ABI's Young and New Members Committee, which encourages active involvement of young bankruptcy practitioners, is co-chaired by Brian Shaw, Melissa Kibler Knoll and Douglas E. Deutsch.

Brian Shaw is a member of the Business Insolvency Group at Shaw Gussis Fishman Glantz Wolfson & Towbin LLC in Chicago. He represents chapter 11 debtors, chapter 7 and 11 trustees, creditors' committees, assignees, landlords, labor organizations, secured and unsecured creditors. He has litigated various creditors' rights causes of action, including ones under state and federal fraudulent conveyance law and the Illinois Revised Uniform Limited Partnership Act. He also has participated in the liquidation of many bankruptcy estates, encompassing both real and personal property. Mr. Shaw joined ABI in 1998 and also is a member of the Chicago and Illinois State Bar Associations. He served a three-year term on the University of Illinois College of Law Recent Alumni Advisory Board from 1998-2000. Mr. Shaw has been published numerous times in a wide variety of publications, including The Bankruptcy Strategist and Norton Bankruptcy Law Advisor. He was a presenter for "Nuts & Bolts of Effective Bankruptcy Trial Practice" at the 2003 Annual Spring Meeting and faculty member of the 2003 Litigation Skills Symposium, and currently serves as vice-chair of ABI's Chicago Consumer Consumer Bankruptcy Conference, scheduled for July 25, 2004 (see p. 61).

Melissa Kibler Knoll provides accounting and financial advisory services in a variety of industries to debtors, secured lenders, unsecured creditors and other parties-in-interest in turnarounds, restructurings, bankruptcies and related litigation at KPMGLLPin Chicago. Her experience includes out-of-court workouts, formal proceedings under chapter 11 or chapter 7, receiverships/trusteeships and other related forums. Ms. Knoll recently led engagement teams in large, complex restructurings including Kmart Corp., Bethlehem Steel Corp., The Warnaco Group, Assisted Living Concepts and The Singer Co., as well as companies involved in out-of-court restructurings in the automotive repair/distribution, health care, non-food distribution and other industries. Ms. Knoll joined KPMG in June 1999 and is currently partner-in-charge of its Midwestern Region Corporate Recovery Practice. She became a Certified Public Accountant in 1992 and is also a Certified Turnaround Professional. She is a former board member and treasurer of the Turnaround Management Association's Northwest Chapter. Ms. Knoll is a newly elected member of the ABI Board of Directors (see p. 69) and had a leading role in the development of the Fundamentals educational programs.

Douglas E. Deutsch is an associate in the New York office of Chadbourne & Parke LLP. A former editor-in-chief of the ABI Law Review, he clerked for Hon. Leif M. Clark (W.D. Tex.) before joining Sheinfeld, Maley & Kay in the firm's Dallas office, where he worked on the Dow Corning bankruptcy. In 2000, he returned to St. John's University for his LL.M. and was the first recipient of the ABI scholarship in the St. John's University LL.M. program. His thesis, "Ensuring Proper Bankruptcy Solicitation: Evaluating Bankruptcy Law, the First Amendment, The Code of Ethics and Securities Law in Bankruptcy Solicitation Cases," was published in the Spring 2003 ABI Law Review. He is admitted to practice in both Texas and New York, and is a member of ABI's Business Reorganization, Law School and Mass Torts Committees.

The committee anticipates collaborating with other committees in the future to provide YNMC members with substantive programming.

More Members in the News

Thomas W. Waldrep Jr., a partner in the law firm of Bell Davis & Pitt in Winston-Salem, N.C., was selected to fill a bankruptcy judgeship in the bankruptcy court for the Middle District of North Carolina in Greensboro.

Goulston & Storrs, Boston, announced that Christine D. Lynch has been elected a director of the firm. Ms. Lynch concentrates on bankruptcy and creditors' rights matters. She has extensive experience in representing creditors' committees, unsecured and secured creditors and debtors in complex chapter 11 cases, as well as representing buyers of assets out of bankruptcy. Ms. Lynch is co-chair of the Practice & Procedure Committee of the Boston Bar Association's Bankruptcy Law Section and is a member of the Attorney Advisory Committee of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Massachusetts. She is admitted to the Bar in New York and Massachusetts.

Pathway Strategic Partners LLC, a corporate recovery consulting firm and subsidiary of Buxbaum Group, announced it has been approved by the bankruptcy court to oversee the restructuring of manufacturer Waterman Industries, which has been operating under chapter 11 protection since earlier this year. Kenneth G. Leddon, a principal of Pathway, will serve as Chief Restructuring Officer of Exeter, Calif.-based Waterman.

McCarter & English LLP has named William F. Taylor Jr. a partner in its Wilmington, Del., office. Formerly a special counsel, Mr. Taylor represents a variety of individuals and organizations in litigation-related matters including bankruptcy, corporate and general litigation. He represents such parties as DIPs, secured and unsecured creditors' committees, liquidating trustees, banks and landlords in Delaware's various state courts. Mr. Taylor is admitted to practice in Delaware and Pennsylvania and before the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware and the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

Lindquist & Vennum PLLP announced that George H. Singer, a partner in the firm's Minneapolis office, has been selected as the firm's recipient of the Leonard E. Lindquist Pro Bono Award. The award, named after the firm's 91-year-old co-founder, is presented annually to the attorney who exemplifies the firm's pro bono efforts. Mr. Singer practices in the areas of corporate and commercial law, including bankruptcy and reorganizations. A considerable part of his pro bono legal services is in the bankruptcy and workout arena.

The National Bar Association Bankruptcy Law Section honored U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Cornelius Blackshear during a special Gala Awards Dinner and Ceremony on May 27 at New York City's Marriott Marquis. Judge Blackshear was sworn in as a U.S. Bankruptcy Judge for the Southern District of New York in November 1985 after serving as the U.S. Trustee for the Southern District of New York, a position to which he was appointed in 1983 by Attorney General William French Smith. ABI, the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges and the American College of Bankruptcy were among the organizations that made special presentations at the dinner.

Lawrence R. Ahern III, the member in charge in the Nashville, Tenn., office of Greenebaum Doll & McDonald PLLC, was recently appointed to the Advisory Board of the Bankruptcy LL.M. program at St. John's University School of Law. Mr. Ahern is board certified in business bankruptcy by the American Board of Certification, and his practice includes bankruptcy reorganization and commercial transactions. He has served as adjunct professor of law at Vanderbilt University since 1998, teaching secured transactions, and in the fall semester of 2002 he taught full-time at the Cumberland School of Law at Samford University in Birmingham. On the St. John's Advisory Board, Mr. Ahern will be involved with curriculum, the ABI Law Review (which St. John's publishes twice a year) and the Duberstein Bankruptcy Moot Court Competition, a national program sponsored annually by St. John's and ABI.

Joel L. Tabas of Tabas, Freedman, Soloff & Miller P.A. in Miami recently participated in a panel at the University of Rochester Simon Graduate School of Business titled, "Preserving Valve in Chapter 11: A Roundtable Discussion of the Bankruptcy Process."

Wilmer Cutler Pickering and Hale & Dorr announced they have agreed to combine to create a firm of more than 1,000 attorneys, making the new firm the 11th largest in the United States. ABI Director William J. Perlstein, chairman of Washington, D.C.-based Wilmer Cutler, said that the purpose of the merger is to combine Wilmer Cutler's expertise in antitrust and securities matters with Boston-based Hale & Dorr's expertise in intellectual property law.

Michael McGrath, chairman of the Bankruptcy Section of Mesch, Clark & Rothschild in Tucson, Ariz., was inducted into the 15th Class of Fellows of the American College of Bankruptcy. Mr. McGrath serves as a lawyer delegate to the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference and has served on the Bankruptcy Rules Committee for the District of Arizona, as well as the Merit Selection Committee for the district's bankruptcy judges and the Bankruptcy Advisory Commission for the certification of bankruptcy specialists. He has been listed in The Best Lawyers in America since 1991.

The international law firm of Greenberg Traurig LLP announced that Clifton Jessup Jr. and Bruce White joined the firm's new Dallas office as shareholders, and William Medford joined as an associate. All are former attorneys of the Dallas office of Patton Boggs LLP. Mr. Jessup will head Greenberg Traurig's eight-member Dallas reorganization, bankruptcy and restructuring group, which includes Michelle A. Mendez, a prominent Dallas bankruptcy attorney recently named to the planning committee for the State Bar of Texas Bankruptcy Section Conference. Mr. Jessup was recently recognized as one of the top African-American lawyers in the nation by Black Enterprise Magazine and was also named as one of the "Texas Super Lawyers 2003" by Texas Monthly. He has more than 26 years of experience in bankruptcy, creditors' rights and business reorganization, representing secured and unsecured creditors, committees, equity-holders, debtors and trustees in federal bankruptcy cases in more than 37 states. Mr. White has 15 years of experience in all aspects of bankruptcy, corporate reorganization and creditors' rights. He has considerable experience in representing boards of directors of publicly traded companies in reorganizations and in bankruptcy matters. Mr. Medford has eight years of experience in bankruptcy, creditors' rights and business reorganization. He has represented debtors, examiners, secured creditors, unsecured creditors, committees and trustees, as well as post-confirmation liquidation trustees in bankruptcy cases in more than 30 states. Mr. White and Mr. Medford are long-time contributing editors to the ABI Journal's "Practice & Procedure" column (see p. 22).

Leslie Ann Berkoff, a partner at Garden City, N.Y.-based Moritt Hock Hamroff & Horowitz LLP, has been selected as one of "Long Island's Top 50 Women" by the business publication Long Island Business News. She has been practicing law for 14 years, concentrating in bankruptcy and related litigation. Ms. Berkoff is chair of the Bankruptcy Committee for the Nassau County Bar Association, a founding member of the Electronic Filing Committee and Local Rules Committee for the Eastern District of New York Bankruptcy Court, and the vice chair of the International Women's Insolvency and Restructuring Confederation (2002-04).

Sheila T. Smith, a principal in Deloitte & Touche's Boston Reorganization Services Group, was inducted as a fellow in the American College of Bankruptcy. She holds an M.B.A. from Boston University and has been an ABImember since 1985.

Poyner & Spruill LLP announced that David M. Warren of the firm's Rocky Mount, N.C., office was recertified in business and consumer bankruptcy law by the American Board of Certification. He was initially certified in 1993. Mr. Warren serves on the Panel of Chapter 7 Bankruptcy Trustees and as chairman of the Local Rules Committee for the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. In addition, Mr. Warren is certified in business and consumer bankruptcy law by the North Carolina State Bar Board of Legal Specialization.

Citigate, an international business intelligence, corporate investigations, business controls and security consulting firm, announced the promotion of Randall D. Wilson to managing director. Mr. Wilson, based in Chicago, heads the firm's Corporate Recovery Group nationally. He has more than 14 years of bankruptcy and restructuring experience, serving as a financial advisor and consultant to a wide variety of distressed companies. He also has worked extensively in chapter 11 proceedings as well as out-of-court cases. He became a Certified Public Accountant in 1991 and earned his J.D. at the Chicago-Kent College of Law in 1999.