Tricia M. Hammons is Director of Governance & Legal Services and Assistant Secretary at Murphy Oil Corporation (NYSE: MUR), with more than 20 years of experience in the oil and natural gas industry.
She leads Murphy’s annual proxy reporting process and plays a key role in board governance, executive and equity compensation, corporate sustainability reporting, SEC and NYSE compliance, entity management, and shareholder engagement. Under her leadership, Murphy’s 2024 proxy was nominated for “Best Proxy Statement – Mid Cap” by Governance Intelligence at the Corporate Governance Awards.

Tricia holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Southern Arkansas University and is a Certified Equity Professional (CEP) through Santa Clara University. She was recognized as an Outstanding Business Leader in Energy by the Houston Business Journal in 2024 and completed the FBI Citizens Academy in Houston that same year.
She is an active member of the Society for Corporate Governance, NASPP, and the Women’s Energy Network, and is deeply committed to community service through board leadership and long-standing volunteer work with the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.

Ron Schneider is Director, Corporate Governance Services for Donnelley Financial Solutions (DFIN). He is responsible for providing thought leadership on emerging corporate governance, proxy, sustainability and other disclosure issues.  Over the past four decades, Ron has advised and assisted senior management, the C-suite and boards of public companies of all sizes, industries and stages of growth to establish effective investor engagement programs, facing investor activism, and with challenging proxy solicitations involving corporate governance, compensation and control issues.

During his career, he has managed more than 1,600 proxy solicitations, 200 tender or exchange offers and 30 proxy contests, with his proxy fight clients succeeding in over 70% of such situations.

Ron’s prior experience includes three years at investor relations agency The Financial Relations Board (FRB), three years at AST Phoenix Advisors and nine years at BNY Mellon, providing thought leadership on regulatory changes and emerging best practices. Earlier in his career, Ron 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.

Richard Gluckselig is an Associate General Counsel and Assistant Corporate Secretary at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc., an S&P 500 biotechnology company headquartered in New York whose mission is to help patients with serious diseases.  Richard has nearly 20 years of experience advising companies on issues critical to their business. In his current role, Richard focuses on corporate governance, securities law compliance and financing matters, as well as strategic transactions, shareholder engagement and board support.  Previously, Richard worked as a member of the securities and public companies practice group of an international law firm in Manhattan.  Richard holds a law degree from the University of Michigan and is admitted to the practice of law in New York.

Matt Geekie Graybar

Senior Vice President, Secretary and General Counsel

Matt Geekie is senior vice president, secretary and general counsel for Graybar, a leading distributor of electrical, industrial, automation and connectivity products and specializes in related supply chain management and logistics services. Graybar celebrated in 2024 155 years as a company and 95 years of employee ownership. A member of Graybar’s board of directors, Geekie is responsible for corporate governance and the legal and risk management functions of the company. He sits on Graybar’s Executive, Audit, Compensation, Contributions, Disclosure, Finance, Employees’ Benefits, Branch House and Information Technologies committees. He also serves as Chairman of Graybar’s Canadian subsidiary. With Matt’s leadership, Graybar has acquired seventeen companies yielding a combined annual revenue of over $1.7 billion for Graybar.

Geekie’s broad-based legal experience includes corporate law, corporate governance, cybersecurity, mergers and acquisitions, commercial and securities law, ethics, risk management, intellectual property, product liability and export/import law. Under his leadership, Graybar achieved national recognition for excellence in corporate governance in 2015, 2016, 2018 and 2019.

Geekie is a native of St. Louis and received his law and undergraduate degrees from Saint Louis University. Geekie currently serves as a board Member of the Saint Louis Zoo Association and on its Nominating, and Long-Range Plan Implementation Committees; as a Member of the Saint Louis Zoo’s Marlin Perkins Society; as a Member of the Board of The Oasis Institute and on its Executive, Finance and Advancement Committees; and as a Member of the Greater St. Louis Inc. Government Relations Council. He is also a Member of the Board of CK Power, a Member of the St. Louis/Chicago Regional FM Global Advisory Board and a Member of the Board of the Missouri Law Institute. He is past chairman of the Boards of Directors of the St. Louis Community Foundation, the Saint Louis Zoo Association and the Oasis Institute.

Dottie Schindlinger is Executive Director of the Diligent Institute, the modern governance think tank and global research arm of Diligent Corporation. In her role, Dottie directs the Institute’s thought leadership on corporate governance and related topics. She also serves as a lead spokesperson for both Diligent Institute and Diligent Corporation, giving dozens of presentations to boards and executives at events around the globe. Dottie’s work has been featured in Fortune, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and multiple governance and technology publications. She is co-author of the book, Governance in the Digital Age: A Guide for the Modern Corporate Board Director and she co-hosts the show The Corporate Director Podcast.

Dottie brings over twenty years’ experience in governance-related roles, including serving as a director, officer, committee chair, senior executive, governance consultant and trainer for private, public, and nonprofit boards. She was a founding team member of the tech start-up BoardEffect, a board management software provider focused on healthcare and nonprofit boards, acquired by Diligent in 2016. She served as the Vice Chair of the Board of the Alice Paul Institute until April 2020, and is a Fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar on Corporate Governance. Dottie is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and lives in suburban Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with her husband, Ron.

Maureen Montgomery is the Deputy General Counsel at Robinhood, where she leads legal strategy across corporate governance, M&A, and regulatory matters. Since joining Robinhood in 2021, she has played a key role in supporting the company’s expansion and strengthening its legal infrastructure, including during its most significant strategic transactions and corporate developments. Maureen previously spent nearly eight years as a corporate associate at Fenwick & West, where she advised high-growth technology companies on mergers and acquisitions and corporate governance. Earlier in her career, she held roles at Google in compensation, M&A, and employee relations, and clerked in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Maureen earned her J.D. from UCLA School of Law and holds a B.A. in Art History and Math from Stanford University.

Lisa Ware-Alexander has served since March 2020 as VP, Corporate Secretary and Chief Compliance & Ethics Officer in the St. Louis office of Bunge Global SA, a leader in agribusiness, food and ingredients. She leads a team responsible for corporate governance, supporting the Company’s board of directors, and for corporate finance, securities and the full range of public company obligations. In addition, she leads the global ethics and compliance program and is responsible for legal and compliance integration efforts related to the Company’s recently announced merger with Viterra Limited. Prior to joining Bunge, she most recently served as Vice President, General Counsel, Chief Compliance Officer in the Calgary, Canada and Loveland Colorado offices of Nutrien Limited, the world’s largest supplier of crop inputs, services and solutions, and the largest retailer of agricultural products. There, she was also responsible for legal and compliance integration efforts related to the formation of Nutrien.

Lisa has over 25 years of experience advising multinational corporations, influencing strategic direction, and delivering sound counsel on the intersection of corporate governance, ethics, global regulatory, ESG and corporate responsibility, crisis and risk management. Lisa has extensive experience across several industries including agriculture, food & ingredients, manufacturing and financial services. Lisa’s commitment towards impacting businesses on a global scale is most evident through her expertise in ethics, ESG, M&A, and global transformations, along with her commitment towards championing diversity and inclusion. She has extensive global experience in North and South America, Europe, and Asia and has experience leading and developing teams across each continent. Lisa obtained a Juris Doctorate degree from Chicago Kent College of Law.

Irving S. Gomez is VP, Deputy General Counsel and Secretary, for PagerDuty, Inc. Irving is responsible for M&A, securities filings with the SEC, corporate compliance, global subsidiaries, providing advice and counsel to the Board, committees, and senior management in the areas of emerging corporate governance, sustainability, stockholder outreach, securities laws, compliance, and executive compensation. Prior to joining PagerDuty, Irving was Chief Governance Counsel and Assistant Corporate Secretary for Intel Corporation.  While at Intel, Irving was instrumental in having Intel be an early adaptor of Proxy Access, integrating reporting, and pioneering the virtual annual meeting and stockholder forum.

Prior to joining Intel, Irving was in private practice working on a variety of matters including corporate securities, venture investments, mergers & acquisitions, and financing transactions as an associate at Morrison & Foerster in San Francisco. Irving earned his B.A. degree in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley, his J.D. degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law, and an LL.M. degree in Taxation from New York University School of Law.

Jenna Kaye is the CEO and Founder of Odyssey Trust Company. She is the first female founder of a Federally Regulated Financial Institution. Jenna is also a Principal of Icebook Investments Corp, a family office with over $20 million of capital invested in early-stage companies across a wide variety of industries, a Founder and Director of Axis Connects Corp., a diversity and inclusion non-profit organization, and Corporate Diversity Consultants, a consulting firm for public issuers providing governance, recruiting and pipeline building solutions to increase diverse representation at the board and c-suite levels. Jenna has a passion for deregulated finance and cryptocurrency and is the Co-Founder and Director of Tetra Trust Company, Canada’s first regulated crypto custodian, backed by Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN). Ms. Kaye has an MBA/LLB from Dalhousie University and practice law at a national law firm.

Elizabeth K. Riotte

Vice President – Deputy General Counsel and Assistant Corporate Secretary

Avangrid, Inc.

Liz has served as Assistant Corporate Secretary for Avangrid, Inc., a leading sustainable energy company with approximately $44 billion in assets and operations in 24 states, since June 2016, and was appointed Vice President – Deputy General Counsel in April 2020. Liz oversees the corporate legal team and provides strategic advice and counsel to Avangrid’s senior management and board of directors in the areas of corporate governance, securities law compliance and public disclosures, and corporate finance. Liz was previously an associate attorney at BakerHostetler LLP in Cleveland, Ohio and Verrill Dana LLP in Portland, Maine.

Liz holds a B.A. from Tufts University and a J.D. from the Case Western Reserve University School of Law School, where she served as Editor-in-Chief of the Case Western Reserve Law Review and is a member of the Order of the Coif. Liz is a member of the Maine Bar and lives in Cumberland, Maine with her husband and two daughters.

Paul Sharobeem is Associate General Counsel and Assistant Secretary of Century Aluminum Company, a role he has held since 2022. In his current role, Paul oversees all of Century’s transactional and corporate governance related legal support including advising the company’s senior management and Board of Directors on legal and governance related matters, as well as direct support of Century’s securities, capital markets, corporate finance, executive compensation, M&A, commercial and sustainability functions.  Paul also leads Century’s annual shareholder outreach and engagement program. Over his nearly two-decade long career, Paul has developed a successful record of leading cross-border teams and has held roles of increasing responsibility to include oversight of additional responsibilities including compliance, commercial litigation, and legal operations.

Prior to his current role, Paul was Senior Governance Counsel at Aramco, one of the largest energy companies in the world, helping to prepare its Board policies, processes and procedures leading up to Aramco’s IPO, and then manage the Governance function immediately post IPO, which remains the largest ever. Prior to that, Paul served as Senior Corporate Counsel at Caterpillar, Inc., a leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, and prior to that, represented several multi-national corporations as outside counsel at a global law firm. Paul holds an undergraduate degree from New York University and two graduate degrees, including a juris doctor, from the University of Florida.

Bruce H. Goldfarb is President and Chief Executive Officer of Okapi Partners, the proxy solicitation and investor response firm.  Bruce works extensively with corporations and investors focusing on investor response strategy and execution for contested election campaigns, mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance matters, investor engagement campaigns, and other extraordinary situations.

Prior to establishing Okapi Partners, Bruce was the Senior Managing Director and General Counsel of Georgeson Inc. (now a subsidiary of Computershare Limited), where he headed the Global M&A Advisory Group.

Before entering the proxy solicitation business, Bruce was a Senior Vice President of the investment management firm, Scudder, Stevens & Clark, which is now a part of DWS Group. At Scudder, he was a member of the Legal Department and served as Chairman of the Firm’s Proxy Review Committee.

Bruce practiced corporate law with Cravath, Swaine & Moore for more than six years, where he specialized in mergers and acquisitions, securities transactions and international matters.

Bruce is a current member of the Board of Visitors of the Columbia University School of Law, the Advisory Board of the Ira M. Millstein Center for Global Markets and Corporate Ownership, and the Board of Advisors of the NYU Law School Institute for Corporate Governance and Finance. He was previously a member of the Council of Institutional Investors Market Advisory Council and the Advisory Board of the Harvard Law School Program on Corporate Governance.  Bruce also serves as a member of the Board of Trustees of the not-for-profit Signature Theatre Company.

Bruce earned a J.D. from the Columbia University School of Law.  He received a B.A. in the History of Art from the University of Pennsylvania concurrently with a B.S. Econ., concentration in Finance, from its Wharton School.

Michael Green is the Chief Compliance Officer at Arm, where he leads the strategic development of the company’s global ethics and compliance program, with a focus on data security, privacy, government contracts, and governance. With over a decade of leadership in compliance roles at top companies including Visa and Granite Construction, Michael brings deep expertise in navigating emerging risk areas such as digital currency and AI. A graduate of Howard University School of Law and a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), he is a respected voice in ethics, investigations, and sustainable governance.

Beth Sasfai is a partner in Cooley’s public companies group and leads the firm’s ESG & sustainability advisory practice. She regularly advises boards of directors and management on a wide range of corporate governance, disclosure and regulatory compliance matters – including corporate governance policy and trends, shareholder engagement and activism, shareholder proposals and proxy season matters, and environmental, social and governance (ESG). She is a seasoned professional with a distinguished career spanning 20+ years in a fortune 20 company, which positions her as a trusted advisor to boards and executive teams.
Beth closely monitors and advises clients on evolving best practices and on corporate governance and ESG proposals put forth by Congress, the Securities and Exchange Commission, stock exchanges, and other stakeholders. Beth brings a wealth of experience in guiding US and international clients through the complex ESG regulatory landscape, including reporting and disclosure controls, engaging with stakeholders, and operationalizing governance and risk management processes.
In addition to her public companies practice, Beth counsels companies of al market caps across a broad spectrum of industries, helping to integrate sustainability strategies, oversight, and risk management principles into the life cycle of early-stage growth companies and pre-initial public offering companies to facilitate their evolution into large, publicly traded entities. In advising companies on ways to integrate sustainability principles into business strategy and operations early on, Beth helps companies build resilience, enhance stakeholder relationships and future-proof their operations.
Before joining Cooley, Beth was Verizon’s chief ESG officer and senior vice president of corporate governance. She also served as a management liaison to Verizon’s board of directors’ corporate governance and policy committee, which was charged with overseeing sustainability, governance, public policy and reputational risk. Prior to joining Verizon, Beth practiced in the corporate and litigation groups of prominent New York City law firms.

Education
University of Pennsylvania
JD, 1997

Seth is a seasoned legal executive with a proven track record of providing strategic legal counsel and support to large global organizations. Seth is the Deputy General Counsel, Assistant Corporate Secretary, and General Counsel for Work Dynamics at JLL.

By working closely with the Work Dynamics Executive Board and other senior leadership, Seth advises on risk mitigation, governance and policy creation, litigation and dispute resolution, M&A deal structures, and solution design and implementation. His contributions help ensure that legal considerations are integrated seamlessly into JLL’s decision-making processes. Seth effectively navigates complex legal landscapes while supporting JLL’s growth strategies.

As JLL’s Assistant Corporate Secretary, Seth’s role as a trusted legal counselor to the JLL Board of Directors and JLL Global Executive Board underscores his commitment to fostering sound corporate governance practices. With his expertise in corporate governance matters, director and officer independence, and compliance with securities laws, Seth plays a vital role in maintaining JLL’s commitment to transparency, accountability, and best practices.

Through his leadership and strategic guidance, Seth enables JLL’s Work Dynamics business to flourish in a competitive market. Seth’s dedication and expertise make him a valuable asset in supporting JLL’s strategic priorities and delivering exceptional results for clients and stakeholders alike.

Prior to joining JLL in 2021, Seth previously served as a legal executive at Cushman & Wakefield and AkzoNobel and was a Litigation Partner at the international law firm of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. Seth received his law and undergraduate degrees from the University of Michigan.

Maria Doughty: As the CEO of The Chicago Network, the premier organization of Chicagoland’s most influential women leaders, Maria Doughty leads with deep personal purpose. She is an ambassador for the organization and its purpose of empowering women to lead, and its mission to connect women for personal and professional growth, advance communities, and support and inspire the next generation of women. She previously served as the Director of Public Policy and Regulatory Examinations for Allstate Insurance Company. Maria brings significant industry experience in highly regulated areas, including insurance and financial services. She is a skilled regulatory compliance, governance, enterprise risk management, litigation, public policy, and government affairs strategist.

Smita Shah: Smita Shah is the Founder and CEO of SPAAN Tech, Inc., a nationally recognized engineering and infrastructure firm trusted by city governments, airports, and federal agencies to solve complex technical challenges. She is a Professional Engineer(PE) licensed in multiple states, (LEED AP BD+C), with an extensive engineering and business education from Northwestern University, MIT and Oxford University. Named one of Chicago’s most powerful people by Crain’s and a past advisor to the White House on infrastructure policy, she brings both strategic insight and public sector experience to the table. Smita’s work sits at the intersection of data, systems, and leadership—making her a vital voice in how AI can support smarter, more resilient decision-making at scale.

Steve Wade is the head of event content at IR Media Group. As a content researcher, conference producer, and event host for IR Magazine and Governance Intelligence, Steve is responsible for gathering intelligence on public companies’ most significant global issues. Steve’s team develops events that promote excellence in investor relations, governance, and sustainability for issuers and investors.

Prior to Corporate Secretary, Steve’s background was in corporate social responsibility and responsible investment. During his time at Ethical Corporation (now Reuters Events), Steve launched the ESG symposium; an event focused on connecting the socially responsible investment community with corporate sustainability leaders at listed companies. Steve was a judge for the Deloitte Green Frog Awards, celebrating the best corporate reporting in Eastern Europe. Steve also presented research at the Global Sustainable Event Summit in London and has spoken about extra-financial reporting with the United Nations Global Compact, the World Bank, and the Polish Ministry of Finance.

Steve has a BSC in Event Management, is a member of working groups toward improved practices in international event management, and enjoys swimming, rugby and outdoor pursuits in his spare time.