September 23, 2020 (Wednesday)
10AM – 6PM
Jed Repko
Title: Partner
Organization: Joele Frank
Bio:
A member of the firm since 2007, Jed opened the firm’s San Francisco office in 2014. He provides counsel to public companies and private equity firms in the context of ongoing investor and public relations and special situations including Shareholder Activism, Mergers & Acquisitions, Restructuring & Bankruptcy, Investor & Public Relations and Crisis Communications. Jed joined Joele Frank with more than seven years of financial advisory experience in corporate bankruptcy and restructuring. He was previously a vice president at AlixPartners and an analyst at Kroll Zolfo Cooper. Jed received a BA in art history with a minor in philosophy from Bowdoin College.
Phil Neiswender
Title: President and Chief Legal Officer
Organization: Center for Board Excellence
Bio:
Phil is a founding investor and advisor to CBE and is currently the President and Chief Legal Officer, and a member of the Board of Directors. In his role with CBE, Phil advises the board of directors and senior management at public, private, and not for profit entities. He particularly focuses on board governance and compliance roles, board effectiveness, and strategic alignment between the board and senior management. Phil is also a frequent moderator and panelist for legal and governance related topics.
Prior to joining CBE full-time, Phil held several senior leadership positions at both public and private companies, including Chief Operating Officer, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary roles. Throughout his career, Phil has been sought out to advise his respective boards and management teams around legal, compliance and governance matters. Immediately prior to joining CBE, Phil was Executive Vice President for Operations & Corporate Development, and Chief Legal Officer at Xevo, Inc. (purchased by Lear Corporation), Chief Operating Officer at Garagiste, Inc., and General Counsel, Vice President of Legal at BSQUARE Corporation (NASDAQ: BSQR). He also held both legal and business roles at Getty Images, Inc. during its season as a publicly traded Company (NYSE: GYI), and was an attorney at Graham & James, LLP and Riddell Williams, PS, in Seattle, WA. Phil obtained his J.D. from the University of Virginia and his B.A. from the University of Washington. He is a member of the Washington bar.
Sid Tandon
Title: Partner
Organization: McKinsey
Bio:
Sid Tandon is an Associate Partner at McKinsey, based out of their Silicon Valley office.
He works primarily with high-tech and semiconductor industry clients where he supports executives to develop growth strategies and help drive structural transformations through M&A.
He has worked on large-scale strategic transformational efforts including large M&A situations in leading semiconductor players, significant divestments in leaders in enterprise technology and software.
Prior to McKinsey, Sid was Founder of three companies in telecom equipment and software.
He has a Bachelor’s of Technology in Computer Science from Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, India.
Judy Bruner
Title: BOD
Organization: : Applied Materials, Rapid7, Seagate Technology, Varian
Bio:
Judy Bruner is a professional director, currently serving on the board of directors for Applied Materials, Rapid7, Seagate Technology, and Varian Medical Systems. She previously served for the board of Brocade Communication Systems from 2009 until 2017.
Judy was the Executive Vice President of Administration and Chief Financial Officer for SanDisk Corporation, a global leader in flash storage solutions from 2004 to 2016 when the company was sold to Western Digital. At SanDisk, she was responsible for finance, investor relations, information technology, legal, and facilities. She also served as a member of the board of directors for SanDisk from 2002 to 2004. From 1999 to 2004, she served as the Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for Palm, Inc., a provider of hand-held computing and communications solutions.
Judy was responsible for executing the Palm separation from 3Com Corporation and the Palm IPO in 2000. She spent 11 years at 3Com in a variety of
senior finance roles. She was the Chief Financial Officer for Ridge Computers and she began her career at Hewlett-Packard in 1980. Judy has a B.A. Degree in Economics
from the University of California in 1980 and an M.B.A. Degree from Santa Clara
University in 1986.
Sue Barsamian
Title: BOD
Organization: Box and Norton LifeLock
Bio:
Sue is a Board Director at two public companies, Box Inc. (NYSE: BOX), NortonLifeLock Inc. (NASDAQ: NLOK, formerly Symantec) and several private companies including Segment Inc., Gainsight Inc. and Xactly Corp. She is a seasoned former General Manager with broad experience leading sales, marketing, product, R&D and business operations. With a technical background and strong domain expertise in enterprise software/SaaS and cybersecurity, she has a track record in both early stage and Fortune 50 organizations.
Sue spent a decade at Hewlett Packard across a range of executive roles including Chief Sales and Marketing Officer for HPE Software, General Manager of the $850M Enterprise Security Products business, General Manager of the $9B Technology Support business and General Manager of the $16B Indirect Partner enterprise business. She was one of five female SVPs in the company. Following the merger of HPE Software and Micro Focus, Sue transitioned the team as EVP, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer for the new $4B Micro Focus, the 7th largest pure-play software company in the world. Sue had responsibility for global product revenue.
Earlier in her career, Sue was Vice President of Global Go-to-Market (GTM) for Mercury Interactive, SVP Marketing for Critical Path and held leadership roles at Verity where she was based in London for four years.
Sue has a commitment to STEM and diversity and served as the Chairman of the Board for the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering. She is a member of the Board of Trustees for Kansas State University and was inducted into the KSU College of engineering Hall of Fame. She has served as Board Chairman of Bowman International School and received the Silicon Valley Tribute to Women in Industry (TWIN) Award. Sue is a Board Director at two public companies, Box Inc. (NYSE: BOX), NortonLifeLock Inc. (NASDAQ: NLOK, formerly Symantec) and several private companies including Segment Inc., Gainsight Inc. and Xactly Corp. She is a seasoned former General Manager with broad experience leading sales, marketing, product, R&D and business operations. With a technical background and strong domain expertise in enterprise software/SaaS and cybersecurity, she has a track record in both early stage and Fortune 50 organizations.
Sue spent a decade at Hewlett Packard across a range of executive roles including Chief Sales and Marketing Officer for HPE Software, General Manager of the $850M Enterprise Security Products business, General Manager of the $9B Technology Support business and General Manager of the $16B Indirect Partner enterprise business. She was one of five female SVPs in the company. Following the merger of HPE Software and Micro Focus, Sue transitioned the team as EVP, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer for the new $4B Micro Focus, the 7th largest pure-play software company in the world. Sue had responsibility for global product revenue.
Earlier in her career, Sue was Vice President of Global Go-to-Market (GTM) for Mercury Interactive, SVP Marketing for Critical Path and held leadership roles at Verity where she was based in London for four years.
Sue has a commitment to STEM and diversity and served as the Chairman of the Board for the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering. She is a member of the Board of Trustees for Kansas State University and was inducted into the KSU College of engineering Hall of Fame. She has served as Board Chairman of Bowman International School and received the Silicon Valley Tribute to Women in Industry (TWIN) Award.
James Dougherty
Title: M&A Practice Leader
Organization: Jones Day
Bio:
James Dougherty leads the Firm’s M&A Practice. He advises companies on transactional matters, including takeover defense, leveraged buyouts, proxy contests, shareholder activism, and corporate governance.
James has worked on a variety of mergers and acquisitions transactions representing acquirors, targets, and special committees, including Goodrich Corporation in its acquisition by United Technologies; The Lubrizol Corporation in its acquisition by Berkshire Hathaway; Exelis in its acquisition by Harris Corporation; the special committee of Hawk Corporation in connection with its sale to the Carlisle Companies; Nationwide Mutual in its acquisition of Nationwide Financial Services in a going private transaction; and multiple other significant transactions, including spinoffs.
Other companies with which James has worked on substantial matters include: Cintas, Cleveland-Cliffs, Developers Diversified Realty, Diebold, Greystar, Lincoln Electric, Marathon Petroleum, Nordson, Olympic Steel, OM Group, Parker Hannifin, PolyOne, Sherwin-Williams, STERIS, and Timken. He also regularly advises investment banking firms as financial advisors on a variety of transactions.
James was born in Brooklyn, New York. He joined Jones Day in 2004 and became a partner in 2008.
Lawrence Elbaum
Title: Lawrence Elbaum
Organization: Vinson & Elkins
Bio:
Lawrence Elbaum is the co-head of V&E’s Shareholder Activism practice. He leverages more than a decade of experience as a securities litigator and business advisor to counsel senior management and boards of public companies with respect to shareholder activism campaigns and complex corporate governance matters.
Lawrence is highly experienced in advising clients concerning proxy fights, merger contests, consent solicitations, “Withhold the Vote” or “Vote No” campaigns, precatory proposals and short attacks. He also counsels clients on strategic investor relations and shareholder activism-related litigation and investigations in the U.S. and abroad
Over the past four proxy seasons, Lawrence has successfully led scores of defense engagements across all market capitalizations and covering virtually every industry, including retail/wholesale, restaurant, hospitality, energy, mining, manufacturing, engineering, pharmaceutical and real estate/REITs. He also represents select investors in activism campaigns against public companies.
In 2018, the New York Law Journal gave Lawrence its Rising Star award, which honors the most promising attorneys in New York’s legal community under the age of 40 who have influenced their practice areas in New York and around the country.
Outside of the office, Lawrence works with organizations to promote gender and ethnic diversity in public company boardrooms across Corporate America. He also devotes significant efforts to pro bono work, including having represented battered and indigent women in connection with divorce, alimony, and child custody and support proceedings in New York City. In addition, he supports a host of regional, national and global charities, including various Holocaust remembrance and genocide prevention initiatives, The Boys and Girls Club of America and Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital at NYU Langone.
Sharon Segev
Title/Company: Former CLO: LIFELOCK
CLO & CFO: SMULE
Bio:
Sharon is a seasoned executive known for her strategic vision and passion for leading highly effective teams, that navigate fast pace growth by combining excellence, tenacity and creativity. Her extensive business operations and legal experience include overseeing finance and accounting, corporate development, legal, compliance, board governance, culture and talent, music licensing, and business practices. Sharon holds a dual degree in accounting and law and enjoys leveraging the intersection between the two to grow companies, teams and people and help them operate efficiently.
Sharon is the Chief Financial and Legal Officer at Smule – where she helps connect the world through music! At Smule, she manages the finance, music licensing and legal focus areas, including talent and culture. Prior to Smule, Sharon was the Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary at LifeLock (NYSE: LOCK), a leading identity theft protection service provider, recently acquired by Symantec for ~$2.4 Billion – following a competitive bidding process where Sharon played an instrumental role advising the Board and leading the company to a great outcome. At LifeLock, she helped raise the compliance and information security bar, while enabling the company to continuously innovate and excel by navigating through evolving complex regulatory requirements and implementing tools and processes that allow for efficiency and scale.
Prior to LifeLock, Sharon was the Vice President, Corporate Development & General Counsel at Elo Touch Solutions, a multinational interactive touch solution provider. Prior to that VP, AGC at Cadence. At LifeLock Segev helped raise the compliance and information security bar, while enabling the company to continuously innovate and excel by navigating through evolving complex regulatory requirements
and implementing tools and processes that allow for efficiency and scale. Prior to
LifeLock, Segev was the Vice President, Corporate Development & General Counsel at Elo Touch Solutions, a multinational interactive touch
solution provider.
Melissa Fisher
Title/Company: BOD: MODEL N
CFO: QUALYS
Bio:
As the chief financial officer of Qualys, Melissa leads all elements of the company’s finance organization, including finance, accounting, investor relations, treasury and tax. She brings 20 years experience as a strategic financial executive working with technology companies on areas including corporate finance, investor relations, treasury, financial planning and analysis, mergers & acquisitions, and corporate governance. Melissa previously served as vice president, FP&A, IR and Treasury at Zynga, a social gaming company.
Prior to Zynga, Fisher served as VP , Corporate Development, IR and Treasury at Digital River, a global provider of enterprise e-commerce SaaS solutions. Prior to Digital River, she was an investment banker and advised companies on more than $400 billion of transaction volume at Goldman Sachs, Banc of America Securities and Foros
Melissa currently serves as a director and as chair of the audit committee on the board of Model N and Image Sensing Systems. She previously served as a member of the audit committee and member of the board of directors of Digital Generation.
Melissa received an AB in government from Harvard University and an MBA
from Harvard Business School.
Greg Taxin
Title/Company: Founder: Spotlight Advisors
Founder and former CEO: Glass Lewis
Bio:
Jackie Liu
Title/Company: Partner: Morrison Foerster
Bio:
Jackie is co-chair of Morrison & Foerster’s Global Corporate Department of over 400 lawyers.
Jackie engages in a general corporate and transactional practice, with special emphasis on corporate counseling of public companies, mergers and acquisitions, and the China practice.
She has more than 20 years of experience in advising public companies on corporate governance matters, including disagreements between board and management, succession planning, investor relations, director and officer fiduciary duties, and board “best practices,” and advises boards and special committees in connection with conflicts of interest matters, proxy contests and other corporate control efforts. Jackie is outside general counsel to a number of public companies with whom she has worked for over 15 years and provides big‑picture, critical value-adding strategic advice. She also counsels public companies on disclosure matters and associated liability considerations. Jackie has lectured at seminars and conferences and written articles on various ’33 Act and ’34 Act law matters and is a staff member of the Practising Law Institute.
Jackie has represented a number of public and private companies in mergers and acquisitions, from small asset acquisitions and divestitures, founder-driven sales and talent acquisitions to complex multibillion-dollar transactions such as SOFTBANK’s acquisition of Sprint, Intel’s acquisition of McAfee and Mercury Interactive’s sale to HP. In addition, she has been involved in a number of complex cross-border transactions in Asia, Australia and Europe, including NCR Corporation’s acquisition of Israel-based Retalix, Intel’s minority stake in Netherlands-based ASML, PRC-based MicroPort Scientific’s acquisition of the orthopedics business of Wright Medical, DSP Group’s acquisition of the DECT business of Netherlands-based NXP B.V. and McKesson’s acquisition of Israel-based Medcon. Her knowledge of U.S. SEC-reporting requirements is a valuable addition to counseling on public-company M&A transactions.
She has also represented a number of well-established Chinese companies in setting up U.S. subsidiaries and counseling them on strategic matters relating to their U.S. operations.
In 2018, Jackie received the Client Choice Award from International Law Office/Lexology for excellent client care and quality of service in the practice of corporate law. She was named the 2013 Legal Advisor of the Year by M&A Advisor, Law360’s “M&A Rising Stars of 2013,” and a winner of the 2012 40 Under 40 West M&A Advisor Awards. She was also recommended as a leading attorney in the field of M&A by Legal 500 USA 2014 and, in 2018, recommended for M&A/Corporate and Commercial: M&A Large Deals ($1bn+).
She was born in Shanghai, China. She is fluent in Mandarin Chinese.
She is a member of the California State Bar and the Bar Association of San Francisco. She is a board member of the Foundation of City College of San Francisco.
During her tenure at Harvard Law School, she served as the co-editor of the Harvard Law Record.
Lauren Gojkovich
Title: Managing Director
Organization: PJT Camberview
Bio:
Jackie is co-chair of Morrison & Foerster’s Global Corporate Department of over 400 lawyers.
Lauren Gojkovich is a Managing Director at PJT Camberview, based in New York. Before joining PJT Camberview, Ms. Gojkovich was a Vice President, Assistant General Counsel in the corporate governance group in the legal division of Goldman Sachs, focusing on the corporate governance of the Goldman Sachs board of directors. Prior to that, Ms. Gojkovich worked as a corporate attorney at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, where she specialized in mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance, proxy fights and takeover defense. Ms. Gojkovich began her career as an analyst in the equities trading division of Goldman Sachs. Ms. Gojkovich is a member of the State Bar of New York and Massachusetts. She holds a JD from Columbia Law School, where she was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, and a bachelor’s degree in public policy studies from Duke University, where she graduated magna cum laude.
Glenn Welling
Title: Founder and CIO
Organization: Engaged Capital
Bio:
Glenn is the founder and CIO of Engaged Capital, a constructive activist fund that invests in small and mid-cap public companies. Previously, Glenn was a Principal and Managing Director at Relational Investors, a $6B activist fund. He was responsible for managing the fund’s consumer, healthcare and utility investments and was involved in all aspects of Relational’s research process.
Prior to Relational, Glenn spent 7 years as a Managing Director at Credit Suisse and Head of the Investment Banking Department’s Advisory Business. He built his group into one of the leading commercially focused advisory businesses on Wall Street advising on over $100B of transactions. Glenn joined Credit Suisse when the Firm acquired HOLT Value Associates, where he was a Partner and Managing Director. Prior to HOLT, Glenn was the Managing Director of Valuad U.S., a financial software and advisory business. Prior to Valuad U.S., he worked at leading consulting firms including A.T. Kearney and Marakon Associates.
Glenn is a member of the Board of Directors of TiVo Corporation, a NASDAQ listed provider of digital entertainment technology solutions where he is the compensation committee chair and a member of the strategy committee and the corporate governance and nominating committee, and The Hain Celestial Group, a NASDAQ listed leading marketer, manufacturer and seller of organic and natural better-for-you-products where he is a member of the compensation committee and Strategic Working Group. From 2015 to 2018 he served on the Board of Medifast, Inc., a NYSE listed manufacturer of medically based, proprietary healthy living and meal replacement products where he was a member of the audit, compensation, and mergers and acquisitions committees. From January 2015 to August 2018 he served on the Board of Jamba, Inc., a NASDAQ listed leading restaurant retailer of better-for-you food and beverage offerings where he was the compensation committee chair and a member of the finance committee. Glenn was recognized by The National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) as one of the 100 most influential directors in corporate boardrooms in 2018. From 2017 to 2019 he also served on the Corporate Governance Advisory Council of the Council of Institutional Investors. Glenn also teaches executive education courses at the Wharton School of Business, his alma mater. He serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors for the university’s tennis program and as a member of the Wharton Executive Education Board.
The Board Games is a unique experience for public company board directors and Csuite executives to stay on top of the evolving shareholder activism landscape. Engage with world-class practice experts, strategists, and advisors with diverse expertise and experiences. Come away prepared to respond to activists and get to know the experts who regularly help board directors and corporate management. This a balanced symposium that will address a wide spectrum of cases…from constructively working with management and activists to the more confrontational situation.
Join us for a world-class immersive learning experience with tabletop exercises on responding to activists and insightful panel discussions with top tier experts.
TARGET AUDIENCE
Public company board directors, CEO, CFO, CLO/GC, PR/IR,
Chief Communications Officer
WHEN?
Wednesday, September 23, 2020
10:00AM – 6:00PM
WHERE?
Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center
505 Howard St, San Francisco
PROGRAM
Opening: Current Activism Landscape
CFO: Qualys
Founder and former CEO: Glass Lewis
Panel 1: To Settle or Not to Settle
Morgan Stanley
Jones Day
Morrison Foerster
CLO & CFO: Smule
Panel 2: Proxy Fight
Engaged Capital
Joele Frank
PJT Camberview
Vinson & Elkins
Panel 3: Proactive Smart Moves
Chief Legal Officer:
Center for Board Excellence
McKinsey
Box and Norton LifeLock