West Coast Think Tank 2009 - 2008 session leaders

Gordon Bigler, VP,finance, IR and corporate communications, Alphatec Spine

Ron Schneider, senior manager, proxy solicitation and director business development, BNY Mellon Shareowner Services

Scott Cunningham, VP, IR, Edison International

Rodrigo Brumana, senior manager, IR and business development, Fairchild Semiconductor

Kevin Sellers, VP, IR, Intel

Bill Sherman, EVP & managing director, global data strategy & analytics, Ipreo

Margaret Cannella, director of North American credit research, JP Morgan Securities

Andrew Shapiro, president, Lawndale Capital Management

Darin Wolter, SVP, sales, Marketwire

Larry Kurtz, VP, IR, McKesson

Smooch Repovich Reynolds, CEO, TRRG

David Berger, partner, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati

Ron Schneider

Ron has provided his extensive experience to public companies of all sizes that were faced with difficult and sensitive proxy solicitations involving compensation, corporate governance, shareowner activism and control issues. He has managed more than 1,500 proxy solicitations and 200 tender or exchange offers. With success in greater than 76 percent of his over 30 proxy fight assignments, Ron has among the highest winning percentages in the industry on behalf of clients facing such issues.

Ron joined BNY Mellon Shareowner Services in 2000 as senior analyst in its proxy solicitation group. He was named senior manager for the group in 2002, and in 2004, became product manager. In his current role, Ron serves his clients as senior consultant on proxy-related issues.

Ron’s prior experience includes four years at The Financial Relations Board, a leading investor relations agency. There he managed its proxy solicitation, corporate governance and stock surveillance practice. Before that, he was a consultant to important proxy intermediary Broadridge (formerly ADP Investor Communication Services), where he served as its first “Issuer Liaison” with responsibility for its relationships with issuer companies. Additionally, Ron has held increasingly senior positions at major proxy solicitation firms Morrow & Company, D.F. King and Georgeson & Company, where he served on its first Board of Directors.

Ron earned a B.A. in Economics from Princeton University in 1978.

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Scott Cunningham

Scott Cunningham is vice president, investor relations for Edison International, with overall responsibility for communications with investors and securities analysts.

He joined Edison International in March 2007. Prior to joining Edison, he was vice president of investor relations for AES Corporation, based in Arlington, VA, one of the world’s largest global power companies.

Before joining AES in 2004, he spent 20 years with Union Carbide and then its spin-off, Praxair. He began his Union Carbide career in federal government relations in Washington, DC and subsequently held treasury positions in project finance and corporate finance in the Danbury, CT headquarters. He established the Praxair investor relations program. Scott also held positions leading corporate strategic planning, business development and marketing for a $1 billion distribution subsidiary, and then the subsidiary’s regional distribution business in the pacific northwest and western Canada. He also served as assistant treasurer responsible for Praxair’s capital allocation and investment due diligence process, pension fund management, and Asia corporate and project finance.

He began his career with the US Government and conducted metallurgical research at the US Department of Interior and helped administer water quality programs at the US Environmental Protection Agency.

A native of Washington, DC, he holds a BS in engineering from the University of Maryland and an MBA from Northwestern University.

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Rodrigo Brumana

Rodrigo Brumana has over ten years of work experience ranging from engineering, investment banking and corporate finance. He started in software enterprise and made the transition to investment banking with various roles at Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. After four years of banking and with a solid understanding of the financial markets, Rodrigo joined Fairchild Semiconductor. He held strategic management positions through 2006, when he was appointed as Senior manager, IR & M&A, reporting to both VP, IR and VP, M&A. In this role, he has enhanced communication and relationship with investors and analysts, participated in a large acquisition of a Taiwanese company as well as developed valuation models for competitors and potential acquisition targets. He adopts a very analytical approach to collect and distribute competitive intelligence back into the organization, driving initiatives that have impacted senior management decisions. Most recently, he has been promoted to controller.

He holds a BS in engineering from Universidade Federal de Uberlandia, Brazil and an MBA from UC Berkeley, Haas School of Business. He races sport bikes and is an avid jiu-jitsu practitioner.

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Kevin Sellers

Currently, Kevin is the vice president of IR for Intel. Prior to this assignment, he served as the director of global brand strategy and market research for Intel. Before taking on the global role, Kevin lived in Tokyo, Japan where he was director of marketing for Intel Japan. He has spent 17 years at Intel with jobs spanning finance, operations and marketing.

Kevin earned his Bachelor of Science and MBA degrees from Brigham Young University.

Currently, he and his family reside in Gilbert, AZ and he spends about three days a week working out of Santa Clara.

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Bill Sherman

Bill and his team are responsible for all of Ipreo's global content and analytics, including the collection and quality control of the decision tools and high-end analytics integrated into all of our product offerings. Bill comes from i-Deal, which he joined in 2006. Previously, he was a partner in the Carson Group, where he created a series of high-end analytical tools used by global investment banks and corporations in many of the prominent deals of the last two decades. After Carson Group was purchased by Thomson Financial in late 2000, Bill served as executive vice president and head of analytical services for Thomson Financial's Corporate Group. Bill holds a BS from the University at Buffalo and an MBA with a concentration in Finance from Baruch College.

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Margaret Cannella

Margaret Cannella is managing director and global head of credit research and US corporate strategy at JP Morgan. She is a winner of Institutional Investor's Fixed Income All America Team award 13 consecutive years running in retailing and consumer products. In 2007, she was also elected to the Fixed Income Hall of Fame by the board of the Fixed Income Analyst Society.

She is chair of Princeton-in-Asia, a 110-year old organization sponsoring students to work in Asia, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, co-chair of Women in Leadership Alumnae group of Princeton University, and a board member and chair of the Audit Committee of Trickle Up, a microfinance enterprise.

Margaret holds a BA degree in east asian studies from Princeton University and an MBA degree in finance and accounting from Columbia University Graduate School of Business.

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Andrew Shapiro

Andrew Shapiro is founder, president and portfolio manager of Lawndale Capital Management, an investment advisor that has managed activist hedge funds focused on small- and micro-cap companies for over 14 years. His proactive involvement in Lawndale’s portfolio companies has been effective in directly creating and unlocking shareholder value and Lawndale’s activist funds have often been ranked among the top long-term performing event-driven and small-cap value funds in peer databases. In addition to leading Lawndale, Andrew is presently vice chairman of the Board of Directors of Arlington Hospitality, chairs its Corporate Governance and Nominating Committee and serves on its Compensation Committee. He has also served on public company boards as Board Observer and as a member of both creditor and equity committees in various restructurings. He is a member of the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) and Lawndale has been a long-time Sustaining Member of the Council of Institutional Investors (CII).

Andrew has two decades of portfolio management and analytically varied experience from a number of "buy-side" positions, employing a rare combination of credit, legal and equity analytic and workout skills. Prior to founding the Lawndale organization in 1992, he managed the workout and restructuring of large portfolios of high-yield bonds, distressed equities and risk arbitrage securities for the Belzberg family's entity, First City Capital. Before joining First City, he was involved in numerous highly leveraged corporate acquisition and recapitalization transactions for both Manufacturers Hanover Trust and the Spectrum Group, a private equity firm.

He received his JD degree from the UCLA School of Law where he was an Olin Fellow, an MBA from UCLA's Anderson Graduate School of Management where he was a Venture Capital Fellow and a BS in Business Administration from UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, where he has taught finance courses and frequently guest lectures. Andrew is often quoted on matters of corporate governance, fiduciary duty and activist investing and has been the subject of several articles, including a Business Week article in 2000 calling him “The Gary Cooper of Governance”. He is also a frequent speaker on corporate governance and activist investing issues at a broad range of prestigious forums that include the CII, NACD, American Society of Corporate Secretaries, SEC Advisory Committee on Small Public Companies, and Stanford University’s Directors College among others.

Andrew started Lawndale’s funds in 1993 with only $188,000 under management and through performance and added capital has grown the firm’s managed assets substantially. Lawndale’s funds have been often ranked as one of the top performing event-driven and small-cap value funds in peer databases. In many of its investments, the firm serves a constructive relational role by actively working with Boards and management teams to help them achieve their strategic and operating goals. In other investments, Lawndale has been a direct value-unlocking catalyst, utilizing a range of tools that have included aggressively promoting improvements in a company's governance and operational structures, asserting shareowner’s legal rights and taking active roles in restructuring and buyout proposal negotiations.

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Darin Wolter

Darin Wolter is Marketwire’s senior vice president western region sales. He brings to the company deep financial-industry knowledge and a track record for success in running growing sales organizations. Formerly a sales executive with Thomson Financial’s Corporate Group (Thomson), Darin leads Marketwire’s sales efforts in the western region of the US.

While at Thomson, he held key sales management positions including vice president and most recently, managing director of Thomson’s Outbound Sales group – the organization responsible for taking the company’s website hosting, webcasting and online communications services to market. Darin also was responsible for managing the sales component of Thomson’s relationship with PR Newswire. Prior to joining Thomson, he held key sales positions with Miller Freeman and also with StreetFusion before it was acquired by CCBN.

Darin joined Marketwire in September 2004. He is based in the San Francisco office. He earned his BA in English from Miami University of Ohio in 1995.

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Larry Kurtz

Larry Kurtz joined McKesson in 1997 and currently serves as vice president, corporate communications and investor relations. Prior to McKesson, Larry worked for Chiron from 1988 to 1997 and has consulted on investor relations and corporate communications for Genentech from 1986 to 1988.

He is a member of the National Investor Relations Institute (NIRI), PRSA, Corporate Committee of SFMOMA and Board of Directors, American Liver Foundation San Francisco Chapter.

Larry received his AB degree in economics from Princeton University and attended the Missouri Graduate School of Journalism.

Despite his busy and intense job at McKesson he managed to play 120 rounds of golf in 2007.

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Smooch Repovich Reynolds

Smooch Repovich Reynolds is founder and CEO of The Repovich-Reynolds Group, a division of TRRG, a retained international executive search and management consulting firm specializing in the communications, investor relations, and marketing functions based in Pasadena, CA.

Since launching The Repovich-Reynolds Group in 1987, she has served clients across a broad range of industries, and has also worked with companies ranging from pre-IPO start-ups to Fortune 500 corporations, nonprofit and industry associations, and public relations and investor relations agencies. Leading a team of recruitment professionals – all of whom are former communications and/or IR practitioners, she has spearheaded senior-level executive search and management consulting assignments on behalf of client companies that include: Activision, Allied Signal, Barclays Global Investors, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Capital One Financial, CBS Sportsline.com, Cisco, Coors Brewing, Eaton, Edelman Public Relations, EDS, Exxon Mobil, Genentech, GoTo.com, Hewlett-Packard, Hill and Knowlton, Intel, McDonald’s, McKesson, Nike, Nokia, Standard & Poor’s, The Boeing Company, The Limited, Times Mirror, and Visa USA, among myriad others.

Having been a key influencer of the IR profession in the US, Smooch was asked in 2003 to join a distinguished group of the senior-most IR professionals in the nation as a member of the National Investor Relations Institute’s (NIRI) Senior Roundtable Forum. She also participates in NIRI’s Center for Integrated Communications, which is a research task force designed to evolve the IR profession for the future evolution of the function for corporations worldwide.

A dynamic lecturer, keynote speaker, media expert on employment issues, and frequent contributor to global professional journals and newsletters, Smooch has been featured on CNBC’s “Power Lunch”, CNN-TV, CNNfn, Bloomberg TV, Fox News’ “Your World with Neil Cavuto,” Fortune.com, and myriad other TV network affiliate broadcast news programs, and in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Chicago Tribune, Dallas Morning News, New York Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Investor’s Business Daily, among other major publications. She was also the creator and producer of “Navigating Your Career,” a live, call-in radio show she hosted on Phoenix’s largest all-talk radio station in the late 1990’s.

In addition, she copyrighted, “Hiring The Intangibles: Benchmark Core Criteria for Evaluating Candidates,” a methodology she developed that imparts her philosophy for assessing candidates based on their intangible qualities. She also is author of the book, Be Hunted! 12 Secrets to Getting on the Headhunter’s Radar Screen, and is a contributing author to the book, Navigating Your Career, in which she wrote the chapter, “How to Take Charge When a Headhunter Calls,” both published by John Wiley & Sons, the country’s largest business book publisher.

Prior to launching The Repovich-Reynolds Group, she had tenure at Hill and Knowlton, a leading international PR and public affairs firm, serving first in account management, and subsequently in human resources and recruitment capacities. She joined the firm as an account supervisor in its consumer marketing division in Los Angeles, providing strategic public relations, public affairs and marketing counsel to global consumer products clients, and overseeing new business development. She was recognized for her skill in hiring and mentoring teams of professionals that developed into top talent at the firm, which led to her promotion to the firm’s first director of domestic executive search for Hill and Knowlton.

She was subsequently promoted to serve as director of human resources for the firm’s Western US region. Smooch designed and launched both the executive search and human resources functions as pilot programs for this world-renowned communications firm.

Her earlier experience in communications management includes serving as Southern California PR director for United Cable Television during the peak of cable franchising in the greater Los Angeles area; and, press deputy for former Los Angeles City Councilwoman Pat Russell. She has a BA in Broadcast Journalism from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

An active member of NIRI, the Public Relations Society of America, and the International Association of Business Communicators, she is on the Board of Trustees of Westridge School in Pasadena, CA, a past member of the Board of Directors for the American Cancer Society, and a past member of the Board of Directors of The City Club of Bunker Hill.

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David Berger

David Berger is a partner in the litigation department of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. He is a leader in the firm's corporate governance group and heads its mergers and acquisitions litigation practice. David's practice combines advising boards and shareholders on matters of corporate control, mergers and acquisitions, and corporate governance, as well as litigating such matters.

David represented Hewlett-Packard in its successful proxy contest to acquire Compaq, and also tried the case of Walter Hewlett v. Hewlett-Packard in the Delaware Chancery Court, which resulted in a complete victory for Hewlett-Packard. David has been involved in a variety of the most prominent takeover transactions in recent years, including representing the Special Committee of Freescale Semiconductor in one of the largest going-private transactions in the technology arena; Ameritrade in its merger with TD Waterhouse and, subsequently, TD Ameritrade in a variety of matters; Pixar in its merger with Walt Disney; and J.D. Edwards in its merger with PeopleSoft and in its response to Oracle's hostile tender offer. David also is counsel to a number of private equity firms, including Francisco Partners. Additionally, David serves as counsel to the New York Stock Exchange's Proxy Working Group, was a participant in the Securities and Exchange Commission's Proxy Roundtable, and has taught corporate governance, mergers and acquisitions, and related classes at such institutions as Harvard Law School, the Stanford Directors' College and Stanford Law School, UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law, and Duke's Director Education Institute.

David also maintains an active pro bono and public service practice. He was one of the lead counsel in a case that successfully challenged the use of written tests to determine disability qualifications under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and also led a multi-week trial in federal court in San Francisco to end discrimination in county-contracting processes. David has served on the board of directors of the California Culinary Academy (NASDAQ:COOK), as well as the Smuin Ballet, Legal Aid Society-Employment Law Center of San Francisco, and the Legal Community Against Violence.

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West Coast Think Tank 2009 - 2008 session leaders

Ron Schneider

Scott Cunningham

Rodrigo Brumana

Kevin Sellers

Bill Sherman

Margaret Cannella

Andrew Shapiro

Darin Wolter

Larry Kurtz

Smooch Repovich Reynolds

David Berger

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