vice president of Bank of America, was named 2019 Hispanic Attorney of the Year by the Hispanic Bar Association of the District of Columbia.
Robert Tanenbaum ’07 was promoted in January to managing director and associate general counsel at Navient in Herndon, Virginia, where he has served as in-house counsel since 2015.
William H. Ebert ’08, resident in Bracewell’s Washington, D.C., office, was promoted from senior counsel to partner in January. He represents large financial institutions, private equity funds, and companies in secured and unsecured commercial lending transactions, primarily in the upstream, midstream and renewable energy sectors.
Gabrielle Mulnick Majewski ’08 was named executive director of DC Affordable Law Firm’s Board of Directors in January. She previously worked at the Children’s Law Center, where she served most recently as education project manager for the Guardian ad Litem Program.
Jessica Palmer ’09 was promoted from associate to member at the Bridgewater, New Jersey, office of Norris McLoughlin P.A.
2010s
Marcus Sohlberg LL.M. ’10 was promoted to counsel in the Global Trade Practice of White & Case in January. Based in Geneva, he advises clients on trade and investment matters with a particular focus on dispute settlement under the law of the World Trade Organization, as well as trade remedies
investigations under EU law.
Karin A. Curtis ’11 is general counsel of Singer Group Inc., an automotive design business with operations in Southern California, London, and Geneva. Prior to joining Singer in February, Curtis was a partner in the Commercial Litigation and Intellectual Property Groups at the Los Angeles office of Gordon Rees LLP, where she began in civil practice as an associate after leaving the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office. She was recently selected to the Los Angeles Business Journal’s Top Litigators and Trial Attorneys 2019 and Courtroom View Network’s Top 10 Defense Verdicts of 2019 lists for her role as lead trial counsel in a $50 million product liability trial with over 30 claims wherein she secured a complete defense verdict.
Gary C. Norman LL.M. ’11 was selected as a Public Policy Conflict Resolution Fellow, created through a partnership among the Maryland Courts and the University Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law with the goal of promoting conflict resolution in public policy affairs. Additionally, Norman was elected as W.M. Elect of a Masonic lodge in Towson, Maryland.
Ryan Norman ’12 began a new position as trial attorney with the Consumer Protection Branch of the Department of Justice in February. He was previously an Assistant U.S. Attorney with the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia from June 2016 until January.
Michael Fallings ’13 was promoted from partner to equity partner at Tully Rinckey PLLC’s Austin, Texas, location.
Prianka P. Sharma ’14 was the recipient of the 2019 Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless’ Pro Bono Intake All-Star Award for her commitment to pro bono service at the clinic’s weekly intake sites. Sharma was also the recipient of the Women in Government Relations 2019 Outstanding Public Sector Member Award for her achievements in government relations and advocacy.
Brittany Gail Thomas ’12, assistant director of student competition teams for AUWCL’s Stephen S. Weinstein Trial Advocacy Program, authored a case file titled “State of Washington v. Pratt.” Thomas’ case file was used for the prestigious Tournament of Champions, a national mock trial competition for the most competitive law schools around the nation. The case file was so uccessfully balanced that it had split prosecution and defense wins.
Eric A. Love ’16 was selected by Law360 as a Fintech Rising Star for 2019. He is an associate in the Financial Institutions Litigation and Regulation Practice at Jones Day in New York City, where he concentrates on the regulation of broker-dealers, investment advisers, private investment funds—including hedge, private equity and venture capital funds—and companies operating in the Fintech, blockchain and cryptocurrency areas.
Leah Potash ’16 began a new position in October 2019 at the Department of Early Education and Care in Boston, Massachusetts, where she works as assistant general counsel in the department’s legal unit. Previously she was an assistant district attorney in Suffolk County, Massachusetts.