Features October 2020

Sitting at his desk in Toronto, Evan Howard can honestly say success breeds success. When Howard began working at CAAT Pension Plan in 2012 as its first in-house lawyer, he remembers it being poised for growth, with 60 employees and 30 participating employers. Assets under management were just under $6 billion. Fast-forward eight years and […]

The building had been grossly underused since the late 1960s. The former Encanto Boys and Girls Club and its 18,000 potentially valuable square feet essentially gathered cobwebs and dust in a distressed part of San Diego. But how that’s changed, the commercially zoned facility having been bought for $4.2 million last December by a minority-run […]

During an infectious disease pandemic, cleaning products are essential, and there are few household cleaners better known than Lysol. As the regional legal director for Mexico and Latin America at RB, maker of the iconic disinfectant spray, Alvaro Gutierrez is tasked with keeping product approvals moving, changing product labels to reflect the times, and streamlining […]

When his parents bought him his first pair of white and blue PUMA suede sneakers with the trademark leaping cat logo on the tongue and heel of the shoes, Peter Mastrostefano was just eight years old. He never imagined that he’d one day become the senior vice president and general counsel for the North American […]

When Renata Cunha Giuliani joined Akamai Technologies, there was no welcoming bouquet on her desk or procession of new colleagues stopping by to wish her well. That happens these days when people onboard in a pandemic, although like other Akamai employees working remotely, she was given a budget for establishing her home office. Giuliani’s joining […]

When Shahin Timdarazar started his job at GKN Automotive in January of 2019, it was pretty clear what his manager was expecting: change. In the wake of its acquisition in 2018—when the UK-headquartered company that once made Minis and Spitfires was bought by Melrose Industries—a firm known to buy, improve and sell manufacturing outfits—change was […]

From a young age DeeDee Drays has always followed her sense of adventure, be it to the jungles of Sumatra or the mountains of Tibet. While a law student at the University of Texas, she even considered joining the Peace Corps after graduation. So it comes as no surprise that her legal career became just […]

For a general counsel operating in one of the country’s most demanding industries, the work was about as high stakes as it gets: a protracted legal battle between two Colorado fintech companies (and their respective banking partners) and the state’s attorney general. At the heart of the dispute was whether the plaintiffs, Avant and Marlette […]

Turns out, when it comes to spearheading a long-overdue societal change, persistency and passion are necessary—if by no means sufficient. Ryan Hurley has been fighting the good fight for well over a decade, trying to relax Arizona’s still-stringent marijuana laws so that recreational possession and use—with regulation and taxation—can be as legal there as in […]

Michael Futch spent much of his legal career helping companies build highways, bridges and infrastructure across the U.S. Though he accomplished everything he set out to do—both as an engineer and as an attorney—it’s the bridges he built within his professions that stand the tallest. During his time as vice president and general counsel at […]