Keynote Speakers
Eva Almirantearena is Vice President, Associate General Counsel, Antitrust and Commercial Litigation at Intel Corporation. Eva has been with Intel since 2004, mainly in the Litigation Group, handling a wide variety of matters, including antitrust litigation and investigations, commercial litigation and misappropriation of confidential information and trade secrets. Eva is Intel Legal’s Diversity and Inclusion Leader, a member of Intel Legal’s Diversity & Inclusion Steering Committee and leads Intel Legal’s Outside Counsel Diversity & Inclusion Program team. She is also co-chair of Intel Legal’s Pro Bono Committee. Prior to joining Intel, Eva was an antitrust partner at Howrey in Northern California and, before that, was a trial attorney at the Antitrust Division of the US Department of Justice in Washington, D.C.
Siobhan Grady Siobahn is the first woman computer science Ph.D. graduate from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (2018). She is an assistant professor of information science/systems in the School of Library and Information Sciences at North Carolina Central University, Program Director for the Information Science program, Lab Director for the Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence and Equity Research (LAIER), Co-Director for the Center fOr Data Equity (CODE), an AAAS IF/THEN ambassador, and an Office e-Learning faculty fellow at North Carolina Central University. Her research focuses on utilizing machine learning to identify sources of misinformation on social media and on improving fault detection in autonomous vehicles. Dr. Grady advocates increasing the number of women and minorities in computer science. She believes that “the STEM workforce has both gender disparities and that of historically disenfranchised groups. As an AAAS IF/THEN ambassador, she affects change by examining girls’ perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors, helping them gain confidence in curating and developing a STEM identity.” Additionally, Dr. Grady has been featured in museums throughout the nation, has spoken at national and international conferences, serves on multiple boards, and is featured as a statue in the world’s largest exhibit of women’s statues. Technology is the way of the future, and Dr. Grady has a vision for minority girls’ and women’s futures. She realizes that vision by providing educational opportunities through community organizations, philanthropic efforts, college courses, and research grants and publications.
Philip Hampton Philip G. Hampton, II, a senior partner with more than four decades of experience as an IP lawyer, serves as Chief Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Officer. In this position, he works collaboratively with the Board of Directors to establish the firm’s diversity and inclusion strategy, including setting and monitoring goals for recruiting, retaining and advancing diverse legal professionals. He leads diversity-related activities and firm resource groups and subcommittees.
Phil has been involved in diversity, equity and inclusion programs and initiatives for most of his professional career. He has mentored dozens of minority and female IP students and young lawyers. While serving as the Assistant Commissioner for Trademark in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) during the Clinton Administration, minority attorneys increased by more than 400%. He proposed innovative solutions to foster diversity and inclusion, for which two of his former firms were awarded the Minority Corporate Counsel Association’s esteemed Thomas L. Sager Award. Phil is a former President and Scholarship Committee Chairman of Foundation for the Advancement of Diversity in Intellectual Property Law (FADIPL). In 2016, Phil was the inaugural recipient of the Diversity in Tech Award presented by the IP Section of the National Bar Association. Phil also teaches Trademark Law at Howard University School of Law, where he has served as an adjunct professor for more than a decade. While serving as the Chief Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Officer, Phil is an active member of Polsinelli’s Intellectual Property Department. Phil’s decades of experience in patent and trademark litigation, patent and trademark counseling, trademark prosecution, enforcement, maintenance and licensing of all types of intellectual property, are valuable to less established department members. He has been an expert witness in almost three dozen trademark infringement actions and has served as a Special Master in several patent infringement actions for the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. Phil has been involved in patent and trademark litigation in U.S. district courts, mini-trials, ITC Section 337 hearings, and Trademark Trial and Appeal Board opposition and cancellation proceedings. He always seeks creative, cost-effective solutions to his client’s legal problems. Phil has prepared, filed, and prosecuted U.S. and foreign patent applications, and he has also prepared opinions regarding patentability, validity, and infringement issues. With his knowledge of the USPTO people and processes, Phil has conducted investigations of “atypical” prosecutions of patent applications within the USPTO. Phil has represented U.S. and foreign clients in many capacities for trademark law, including preparing, filing and prosecuting trademark applications, preparing trademark opinion letters, preparing and filing appeals to the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, and conducting opposition and cancellation proceedings. Also, during his tenure at the USPTO, Phil oversaw the reengineering of the agency. He promulgated almost 200 Commissioner’s Decisions and oversaw the first new edition of the Manual of Trademark Examining Procedure in almost ten years. Phil received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Chemical Engineering from MIT and his J.D. degree from the University of Chicago Law School.
Mimi Afshar Professor Mimi Afshar is the Director of the NCCU Intellectual Property (IP) Clinic, and the supervising patent and trademark attorney for the IP Clinic. Prof. Afshar brings almost 18 years of combined private-practice and outside counsel experience to NCCU’s Intellectual Property department, including experience as a chemical engineer in the pharmaceutical industry. She possesses diverse expertise in the areas of intellectual property, patents, trademarks, and licensing. Professor Afshar has represented technology & pharmaceutical clients in intellectual property counseling and patent prosecution. She has also provided patent counseling and prosecution expertise to independent inventors. Her pro bono representation includes assisting entrepreneurs with patent and trademark matters. Prof. Afshar received her BS Degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley. She graduated Summa Cum Laude from Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, CA. Prof. Afshar received her LLM in Law and Technology from the University of California at Berkeley Law School. She is a Registered US Patent Attorney, and is admitted to the USPTO Patent Bar. She is admitted to the California State Bar, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and the United States District Court-Southern District of California.
Mark Atkinson Is a second career attorney. Duke undergrad ’86. 4 years in US Navy. 25 years in consulting. NCCU JD ’20. I have a short attention span so I like working with new ideas, entrepreneurs and solving problems. Married with 4 adult kids.
Dennis Barnes Dennis Barnes is a Managing Director at Dovetail Consulting Group. He has over 20 years of experience serving life sciences companies both as an external resource evaluating and testing the effectiveness of compliance programs, and as an internal member of the senior management team charged with building and implementing compliance programs, leading risk management initiatives, and serving as an independent voice reporting directly to Boards of Directors. Dennis served as the Vice President of Global Governance, Risk & Compliance at Mayne Pharma where he was responsible for building and implementing the US Healthcare Compliance Program, and developing and executing a global risk management program, among other responsibilities. Before joining Mayne Pharma, Dennis served as Vice President, Global Compliance Officer for PAREXEL International Inc., the second largest clinical research organization (CRO) in the world, where he focused on partnering with key global pharmaceutical clients to support their compliance with important elements of their Corporate Integrity Agreements and Deferred Prosecution Agreements. Dennis managed three teams while at PAREXEL, including a US Spend Reporting Team, a US Third Party Due Diligence Team and a Global Third-Party Due Diligence Team located in Hyderabad, India. Dennis earned a BA in Economics from Bucknell University, a JD from the University of Notre Dame School of Law, and an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin, McCombs Graduate School of Business. Dennis is also a Certified Public Accountant, licensed in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Earlier this year, Dennis earned the Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP) designation and the Certified Information Privacy Manager (CIPM) designation from the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) and has begun helping his clients work toward privacy solutions within their compliance programs.
Roderick Brown Mr. Brown formerly served as LNLP Interim Head of UK Legal and is currently LNLP NA Senior Counsel and Director. He previously served as Senior Corporate Counsel at HCL America, Inc., and Senior Counsel at Murphy Wesley & Harlan (formerly Gonzalez, Saggio, and Harlan), where his focus areas were, and still remain, supporting and negotiating complex customer and procurement commercial transactions, intellectual property, product development, alliances and channel partnering, software and data licensing, cloud computing, Software as a Service, and mergers and acquisitions. He also served as Vice President of Business Development and General Counsel for FDR Inc., a boutique government contracting organization that focused on technical and specialized military training. Mr. Brown is a graduate of North Carolina Central University School of Law. He enjoys traveling, outdoor activities, research, sports, and team enhancing activities.
Ashley Campbell Ashley Campbell is the CEO of Legal Aid of North Carolina. She represents the Tenth Judicial District (Wake County) on the North Carolina State Bar Council where she serves on the Access to Justice Standing Committee. She is a member of the Chief Justice’s Equal Access to Justice Commission and is the past president of the Wake County Bar Association and Tenth Judicial District Bar. Prior to moving to Legal Aid, Ashley was a clinical professor at Campbell Law School where she directed the Blanchard Community Law Clinic and taught trial advocacy. Ashley has been rated as a Best Lawyer in America in Commercial Litigation for many years. She earned both her undergraduate and law degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Maryam Casbarro
Rachel Cash
Ezekiel Dixon-Román Ezekiel Dixon-Román is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Policy & Practice at the University of Pennsylvania. His research seeks to make cultural and critical theoretical interventions toward rethinking and reconceptualizing the technologies and practices of quantification as mediums and agencies of systems of sociopolitical relations whereby race and other assemblages of difference are byproducts. He is the author of Inheriting Possibility: Social Reproduction & Quantification in Education (2017, University of Minnesota Press); recipient of the 2018 Outstanding Book Award from the American Educational Research Association. He also co-edited Thinking Comprehensively About Education: Spaces of Educative Possibility and Their Implications for Public Policy (2012, Routledge) as well as co-guest edited “Alternative Ontologies of Number: Rethinking the Quantitative in Computational Culture” (2016, Cultural Studies-Critical Methodologies), “The computational turn in education research: Critical and creative perspectives on the digital data deluge” (2017, Research in Education), “Control Societies @30: Technopolitical Forces and Ontologies of Difference” (2020, Social Text Online), and most recently “Dialogues on Recursive Colonialism, Speculative Computation, and the Techno-Social” (2021, e-flux journal). He is currently working on a book project that examines the haunting formations of the transparent subject in algorithmic governance and the potential for transformative technopolitical systems.
April Dawson
Jasmine Glaspie Jasmine Glaspie is a Tax Manager at Walmart, Inc., an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets, department stores, and grocery stores. In her current role, she is responsible for organizing and managing external tax audits, monitoring tax policy developments, and ensuring compliance of tax reporting requirements on behalf of Walmart. Previously, Jasmine worked as a Tax Research Analyst for a tax tech software company, where she conducted complex transactional tax analysis and maintained tax compliance by monitoring legislation and state revenue publications for sales tax updates and impositions. She is a triple alum of North Carolina Central University, having earned her Bachelor of Business Administration (2012), Master of Business Administration (2018), and Juris Doctor (2018) degrees from the illustrious institution. During her time of NCCU School of Law, she interned at the EEOC, State Farm Bank, the North Carolina General Assembly, and was a Student Attorney for the school’s Trademark Clinic. She also served on the Executive Boards of the Business Law Society and the Intellectual Property Law Society. She is licensed to practice law in New York and currently resides in the Triad area of North Carolina, where she works remotely for her organization.
Katia Gondarenko Katia Gondarenko is a business unit attorney at Intel Corporation, based in Santa Clara, U.S. She supports several software technology engineering groups. Katia concentrates on intellectual property licensing, contracts, competitive analytics and marketing matters. Before joining Intel, Katia was an M&A lawyer in New York. Katia has a J.D. from Cornell Law School.
Shaquana Johnson Shaquana serves as Lead Counsel at Meta, Reality Labs working in its Research AR/VR division. Shaquana works on complex technology agreements such as joint development agreements, license agreements and sponsored research agreements to name a few. Prior to joining Meta Shaquana was a transactional attorney at a healthcare technology company and prior to that she was in the clinical research field. Shaquana is a proud graduate of Howard University and NCCU School of law. Shaquana is extremely passionate about DEI and leads Meta Reality Labs’ DEI workstream where she has implemented a first of its kind DEI initiative to be announced in late winter. Shaquana also serves as Chair of the Career Development Committee of the Raleigh Chapter of Association of Corporate Counsel. In her free time she enjoys spending time with her precious son Evan and her family.
Vedia Jones-Richardson is a partner heading the Trademark/Copyright/Transactional Practice Group at Olive and Olive, an intellectual property law firm in Durham, North Carolina, with a practice focused on consumer products, computer, communications, educational, arts, and entertainment clients. Her background includes an undergraduate degree in design, management positions in television, advertising, and software development, law practice in law firms and in-house, and several years as an adjunct professor and USPTO-certified law clinic supervisor. She draws on each of these perspectives to provide insights for solving the challenges faced by her clients. Vedia is a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center and Howard University, admitted to practice in Washington, DC, Illinois, and North Carolina, and is certified as a North Carolina Bar Trademark Specialist. She has served in many bar leadership positions, including in the American Bar Association, as chair of the Law Practice Division and ABA Women Rainmakers, on various ABA commissions for technology and client development issues, as an elected Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and in the North Carolina Bar Association and the North Carolina Association of Women Attorneys. She also has been a Fellow in the College of Law Practice Management, a founding board member of InternetBar.org, and has served on the boards of many arts and cultural organizations. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Queens, NY, she also spent several years in Washington DC and Chicago, and now lives in the Triangle Area of North Carolina with her husband and three sons.
Ben Kastan Ben Kastan is the Associate General Counsel for Cybersecurity at the National Security Agency (NSA). As such, he is the senior legal adviser to NSA’s Cybersecurity Directorate (CSD) and leads the NSA Office of General Counsel (OGC) Cybersecurity Practice Group, a team of military and civilian attorneys who provide day-to-day operational legal advice and counsel to NSA personnel around the world on the full breadth of NSA’s cybersecurity mission, including on-net operations, cryptography, industry engagement, Defense Industrial Base cybersecurity, and information sharing with U.S. and foreign partners. The Cybersecurity Practice Group also advises CSD and other U.S. Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) System elements on the collection, analysis, and dissemination of SIGINT on foreign cyber threats, as well as NSA’s relationship with U.S. Cyber Command. Ben began his NSA career in NSA OGC’s Litigation Practice Group through the NSA Legal Honors Program. He has worked on a wide range of cyber operations issues since March 2016, including as the attorney embedded with NSA’s Computer Network Operations office and the NSA attorney assigned to support the NSA/U.S. Cyber Command Russia Small Group, charged with helping to protect the 2018 elections from foreign interference. He was elevated to the rank of Defense Intelligence Senior Level in May 2021. Prior to joining NSA, he clerked for the Honorable Donna Stroud on the North Carolina Court of Appeals. Ben received his J.D. and LL.M. in International and Comparative Law from Duke University School of Law.
Leslie J. Keyes Leslie J. Keyes has worked at the NSA in the Office of General Counsel (OGC) since May, 2017. She is currently assigned to the Operational Authorities practice group and is a member of the team that helps to develop NSA-supported FISA applications that are then filed at the U.S. FISC by the Department of Justice (DOJ). Before the Operational Authorities group, Leslie worked in the Litigation practice group where she handled both civil and criminal litigation matters. Following Litigation, Leslie was assigned to the Law & Policy practice group as the first forward-deployed OGC attorney assigned to advise NSA’s Office of Strategic Communications, which houses its Office of Public Affairs (OPA) and conducts both internal and external public-facing communication-related activities on behalf of the Agency. Leslie obtained her B.A. in Political Science from Tufts University in 1990, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s law school in 1993. She has gathered legal experience on both the state and federal levels and in both the private and government sectors. Prior to working at NSA, Leslie served as a Senior Attorney with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for approximately 15 years, clerked on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania for U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Carol S.M. Wells, and served as an administrative law clerk for the Pennsylvania Department of Labor Administrative Law Judges. She also worked as an Assistant D.A. in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office for five years and as an Associate Attorney at the law firm of Mylotte, David & Fitzpatrick in Philadelphia. Leslie is barred in Pennsylvania, Maryland & Washington, D.C. and has one sixteen year-old daughter, Kendall.
Kevin Lee Prior to joining NCCU, Professor Lee was a tenured, full professor at Campbell University, Norman A. Wiggins School of Law, where he taught corporate law, jurisprudence, and computational law for 15 years. He was the founding Director of Campbell Law Innovation Institute and the Founding Chair of the North Carolina Bar Association Future of Law Committee. In 2017, he was recognized by FastCase as one of the top 50 innovators. Professor Lee was a law clerk to the Hon. Herbert J. Hutton, Jr., US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. He was a Foreign Office Lawyer/Associate with a large commercial law firm located in Tokyo, Japan. He holds advanced degrees in Social and Political Ethics from the Divinity School of The University of Chicago, from Colgate University in Philosophy and Religion, and he is a graduate of New York Law School.
Diane Littlejohn serves as the Executive Director of the Technology Law and Policy Center. She is a 2010 alumnus of NCCU School of Law. In addition, Ms. Littlejohn maintains her private practice, practicing primarily in intellectual property and family law. While at North Carolina Central University, Ms. Littlejohn served as a staff editor on the NCCU Law Review as well as a senior editor on the Southern Region Black Law Students Association Law Journal (SRBLSA). During her time as a student, Ms. Littlejohn published a legal article in the SRBLSA Law Journal concerning presidential security. Ms. Littlejohn has also been featured in publications including, Voyage Raleigh Magazine and Authority Magazine. She is originally from Omaha, Nebraska and spends her free time with her two dogs and enjoys listening to podcasts.
David Lingerfelt is responsible for the North America Tax Content Research teams at Avalara. David’s teams combine tax technical and research skills with advanced automation technologies to provide the tax content that powers Avalara’s North America tax compliance automation suite. David joined Avalara in 2017 with a seventeen-year background in government tax administration including auditing, tax controversy, collections, taxpayer education, and compliance documents processing. David deeply understands the complex compliance obligations businesses face dand is committed to automating this burden. David is a 2014 graduate of NCCU Law and is a licensed North Carolina attorney.
Lara J. Marion Lara Marion is currently the Manager of Public Policy for Amazon’s connectivity team. She leads third party engagement for all connectivity related policy work including Amazon’s Low Earth Orbit Satellite broadband initiative Project Kuiper. Prior to her work at Amazon Lara spent 4 years on Capitol Hill as a Legislative Counsel and lobbied for various organizations including the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, The National Cable Telecommunications Association and AARP. Lara currently resides in Davidson, North Carolina.
Angelica McDonald
Luciana Parisi Luciana Parisi is a Professor in Literature and a core Faculty in Computational Arts, Media and Culture at Duke University. She is a founding member of the Critical Computational Bureau. In 2004, she wrote Abstract Sex. Biotechnology and the Mutations of Desire (Athlone Press). In 2013, she published Contagious Architecture. Computation, Aesthetic and Space (MIT Press). She is completing a monograph on AI, epistemologies and the alien thinking of machines.
Alyssa Pearce Alyssa Pearce is an Associate member of the Data Privacy & Cybersecurity Practice of Lewis Brisbois, where she assists clients in preparing for and responding to data security incidents. She graduated from William & Mary Law School, where she held a research fellowship at the Center for Legal & Court Technology studying the legal impacts of emergent technologies. Alyssa has also served as a mentor to teams of Virginia university students prototyping solutions to cybersecurity issues, and interned with a large technology company. Prior to law school she served as the Director of Business Development and a Program Analyst for a defense contracting firm, and as the POS System Administrator for a regional retailer.
Nichelle “Nikki” Perry currently serves as the Director of the Law Library and an Associate Professor of Law at North Carolina Central University School of Law. Prior to becoming director, she served as the Assistant Director and the Reference Instructional Librarian at NCCU and the Reference/Electronic Services Librarian at the Kathrine R. Everett Law Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Additionally, she served as a judicial law clerk for North Carolina Court of Appeal judge Clifton E. Johnson. Nichelle received her Master of Library Science and Juris Doctor degrees from North Carolina Central University. She serves on several regional and national library committees and is a member of the North Carolina State Bar.
Cedric Pickett
W. Keith Robinson is a Professor of Law at the Wake Forest University School of Law. Professor Robinson is a nationally recognized patent scholar. He researches how legal institutions govern emerging technology. He has commented on issues of intellectual property law in media outlets and given more than seventy presentations around the world on patent law. Thomson Reuters has twice recognized Professor Robinson’s articles as the best that year in intellectual property law. His recent work has explored how artificial intelligence may impact obtaining U.S. patents. Robinson’s work has been cited in briefs before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (the court that hears all appeals in the U.S. arising under the patent laws). The Federal Circuit has also cited his work favorably. His most recent article is published in the Nevada Law Journal. In addition, he has published articles in the Florida Law Review, DePaul Law Review, and the American University Law Review. Robinson graduated from Duke University, earning a BS in electrical engineering. He received his JD, cum laude from Duke University. After law school, he worked for the Washington, DC law firm of Foley & Lardner LLP, where his practice focused on patent law. While at Foley & Lardner, Robinson was an adjunct professor at The George Washington University Law School. Before joining Wake Forest, Professor Robinson was an Associate Professor at the SMU Dedman School of law for ten years. There, he was an Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor, a founding Co-Director of the Tsai Center for Law, Science and Innovation, and Faculty in Residence in Kathy Crow Commons on the campus of SMU.
Josh Rowland is a Data Privacy & Cybersecurity Attorney located in Durham, NC and has been in the information security field for 12 years. Josh is a Director of Risk for Fidelity Investments, covering a wide variety of topics, including technology and operational risk, data governance, privacy, and potential suspicious activity monitoring and investigations. Prior to his work at Fidelity, Josh was a police officer for five years and participated in several cyber investigations. Josh also teaches continuing legal education to attorney’s, helping educate them on compliance with ethical obligations to protect client data, how to respond to data breaches, and how to handle operational risks like wire fraud. Josh received his BA in Sociology and Justice Studies from the University of New Hampshire and his JD from North Carolina Central University. Josh has been a member of the North Carolina Bar since 2017. Josh is an avid fisherman and enjoys spending time with his wife and two boys, ages 6 & 9.
Stacey Rowland Professor Stacey L. Rowland came to UNC as the Reference & Digital Communications Librarian with the rank of Associate Librarian in 2015. Her IT expertise, including systems, web design, and network troubleshooting led to the expansion of her role as the IT Services Librarian and then to her current position as the Assistant Director for Collection & Technology Services. She teaches Law Practice Technologies, Electronic Discovery Technologies, and Advanced Legal Research. Her research interests include automation in legal practice, public access to legal information, and legal research innovation. Prof. Rowland holds a J.D., a Masters of Library and Information Sciences and a Masters in History from Florida State University. Prior to her employment as a law librarian, she held Law Clerk positions in the General Counsel’s Office of the Florida Department of Health and in the Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco of the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation. Before working at UNC, Rowland was a Public Services Law Librarian for ten years at the University of Mississippi Grisham Law Library.
Kim Stahl Attorney (NCCU ’04) and IT professional, former CIO, currently working in IT policy and organizational data governance in Higher Ed.
Steven Schwarcz Steven L. Schwarcz is the Stanley A. Star Distinguished Professor of Law & Business at Duke University and founding director of Duke’s interdisciplinary Global Financial Markets Center. His areas of research and scholarship include insolvency and bankruptcy law, international finance, capital markets, systemic risk, corporate governance, and commercial law. He holds a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering (summa cum laude) and a Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School. Prior to joining Duke, he was a partner at two of the world’s leading law firms, Visiting Lecturer at Yale Law School, and Lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School. He also helped to pioneer the field of asset securitization. He has been the Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford, Visiting Professor at the University of Geneva Faculty of Law, Distinguished Visiting Professor at University College London (UCL) Faculty of Laws, the MacCormick Fellow at The University of Edinburgh School of Law, the Liberty Fellow at the University of Leeds School of Law, and an advisor to the United Nations. He has testified before the U.S. Congress on topics including systemic risk, securitization, credit rating agencies, and financial regulation, and has advised various governmental agencies on the global financial crisis. He has been recognized for the past two decades as the world’s second-most-cited scholar in commercial, contract, and bankruptcy law. Schwarcz is a fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy and the American College of Commercial Finance Lawyers, a founding member of the International Insolvency Institute, former Business Law Advisor to the American Bar Association, a member of P.R.I.M.E. Finance’s Panel of Recognized International Market Experts in Finance, and Senior Fellow of the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI).
Jeffrey Tidwell Jeffrey Tidwell, is currently Vice President and Chief Intellectual Property Counsel at ORIC Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Prior to ORIC, I practiced patent law at the Finnegan Henderson firm in their Washington, D.C. office, and at various pharmaceutical and biotech companies, including Pfizer, Santarus, Ignyta, and Synthorx. I have a Ph.D. in chemistry from MIT and a J.D. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. My practice lies mostly at the intersection between patent law and the Hatch-Waxman Act. 
Pegeen Turner is a legal technology consultant based in Raleigh. She has worked with attorneys and their technology both inside and outside of law firms for more than 20 years. Now, as a consultant and president of Legal Cloud Technology, she helps firms integrate new technology into their practices and helps firms update and use their existing technology better. Her firm concentrates on cloud-based technology and moving attorneys and firms toward cloud-based technology. She is also a co-founder of a technology product called myFirmData, a custom reporting tool that integrates with Clio, the leading cloud-based practice management system.