Conference - Turnaround Management Association

eform. He was the International Bar Association’s representative to the
meetings that lead up to UNCITRAL’s promulgation of a convention on the
assignment of receivables.
Robert Prior is the Chief Federal Prosecutor with the Public Prosecution
Service of Canada (“PPSC”) in British Columbia since 1996, where he is
responsible for the conduct of all federal prosecutions that arise in British
Columbia. Mr. Prior’s responsibilities have a heavy emphasis on drug
offences, organized crime, tax evasion and environmental offences. Mr.
Prior has been a prosecutor with the PPSC since 1988. Mr. Prior received is
Bachelor of Laws from Osgoode Hall Law School in 1986 and a Bachelor
of Science, with honors, from the University of Toronto in 1983.
Mitch Reed is a Senior Vice President, Corporate Finance in Prudential
Capital’s San Francisco office. He is responsible for a team which covers
Arizona, Colorado, Montana, Oregon, and Washington, and manages a
$1 billion portfolio of senior term debt, bank loans, subordinated debt, and
private equity investments. Mr. Reed joined Prudential Financial in 1991
and spent two years in marketing and analysis of life and health insurance
products before transferring to Prudential Capital in 1993. Prior to moving
to San Francisco in 1996, Mr. Reed originated and managed investments in
Prudential Capital’s Atlanta and Newark offices. In aggregate, he has
invested approximately $4 billion in more than 100 transactions. Mr. Reed
graduated from Amherst College and holds the Chartered Financial
Analyst designation.
John Rizzardi Since 1979, John has provided strategic and general business
planning to a wide range of companies and their owners, as well as
litigation and dispute resolution assistance, to clients in his business, insolvency
and litigation practice. John is currently serving on the Executive
Committee of the Washington State Bar Association’s Creditor/Debtor
Section. In addition, he has served as the Northwest Chapter of the TMA’s
President in 1999, International President of the TMA from 2002 to 2003,
and was the International Chairman through 2004. He is currently serving
as the chair of TMA’s Past Chairs’ Council and is a member of the TMA
Task Force reviewing TMA’s governance structure. John has been honored
by Seattle Magazine as a 2001, 2003, 2005 and 2007 “Top Lawyer”, has
been named by Washington Law & Politics magazine as a “Super Lawyer”
for nine consecutive years (2001 - 2009) and in the 2009 Corporate
Counsel edition and was listed in Seattle Business Monthly as a “Top
Business Lawyer” in 2006 and 2007.
Stephen M. Schiller is a Managing Director of Gordian Group. Prior to
joining Gordian, he served as an investment banker at Citigroup, where, at
various points in his career, he led the bank’s financial institutions mergers
and acquisitions practice, its Asian M&A business and its sell side business.
He has over 20 years of experience in financial restructuring and complex
M&A. At Gordian, Mr. Schiller works in the firm’s restructuring practice and
in its marketing efforts. Mr. Schiller is a member of the Board of Directors
of Student Sponsor Partners. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in
International Relations, Phi Beta Kappa, from Stanford University and
is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School.
William (“Bill”) E. J. Skelly is the partner in charge of the Vancouver
Lending and Restructuring Group of Heenan Blaikie LLP. Bill practices
corporate and commercial law, with a focus on the restructuring of national
and international companies, bankruptcy matters and corporate and commercial
lending. Bill acts for debtors, Trustees, Receivers, Monitors and
many of Canada’s largest financial institutions. Mr. Skelly has published
numerous papers and arcticles and lectured at many conferences on
various insolvency topics, is a contributing author to the British Columbia
Personal Property Security Act Practice Manual and is peer rated as
repeatedly recommended in the annual Lexpert survey. He is a member of
the business law, banking law and insolvency subsections of the British
Columbia branch of the Canadian Bar Association. In 2007, Mr. Skelly was
selected as the first non-American to be the President of the TMA. In 2008,
he was the Chairman of the Board of TMA International. He is also the Past-
President (2003) and a director of the Northwest Chapter of the TMA. Bill
was called to the Manitoba Bar in 1980 and to the British Columbia Bar in
1989. He was a major in finance at the University of Manitoba in the Faculty
of Commerce prior to obtaining his law degree from the University of
Manitoba in 1979.
Teri Stratton is a Senior Vice President in the Los Angeles office of
Macquarie Capital (USA) Inc. Ms. Stratton focuses on providing capital
markets, mergers and acquisitions, and restructuring advisory services to
middle market companies. Previously, Ms. Stratton had eight years experience
in corporate banking, serving in both credit administration and special
assets. Ms. Stratton earned a Masters of Business Administration in Finance,
with Honors, from The Anderson School at UCLA and her undergraduate
degree in Economics from the University of California at Los Angeles.
She is a member of the American Bankruptcy Institute, the Turnaround
Management Association, and the Association of Insolvency & Restructuring
Advisors (AIRA) for which she is also a board member and is a Certified
Insolvency Restructuring Advisor. She has worked in several Pacific
Northwest restructurings including Consolidated Freightways, Crown Pacific
Holdings, Larry’s Markets, Brown & Cole Stores, a private homebuilder, and
two private building products companies.
David F. Taylor is a Partner in the Seattle office of Perkins Coie L.L.P.
and Firmwide Co-Chair, Investigations & White Collar Defense Practice.
Mr. Taylor is a trial lawyer with more than 20 years' experience representing
clients in civil and criminal litigation and investigations throughout the
United States. A former Assistant United States Attorney, Mr. Taylor’s experience
includes grand jury investigations and criminal prosecutions, SEC
enforcement actions, securities class actions, derivative lawsuits, director
and officer liability claims, common law fraud, False Claims Act cases,
RICO claims and contract disputes. Mr. Taylor also regularly leads internal
corporate investigations on behalf of companies and board committees
and advises clients concerning corporate governance issues, director and
officer liability, employee misconduct and fraud, and the design and
implementation of corporate compliance programs. Mr. Taylor received his
J.D. from Harvard Law School, magna cum laude, 1986 and holds a B.A.
from Middlebury College, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, 1982 and is
admitted to the bars of Washington and Oregon.
Justice Juliana E. Topolniski was appointed to the Court of Queen’s
Bench in 2003. She sits mainly in Edmonton, Alberta and is a member of
the Court's Commercial List. Before her appointment, Justice Topolniski was
a partner of Bishop & McKenzie LLP where her practice was focused in the
areas of commercial litigation and insolvency.