Michelle Ifill

Founder, La Maison Michelle
Retired Senior Vice President & General Counsel, Verizon Corporate Services, Inc.

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As the recently retired Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Verizon Corporate Services Group, Inc., Michelle was responsible for primary legal oversight and support of the Chief Administration Office, which included Supply Chain and Vendor Management, Supplier Diversity, Global Real Estate, Sustainability, Aviation & Fleet Management. Michelle’s team also had responsibility for a variety of information technology, cyber security, intellectual property and financial services areas. Prior to this most recent appointment, Ms. Ifill was Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary for Verizon’s Enterprise Solutions business unit. In this capacity, she was responsible for representing the legal and regulatory interests for Verizon’s $18 billion business unit which oversees all of Verizon’s wireless, wireline, IT and Cloud capabilities for enterprise and government customers globally.

Michelle is the founder of The Women’s Excellence Network (WEN) a professional business development and relationship-building organization. Relatedly, she has continued her practice of providing executive coaching and diversity & inclusion training through WE Consulting LLC. She and her husband are also entrepreneurs in the development and management of their Caribbean spa resort and conference venue, Villa La Maison Michelle, Barbados www.lammbarbadosvilla.com.

Michelle is a founder and former Co-Chair of the Verizon Legal Diversity & Inclusion Council, is the Governance Committee Chair and Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees for SUNY Purchase College Foundation and is a member of the Audit Committee of the Purchase College Housing Corporation. Active with the National Bar Association, Michelle is a Co-Chair of its annual General Counsel Invitational, as well as on the Advisory Board of the NBA 2025 GC Initiative. Passionate about preparing and empowering our next generation of leaders, Michelle is an Advisory Board Member of the Ron Brown Scholars Program, which focuses on providing mentoring and scholarship assistance to promising high school students of color.

Michelle received a Bachelor of Arts from Brown University and her law degree from Harvard Law School and lives in Westchester County, NY with her husband and teenage daughter.

Stuart Alderoty

General Counsel,
Ripple

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Stuart Alderoty is General Counsel at Ripple. Stuart brings more than 30 years of legal experience to the role with expertise in financial services and regulatory affairs. He’s been General Counsel and part of the executive leadership teams at CIT Group and HSBC North America Holdings. Stuart also was Managing Counsel at American Express where he served on the leadership team of the President and CEO of American Express’ Consumer Card Business. Stuart began his career in private practice and was a partner with the international law firm of LeBouef, Lamb, Greene and MacRae where he specialized in litigation.

Damien Atkins

Senior Vice President, General Counsel & Secretary,
The Hershey Compnay

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Damien Atkins is Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary for The Hershey Company, where he was responsible for leading the corporate secretary, government relations, legal and security functions.

Prior to joining Hershey in August of 2018, he was General Counsel and Corporate Secretary for the Panasonic Corporation of North America. At Panasonic, he managed the company’s full litigation portfolio and led global legal teams in several multi-jurisdictional Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and antitrust investigations, lawsuits and claims. He also led a global legal team in the $1 billion acquisition of the Hussmann Corporation in 2016.

Before Panasonic, Damien was Senior Vice President, Deputy General Counsel, Corporate and Chief Compliance Officer for AOL, Inc., leading a range of high-profile legal matters for the company, including mergers and acquisitions, corporate and real estate legal matters, including AOL’s spin‐off from Time Warner.

In 1998, Damien began his legal career as a corporate associate at Chadbourne & Parke (now known as Norton Rose).

Damien holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Stanford University where he was Senior Class President and a Mellon Scholar, and a J.D. from New York University School of Law.