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Spotlight:
Alyson Spurlock Danner

Q: Please tell us about your current role and how you got to where you are today.  

A: Current Role. I am a Managing Director, Associate General Counsel leading the Global Payment Solutions and Global Banking Digital Strategy Legal Teams (“GPS Legal Team”). The team is comprised of about 30+ lawyers that sit globally in Hong Kong, Singapore, Brazil, London & the US.  The GPS Legal Team provides legal advice with respect to the following products: Commercial Card, Trade Finance, Liquidity, Receivables, Payments & Digital Platforms.

How I got to where ...

Spotlight:
Kristen Kenley

Q: Please tell us about your current role and how you got to where you are today.

A: I am Corporate Counsel at Brighthouse Financial in the Litigation, Employment and Customer Relations department. In this role, my responsibilities include acting as a legal advisor on a wide variety of counseling and pre-litigation matters related to the company’s annuity and life insurance business.

Before I joined Brighthouse in September 2022, I was lucky enough to spend seven years at MVA after being a summer associate and joining MVA right out of law school. While at ...

Spotlight:
Kim Cochran

Q: Please tell us about your current role and how you got to where you are today.

A: I am currently counsel in the Novant Health Legal Department, focusing on board governance and corporate matters.  I also support our direct-to-employer health group. Prior to this role, I worked in the Legal Department at Wells Fargo in recovery and resolution planning, with a focus on governance mechanisms. My career path has been shaped by doing good work for good leaders. I have benefited from good leaders getting new opportunities, which in turn have created new opportunities ...

Spotlight: Brian Soja

Senior Vice President, Associate General Counsel, Regulatory Exams & Inquiries
LPL Financial

Q1: Please tell us about your current role and how you got to where you are today.

A1: For the past four and a half years, I worked on the Regulatory Exams and Inquiries (REI) team within the Legal Department of LPL Financial, an independent broker-dealer that provides investment, technology, and compliance support, among other services, to over 21,000 financial advisors across the country, including advisors at approximately 1,100 bank and credit union-based ...

Spotlight:
Cabell Clay

Senior Vice President | Associate General Counsel
Corporate Legal | Compliance, Legal & Risk (CLR)
LPL Financial
Pronouns: she/her/hers

Please tell us about your current role and how you got to where you are today.   
I am currently Senior Vice President, Associate General Counsel, Head of Employment Law for LPL Financial, a leading provider of investment and business solutions for financial advisors across the nation. My team and I partner with human capital and business leaders to protect the Company by ensuring compliance with various federal, state ...

I oversee several key monitoring and testing programs in LPL’s Compliance function, including our Compliance Risk Assessment, Compliance Testing Program, the Surveillance Department, and a compliance strategy and projects function. If these functions do not mean a lot to you (and they would have meant very little to me when I was practicing law), you should feel free to reach out to me learn more. Each of these are standard compliance programs in financial services companies, and may provide valuable inputs to defending financial institutions from liability or helping to evaluate the effectiveness of the processes the institution currently has in place to manage its regulatory obligations.

Spotlight

Jonathan Prytherch

Counsel
Question: What makes an in-house counsel successful?
 
The importance of establishing trusted relationships with key business and compliance partners are very important. Many times, working with those partners on a specific project and taking the time to get to know not only their line of business, but also their hobbies and interests, will cement the way to an internal network of people that you can rely on in a pinch down the road. For instance, when you need information or an understanding of a business or compliance process for a regulatory ...

On January 15, MVA had the opportunity to virtually welcome outstanding first-year law students from across the country as part of the firm’s third annual Diversity Conference. Student attendees were selected through a competitive application process and participated in various networking opportunities, interactive panels, and presentations from MVA attorneys, clients and other leaders in the legal profession during the one-day seminar. We are grateful to have connected with such an inspiring group of future lawyers and we look forward to supporting their continued success.

We wanted to share with you a video created by our White Collar, Regulatory Defense, and Investigations and Financial Regulatory Advice & Response teams and shared with their clients. It addresses important issues on our civic engagement over the past several months and discusses our transition to a work-from-home environment. We hope you enjoy seeing some familiar faces.

Brian joined the firm’s Litigation team in 2004 from the U.S. Department of Justice. He left the firm in 2018 to join Duke Energy Corporation where he serves as Deputy General Counsel.

Spotlight

Jason Idilbi


Q: What are three keys to your professional success?

A: Without a doubt, nurturing strong and positive connections with people—my colleagues and others in the legal and business community—ranks at the top. I say “nurturing” intentionally; building and maintaining these relationships takes focus and effort but also bears the greatest personal and professional rewards. My team will tell you that I’m always saying that there are plenty of talented attorneys who have the training and substantive experience to perform our jobs well. But these ...

As many of you know, Greg Murphy served as Chair of our Litigation Practice Group from 2002-2010 and served on the Firm's Management Committee from 2000-2010. Greg left the firm to become the first General Counsel at Nucor Corporation and he has been kind enough to take some time away to share his perspective on professional success, best practices, and relationship building.

One of the features of MVAToday will be updates from our alumni. We have a diverse network of talented individuals that have been a part of our firm. We think allowing them to share their stories and advice will be a great resource and help our alumni make connections that may help them in their current position or in a later stage of their career.

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