The Foundation

President

Todd Brown is the Managing Attorney of several Liberty Mutual Insurance Group Staff Counsel offices: The Law Offices of Brown & Black in Boston, Massachusetts and the Law Offices of Brown, Sherry & Geller in Raynham, Massachusetts and Providence, Rhode Island. He was admitted to practice in 1989 and joined Liberty Mutual the same year. In addition to managing the offices, Todd practices in the areas of general liability, construction, SIU, premises liabiliy and multiparty complex litigation. He has significant experience handling complex and high exposure environmental, restaurant, subrogation and transportation matters. Todd received his Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from The George Washington University where he spent a year abroad at the London School of Economics. He received his Juris Doctor from Boston University School of Law. He is a member of the state bars of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Arizona. He is a past or present member of The Massachusetts AIDS Action Committee, Mass Equlity, the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Bar Association and COLAGE (Children of Lesbians an Gays Everywhere). He also serves as an Overseer to the Board of Directors of the Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, Massachusetts. He is married to Rob Cullinane and has two teenaged boys.

Past President

Charles M. Sprock, Jr. (“Casey”) is a partner with the firm Baldwin & Sutphen, LLP, Syracuse, NY, where he focuses in the areas of Real Estate Law, Estate Planning & Asset Protection, Trust & Estate Administration and Adoptions. A large percentage of his client base is comprised of non-traditional families. He is a graduate of Colgate University (B.A., Honors in Philosophy) and Notre Dame Law School. He is also an adjunct faculty member with three colleges at Syracuse University (the College of Law, the Maxwell School and University College) as well as Colgate University. His teaching and course designs have earned him several awards. He advises the College of Law’s gay/straight alliance (Outlaw) and coaches the group’s Moot Court Team, which competes at UCLA’s Williams Institute’s Annual Sexual Orientation and the Law National Moot Court Competition. In 2006, his team won the competition. Casey also serves on the boards of United Way of Central New York and SAGE Upstate.

President-Elect | Treasurer

Joseph A. Vallo is a Litigation Shareholder with Greenberg Traurig’s New York, Fort Lauderdale and White Plains offices. Joseph focuses his practice on securities arbitration, mediation, litigation and also has wide-ranging experience in retail brokerage compliance in domestic and international markets. Before joining Greenberg Traurig, Joseph served as Senior Vice President, Senior Litigation Counsel for Wachovia Securities, LLC, n.k.a Wells Fargo Advisors LLC, where he supervised the firm’s major litigations and arbitrations. Previously, he served as the Senior Vice President and Director of Compliance for TD Waterhouse Group, Inc. and the Divisional Compliance Director at Salomon Smith Barney, Inc. where he was also the Director of International Private Client Group Compliance. Joseph is a 1979 graduate of SUNY Cortland and a 1984 graduate of New York Law School. He is admitted to practice in New York and Florida. Joseph also serves on the Board of the SUNY Cortland Foundation Board of Directors and the advisory board of the Center for Gender Studies. Joseph lives in New York and Fort Lauderdale with his partner, Ethan and his daughter, Emma.

Secretary

Brian Esser is a member of the Litigation group in the New York office of Baker & Hostetler LLP.  He focuses his practice on complex and general civil litigation and corporate investigations, with a particular emphasis on electronic discovery and technology. Brian has worked on a range of investigations and monitorships on subjects as diverse as anti-money laundering, economic and trade sanctions, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) violations, export controls, channel stuffing, New York State ethics laws and Medicare fraud and abuse. His representative litigation matters include civil RICO claims brought against insurance companies, tobacco manufacturers, foreign sovereigns and government contractors, as well as breach of contract, noncompete clauses and unfair competition cases. Brian currently coordinates discovery for the over one thousand avoidance actions initiated by the court-appointed trustee under the SIPA liquidation of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC.  In addition to his main practice, Brian maintains an active pro bono practice that encompasses litigation, appellate and legislative work in the areas of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and HIV status, reproductive rights, asylum and the death penalty. While at his previous law firm Arnold & Porter, Brian served as a “loaned associate” to the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia, where he represented low-income tenants in matters before the D.C. Superior Court and in administrative hearings before the D.C. Housing Authority. From 2000 to 2001 he served as a law clerk to the Honorable Rafael Diaz of the D.C. Superior Court. Brian graduated magna cum laude from the American University Washington College of Law. He received his B.A. from Northwestern University in 1997. He and his husband Kevin O’Leary have a son through open adoption.

At-Large Board Members

Wesley Bizzell serves as Assistant General Counsel, Government Affairs for Altria Client Services Inc. (“ALCS”). Mr. Bizzell provides in-house legal counsel on matters relating to the political, legislative and lobbying activities of Altria Group, Inc. In this role, Mr. Bizzell is responsible for ensuring that Altria and its companies comply with all laws and regulations regarding federal, state, local, and Canadian campaign finance, government ethics, gifts to government officials, lobbying disclosure and reporting, and charitable giving. Mr. Bizzell is a member of Altria’s Compliance Leadership Team and the Altria Law Department’s Diversity Committee. He also has served on the advisory board for the Minority Corporate Counsel Association’s 2011 CLE Expo. Previously, Mr. Bizzell was an attorney in Winston & Strawn LLP’s Federal Government Relations and Regulatory Affairs Practice Group. Mr. Bizzell graduated with a B.A. in justice, magna cum laude, from the American University in Washington, D.C. and received a Master of Social Work with a focus in public policy from the Catholic University of America. He received his J.D., magna cum laude, from Georgetown University Law Center, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif and served as an editor for the Georgetown Law Journal. He is a member of the Maryland and District of Columbia bars.

Ted Furman is a Vice President in the GlaxoSmithKline(GSK) Legal Department managing a global team handling GSK’s Consumer Healthcare, Dermatology, and Ophthalmology patent matters, having joined GSK in 2002. Ted has also been a member of the patent departments at Bristol-Myers Squibb and the RCA Corporation and has a total of 31 years in the patent profession. Ted is co-chair of GSK Legal’s Diversity and Inclusion Steering Team which includes members from around the world. Under Ted’s leadership that Steering Team has succeeded in implementing programs and practices including the leveraging of GSK’s external legal spend to promote diversity in the profession, providing summer internships for diverse law students, providing a Young Inventors Program for grade school children, and providing Career Days for law students, to name a few. These and related efforts have led to GSK being the first Pharma company to sign on to the Law Society’s (UK) Diversity and Inclusion Charter in 2010, GSK Legal being an MCCA Mid-Atlantic Region Employer of Choice for 2010, and GSK scoring a 100 on HRC’s ‘Best LGBT Places To Work’ list for 7 consecutive years. GSK Legal’s Diversity efforts under Ted have also garnered the ACC’s 2011 award for Outstanding Commitment to Diversity by a Law Department in the Philadelphia area (DELVACCA) as well as the National LGBT Bar Association’s 2012 Out and Proud Corporate Counsel Award recently in Philadelphia. Also, for the past 8 years Ted has served as Executive Sponsor for GSK’s Philadelphia-area LGBT Employee Resource Group, SPECTRUM, and is proud to have led or sponsored successful efforts to obtain health coverage for gender reassignment surgeries for transgender employees, to provide Safe Zone training within GSK, and to include LGBT into GSK’s Supplier Diversity efforts.