Board of Directors

Over the past 25 years, Appleseed has had the honor to host an array of incredibly successful individuals on our board of directors. These individuals' careers have ranged from heads of fortune 500 companies to partners in prestigious law firms.

You can download a list of our current board members and select former board members (as of October 2019). If you have questions about board roles and responsibilities, please contact Deirdre Flaherty.

Robert Bachner, Philips Nizer (Founder)
Robert L. Bachner, Founding Member, is Senior Counsel at Phillips Nizer LLP in New York City, concentrating in real estate and trust and estate matters. Mr. Bachner is also a member of the National Council of the Environmental Defense Fund.

Mary Benton, Alston & Bird
Mary Benton has more than 20 years of experience advocating for taxpayers, negotiating with revenue departments and litigating in court to obtain the best resolution for her clients. She is a frequent speaker at national SALT conferences and symposia. Mary also serves as Alston & Bird's pro bono partner, leading all pro bono and community service efforts firmwide.

Brian Boyle, O’Melveny and Myers
Brian Boyle, a partner in O’Melveny’s Washington, DC office, represents financial services companies in class action and other litigation seeking to aggregate consumer and other economic injuries. Mr. Boyle is Chair of the Firm’s Financial Services Practice and Co-Chair of the Firm’s Health Care and Life Sciences Practice.

George Butts, George Butts Law
George Butts is Texas Appleseed’s representative to the National Board. In his extensive trial practice, Mr.Butts has tried cases involving allegations of negligent and intentional torts, breach of contract, violations of the Deceptive Trade Practices Act, the Insurance Code, breach of warranty, fraud, legal and medical malpractice, among others.

Michael Collora, Hogan Lovells
Michael Collora is Massachusetts Appleseed’s representative to the National Board and a founding member of Collora LLP. Before founding Collora LLP, Mr. Collora served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for eight years and headed the U.S. Attorney’s Special Investigation Unit from 1979 – 81. In the summer of 2017 he became partner of the Boston office of Hogan Lovells.

Elizabeth (Lisa) Dewey, DLA Piper
Lisa Dewey became DLA Piper’s full-time Pro Bono Partner in 1999. As such, Ms. Dewey advises and represents individuals and public interest organizations on a pro bono basis. She cultivates DLA Piper’s strategic thinking on pro bono, including the vision for DLA Piper’s US pro bono program, including over 1,500 lawyers. She also serves as the Director for New Perimeter, DLA Piper’s nonprofit affiliate dedicated to global pro bono work.

Rebecca Dulin,Duke Energy
Rebecca Dulin is South Carolina Appleseed’s representative to the National Board. Ms. Dulin practices energy law with a focus on electric utilities particularly involving Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) matters. Prior to joining Parker Poe, Ms. Dulin worked with The Public Service Commission of South Carolina as an energy attorney.

Marc Efron, Crowell & Moring
Marc Efron is DC Appleseed’s representative to the National Board and a retired partner of Crowell & Moring. He is a founding member of Crowell & Moring and practiced in the areas of government contracts litigation and counseling and defense of alleged procurement fraud.

Gail Erickson, W.R. Grace, Retired (Founder)
Gail Erickson, Founding Member, previously served as senior vice president, general counsel and secretary of W.R. Grace & Co., a multinational chemical company. Ms. Erickson is currently engaged in civic and philanthropic activities. She retired as a vice chairman of Citizens Union, a good government organization in New York City, a director of Brooklyn Youth Chorus Academy, a musical training institution in Brooklyn, and treasurer of Lemur Conservation Foundation, a reserve and research facility in Florida.

Rowena Frazer, BBVA Compass
Rowena Frazer is Alabama Appleseed’s representative to the National Board and a Senior Instructional Designer and Training Specialist at BBVA Compass. Ms. Frazer works with various lines of business and international project teams to design and produce instructional and reference materials.

Susan Haller, Sprint, Retired
Susan Haller retired as Vice President, Legal at Sprint Nextel Corporation where she served as Chief Litigation Counsel. Prior to her role at Sprint, which she assumed after the Sprint-Nextel merger in 2005, she was Vice President and Deputy General Counsel at Nextel Communications.

Eileen Hershenov, Anti-Defamation League
Eileen Hershenov is Senior Vice President of Policy at the Anti-Defamation League. She oversees ADL’s civil rights team, its government relations and community engagement team, the Silicon Valley-based Center for Technology and Society and the library and archives work.

David Hurtaldo Badiola, Juaregui y Del Valle, S.C.
David Hurtado Badiola is Mexico Appleseed’s representative to the National Board and Partner at the law firm of Jauregui y Del Valle, S.C.
Mr. Hurtado specializes in international trade (including antidumping and countervailing duties regulations), customs law, antitrust, corporate law, commercial law and foreign investment regulations. He has also been a Professor of Administrative Law at the Escuela Libre de Derecho since 1985.

Rob Katz, Shearman & Sterling
Robert Katz is a Partner in Shearman & Sterling’s Mergers and Acquisitions Group. He represents clients in a broad range of M&A transactions including tender and exchange offers, leveraged buyouts, takeover defense strategies, joint ventures, divestitures and cross-border transactions. Mr. Katz has been recognized as a recommended lawyer in private equity buyouts by Legal 500.

Eric Koenig, Microsoft, Retired
Eric Koenig retired as a lawyer in Washington, DC with expertise in litigation, intellectual property law, and nonprofit management. Mr. Koenig worked for Microsoft from 1991-2001 as a senior attorney in the company’s European office in Paris, France. His responsibilities included intellectual property, antitrust, litigation, trade, and management of legal and corporate affairs in Central, Northern and Eastern Europe.

Rory Leraris, Cravath, Swaine & Moore
Rory Leraris is a partner in Cravath’s Litigation Department. Her practice focuses on antitrust, M&A, securities and derivative litigation, and other complex commercial disputes. She has been recognized by Benchmark Litigation for her work. She joined Cravath in 2008 and became a partner in 2017. Ms. Leraris holds a JD from Chicago Law School.

Ray Lin, Raymond Y. Lin Advisors
Raymond Lin is Principal of Raymond Y. Lin Advisors. Mr. Lin’s practice focuses on the representation of private equity firms in mergers and acquisitions and capital market transactions. In addition to Appleseed, he serves on the Board of Visitors of Columbia Law School.

Tom McCoy, Strategic Advisor
Tom McCoy specializes in counseling senior executives and boards of directors at the intersection of high-profile business, legal, regulatory and political challenges and opportunities. With 40 years of experience as a trial lawyer, public company executive and board member, he most recently served as Executive Vice President and General Counsel of CH2M Hill Companies, Ltd.

Herbert Milstein, Cohen Milstein, Retired
Herb Milstein began practicing law with Jerry S. Cohen in 1970 – the birth of the Firm. Mr. Milstein has been lead or principal counsel in many of the best known securities class actions litigated during the past 40 years. Mr. Milstein formerly served on the staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission for five and one-half years, and last held the position of Chief Enforcement Attorney, Division of Corporate Regulation.

Mary Morningstar, Lockheed Martin
Mary Morningstar is Associate General Counsel for environmental law with Lockheed Martin Corporation for 24 years. Ms. Morningstar manages much of Lockheed Martin’s existing or potential toxic tort litigation and provides legal counseling and support to the energy, environment, safety, and health department in Bethesda, Maryland.

Ralph Nader, Consumer Advocate, Lawyer (Founder)
Ralph Nader, Founding Member, first made headlines in 1965 with his book, Unsafe at Any Speed, which documented the production of unsafe vehicles by the auto industry. He is responsible for at least eight major federal consumer protection laws, the recall of millions of defective motor vehicles, and a number of other advances in areas of safety, health, pollution control, access to government, and freedom of information. The largest of the organizations which Mr. Nader founded is Public Citizen.

Ralph Petersberger, McDermott, Will & Emery, Retired (Founder)
Ralph Petersberger, Founding Member, is retired from McDermott, Will & Emery’s Washington, DC office, where he specialized in corporate federal tax matters. He now performs legal services for a number of charitable organizations on a pro bono basis. He has served on the board of trustees of Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church in Bethesda.

Bert Pogrebin, Littler Mendelson (Founder)
Bertrand B. Pogrebin, Founding Member, is a shareholder of Littler Mendelson in New York, where he advises and represents many public and fortune 500 private sector employers throughout the country on labor relations and employment law issues. Mr. Pogrebin focuses his practice on corporate compliance related to anti-discrimination laws, the National Labor Relations Act, Title VII, and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Mark Raffman, Goodwin
Mr. Raffman concentrates his practice on complex product liability and consumer products litigation and advice. He has 30 years’ experience defending complex litigation matters in state and federal courts nationwide, is a member of the Defense Research Institute and has lectured and published on tort liability litigation developments, most recently on product liability risks.

Malcolm Rich, Chicago Appleseed
Malcolm C. Rich is the Executive Director of Chicago Appleseed. He has been the executive director of the Chicago Council of Lawyers since 1986. He practiced with the law firm Whitted & Kraning where he specialized in special education and mental health law, and is the former executive director of the Foundation for Educational Research. Mr. Rich is of counsel to the law firm Whitted & Cleary LLC. He chairs the Executive Directors Council of Appleseed.

Rachel Richardson, Arent Fox
Rachel Richardson is a partner in the General Business group at Arent Fox where she counsels clients in various industries such as real estate, hospitality, technology and healthcare in connection with various types of corporate and real estate transactions. Rachel has developed a business-oriented approach to managing these types of transactions due in large part to her experience on the client side of the business.

Jim Rogers, Cars.com
Jim Rogers is the Chief Legal Officer at Cars.com. Prior to joining Cars.com, Jim had General Counsel posts at Orbitz Worldwide and TLC Vision, following a 28-year career as a corporate partner at Latham & Watkins. He holds degrees from Yale, Princeton and Columbia Law School, where he served on the Law Review.

Steven Schulman, Akin Gump
Steven Schulman, Partner at Akin Gump, leads Akin Gump’s pro bono practice worldwide. B.A. cum laude in 1989 from Brandeis University and his J.D. cum laude in 1994 from the Northwestern University School of Law, where he was the associate note and comment editor of the Northwestern University Law Review.

Kathleen A. Scott, Norton Rose Fulbright
Kathleen A. Scott is a senior counsel in the New York office representing some of the world's largest international banks and other financial institutions concentrating on a broad range of financial services regulatory, anti-money laundering and privacy matters.

Megan Wright, Cline Williams Wright Johnson & Oldfather
Megan Wright is Nebraska Appleseed’s representative to the National Board and Attorney at Cline Williams. Ms. Wright’s litigation practice focuses on complex commercial cases, securities, energy, trademark and intellectual property disputes. Ms. Wright has also represented clients in real estate disputes, including eminent domain and partition proceedings and cases involving internet defamation.

Philip Zeidman, DLA Piper (Founder)
Philip F. Zeidman, Founding Member, is a partner with DLA Piper US LLP Washington, DC, where he specializes in franchise law. He was a lawyer at the Federal Trade Commission, general counsel of the Small Business Administration and special assistant to Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Mr. Zeidman also serves Appleseed as its General Counsel.

Board Of Directors