01
ABOUT
The William & Mary Business Law Review will host its inaugural symposium on Saturday, March 20, 2021, on Social Entrepreneurship and the Law. The symposium is co-sponsored with the Raymond A. Mason School of Business at William & Mary and the Business Law Society and hopes to attract both law and business students. The goal of this event is to explore the needs and operations of growing businesses. We hope that the speakers will inspire students to think critically about some of the challenges growing businesses face.
02
SCHEDULE
10:00
Opening Remarks and
Keynote Address
AM
11:00
First
Break
11:15
Panel 1: Identifying Social Needs and Creating Companies
12:15
Lunch
Break
PM
12:45
Panel 2: The Legal Implications of Social Enterprises
1:45
Closing
Remarks
03
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
PROFESSOR BERNICE GRANT
Bernice Grant is an Associate Clinical Professor of Law and the Senior Director of the Entrepreneurial Law Program at Fordham University School of Law. She teaches an entrepreneurial law seminar and directs a clinic that provides legal advice to social ventures and low-income entrepreneurs. She is also the host of the Startup LAWnchpad podcast, which educates entrepreneurs about legal issues. She previously taught at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, where she served as the Clinical Supervisor and Lecturer for the Entrepreneurship Legal Clinic, and at New York University School of Law, where she was the Associate Director of the Lawyering Program.
A Harvard Law School graduate, she practiced corporate law in New York for seven years at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP. She worked in the executive compensation and employee benefits, mergers and acquisitions, capital markets, and credit groups. She also maintained a pro bono practice, advising entrepreneurs and artists on legal issues. She subsequently served as Of Counsel to a transactional boutique law firm.
Before becoming an attorney, Bernice received a B.S., magna cum laude, and M.S. from Wake Forest University in Accountancy, then worked as a Certified Public Accountant at an international accounting firm.
04
PANELS
PANEL 1: IDENTIFYING SOCIAL NEEDS AND CREATING COMPANIES
This panel will discuss how companies identify and serve social needs and the legal challenges they may face when developing their company. The panelists will first be invited to introduce themselves and then will receive a mix of predetermined questions and questions from the audience regarding this topic.
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PROFESSOR JENNIFER FAN - PANELIST
Professor Jennifer Fan joined the University of Washington School of Law in 2010. She teaches and writes on various topics in business law, with an emphasis on entrepreneurship, innovation, corporate governance, and corporate purpose. Professor Fan is the faculty director of the Entrepreneurial Law Clinic and faculty advisor for the Law, Business, and Entrepreneurship track. Professor Fan is the 2019 recipient of the Philip A. Trautman Professor of the Year Award given by the student body and was selected to participate in the UW Leadership Excellence Cohort from 2017-2019.
Prior to joining the faculty, Professor Fan was a senior associate in the corporate securities group at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. Professor Fan was also the inaugural director of the Pro Bono Program of the John and Terry Levin Center for Public Service and Public Interest Law at Stanford Law School. Previously, she served as the Vice President and Director of Legal Affairs of the Asian Pacific Fund, a community foundation serving the Asian American community in the Bay Area. Professor Fan earned her A.B. in Political Science, with distinction, from Stanford University and received her J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She is admitted to practice in California, New York and Washington.
PROFESSOR PRAVEEN KOSURI - PANELIST
Praveen Kosuri has a unique background in law, business, and public interest. As a former investment banker he is versed in all forms of capital raising for Fortune 500 companies as well as privately held businesses. In addition, his experience representing businesses as a corporate lawyer with a litigation background allowed him to apply an integrated, interdisciplinary approach to solving his clients’ problems. That same integrated approach can be seen in his direction of the University of Pennsylvania Carey School of Law's Entrepreneurship Legal Clinic. Kosuri has marshaled the resources of the Clinic to positively impact distressed communities by representing clients that range from small business owners in the inner-city, to nonprofit organizations engaged in community revitalization, to social ventures creating technologies that can benefit society at large.
As a former trial lawyer and teacher of trial advocacy, Kosuri also serves as part of the National Institute for Trial Advocacy’s national faculty. Kosuri began his clinical teaching career at the University of Chicago Law School. He was also an Adjunct Professor at Northwestern University School of Law.
SHARON OWLETT, ESQ. - PANELIST
Sharon Owlett has spent the majority of her career serving as a corporate executive and in-house General Counsel. She has worked in both government and private industry, with large corporations and with start-ups. In her role as counsel, she participated in mergers and acquisitions for both private and public companies as well as in a highly successful IPO. She directed litigation, investigations, and corporate and board programs and training in ethics and governance. In addition to her experience as counsel, she has headed departments in finance and accounting, human resources, contracts and purchasing, government security, and government relations. She has extensive experience with government contracts, including those involving national security elements, and has instituted and run programs on protection of classified and other sensitive information. She has also worked extensively with print and broadcast media. She has significant experience as a member of corporate and non-profit boards and currently serves on or as an advisor to several non-profit boards. She also currently serves as an Executive Partner with the Raymond A. Mason School of Business of the College of William and Mary, advising undergraduate business and MBA students.
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She received her undergraduate degree from The American University School of Government and Public Administration and received her JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. She is admitted to the bar in Virginia and Georgia.
PROFESSOR LISA ALEXANDER - PANELIST
Lisa Alexander is a professor of law at Texas A&M University School of Law, with a joint courtesy appointment as a professor at Texas A&M University’s Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning. She is also a co-founder and a co-director of the law school’s Program in Real Estate and Community Development Law. Professor Alexander’s research and teaching focuses on property law, housing law and policy, urban development, historic preservation law, local government law, fair housing, law and society, and business and social entrepreneurship law. She has published in the Minnesota Law Review, Hastings Law Journal, Wisconsin Law Review, Nebraska Law Review, Yale Law Journal Forum, Harvard Law and Policy Review, Fordham Urban Law Journal, William and Mary Business Law Review, and the Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law and Policy, among other publications.
Professor Alexander was the first person in the law school to receive a Texas A&M University School of Law Presidential Impact Fellow Award, and one of only 21 professors at the University to receive the recognition in 2018. Professor Alexander was also recently selected as one of two Sadie Alexander Leadership Award recipients by the Black Law Student’s Association (BLSA) at the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 2020.
Professor Alexander was a Summer Honors Program attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Housing Section; an Equal Justice Works Fellow; an Earl Warren Civil Rights Scholar; and a Coro Fellow in Public Affairs. She is a former Associate Editor of the ABA Journal of Affordable Housing & Community Development Law, the premiere scholarly publication in the field of affordable housing and community development law. She was also appointed to the Wisconsin State Advisory Committee for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. She is affiliated with Texas A&M University’s Center on Housing and Urban Development, and with the University of Wisconsin’s Institute for Research on Poverty. She holds a B.A. in Government with honors from Wesleyan University and a J.D. from Columbia University School of Law.
PROFESSOR ERIC A. KADES - MODERATOR
Professor Kades graduated from the Yale Law School, where he was an Articles Editor on the Yale Law Journal. He clerked for Judge Morton I. Greenberg on the Third Circuit, and began his teaching career at Wayne State University in Detroit. Author of articles in North Carolina, University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers, and Yale Law Reviews/Journals, and in the Law and History Review and Law & Social Inquiry. Recipient of teaching awards in 1995, 1996, 1997, 2004, and 2018.
PANEL 2: THE LEGAL IMPLICATIONS OF SOCIAL ENTERPRISES
This panel will discuss the variety of legal implications and obstacles entrepreneurs will face after they have materialized their product. The panelists will receive a mix of predetermined questions and questions from the audience regarding this topic.
RYAN WERTMAN, ESQ. - PANELIST
Mr. Wertman represents startups, emerging growth, and mid-market companies as their general counsel and helps to execute strategic transactions during the entirety of their life cycles.
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He believes deeply in giving counsel that balances both the legal and business considerations of the matter at hand, recognizing that his clients rely on him to inform their business decisions in the real world.
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Prior to co-founding GrowthCounsel, Ryan founded Wertman Law (2010) and started his career in the M&A department of an Am Law 100 law firm based in Philadelphia (2007-2010). Ryan also served as general counsel to Skipta LLC (2011-2017), a tech startup in the social networking space, representing the company through several rounds of financing and a successful exit to a publicly-traded company.
MR. TROY WIIPONGWII - PANELIST
Troy Wiipongwii is a graduate of W&M MPP program and has an interest in emerging technologies impact on development outcomes. Troy co-authored two published works on blockchain: Blockchain and International Development and Ten Things you Should Know about Blockchain Today, and has produced several whitepapers with W&M colleagues. Troy has worked on blockchain projects ranging from the design of arbitrage algorithms to blockchain based machine learning algorithms for microlending. In 2019, with the feedback and support of students and faculty, Troy developed a Blockchain Lab proposal for W&M. In Feb. 2020 with seed funding from W&M and a collaboration between the Global Research Institute and Entrepreneurship Center, W&M Blockchain Lab was formalized. Troy is a current PhD student in Data Science.
PROFESSOR DEBORAH BURAND - MODERATOR
Deborah Burand is the director of the International Transactions Clinic and co-director of the Grunin Center for Law and Social Entrepreneurship. She writes and lectures on issues related to impact investing; social finance innovations such as social impact bonds; social entrepreneurship; international finance; microfinance and microfranchise; and developing sustainable businesses at the base of the economic pyramid.
She was formerly director of the International Transactions Clinic that she cofounded at The University of Michigan Law School in 2008. In 2010-11, Burand took a leave of absence from Michigan Law to serve as general counsel to the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the development finance institution of the United States. Prior to joining Michigan Law, she worked in the microfinance sector. Earlier in her career, she was a senior attorney in the international banking section of the Federal Reserve Board’s Legal Division; and then at the US Department of the Treasury where she was first the senior attorney/adviser for international monetary matters, and later the senior adviser for international financial matters. She also practiced law at the global law firm Shearman & Sterling. She is a member of the Bars of New York and the District of Columbia. She earned her BA, cum laude, from DePauw University and a joint graduate degree, JD/MSFS with honors, from Georgetown University.
SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR COSPONSORS
William & Mary
Business Law Society
