The new partners are in 11 of the firm’s markets, including several offices across the United States and the UK. Members of 13 practice groups, the 2024 partner cohort comprises 11 women and 16 men, and 59% are diverse.
The new counsel are based in 18 global markets; 29% are women and 43% are diverse.
“I am pleased to announce the advancement of these talented, diverse individuals across our firm,” said Doug Cameron, Reed Smith’s global head of legal personnel. “These promotions result from their outstanding legal skills and client service, their high levels of productivity, and their strong firm citizenship. They have each made valuable contributions to the success of our culture and of our firm, and we have the utmost confidence they will continue to do so.”
New Partners
United States
Chicago
Andrew M. Barrios, a member of the Insurance Recovery Group, represents corporate policyholders in a wide range of coverage matters involving general and excess liability, first-party property and business interruption, cyberliability, commercial crime, and fiduciary liability, among others. His experience includes representing clients in insurance coverage disputes in mediation, arbitration, and litigation in state and federal courts across the United States.
Andrew D. Bell is a member of the Global Corporate Group. He counsels high-net-worth individuals on multigenerational estate planning, with particular attention to succession planning for the entrepreneurial founders of closely held businesses. In addition, he assists clients in implementing bespoke tax strategies, including charitable giving and lifetime gifting, as well as the formation and governance of family-controlled entities. Bell drafts complex estate planning documents, including wills, revocable trusts, irrevocable life insurance trusts, grantor-retained annuity trusts, charitable remainder and charitable lead trusts, as well as irrevocable generation-skipping tax-exempt trusts.
Johnathan H. Foster is a member of Reed Smith’s Global Corporate Group. His practice concentrates on domestic and international mergers and acquisitions, private equity transactions, restructurings, and general corporate matters for private equity funds, their portfolio companies, and other public and privately held businesses. Foster represents companies in a wide range of industries, including manufacturing and supply, food, retail, insurance, technology and data, and other business services.
Anna M. Targowska, a litigator in the Intellectual Property Group, represents clients in high-stakes patent and commercial disputes. Targowska draws on her electrical engineering background to effectively resolve legally and technologically complex disputes involving wired and wireless communications, IoT devices, semiconductors, LEDs, as well as biomedical and pharmaceutical technologies. She routinely represents clients in multi-forum disputes across the United States district and appellate courts, the Patent Trial and Appeals Board, and the U.S. International Trade Commission. Targowska is also frequently called upon to serve as an IP counsel on high-profile merger and acquisition deals. As an avid runner, Targowska gives back to her community by fundraising at races for different causes, including childhood cancer. She also undertakes many pro bono initiatives, including representing veterans in denial of benefits cases and assisting domestic violence victims with securing temporary restraining orders.
Dallas
Jay L. Krystinik, a member of the Financial Industry Group, focuses his practice exclusively on commercial business matters, litigating cases for companies in the real estate, health care, technology, and aviation industries, among others. He has advised on countless other matters in these industries, solving clients’ challenges without the need for litigation. With experience in both federal and state courts, Krystinik advises public and private companies doing business around the globe.
Houston
Katie M. Belleville is a member of the Global Corporate Group. Her practice focuses on corporate transactions, mergers and acquisitions, and private equity matters, including representing private and public companies in a variety of industries. In addition to her cross-border and domestic M&A experience, she counsels clients on general corporate governance and commercial matters.
William W. Russell is a member of the Energy & Natural Resources Group and is on the steering committee of the firm’s Latin American business team. He represents clients in litigation and international arbitration, primarily in the fields of oil and gas, construction, and commercial disputes. Russell is an adjunct professor of International Commercial Arbitration at the University of Houston Law Center and has served two terms as the chair of the Houston Bar Association’s International Law Section. Fluent in Spanish, Russell has handled numerous cases involving Spanish-speaking parties and projects in Spanish-speaking countries. He has handled international arbitrations before each of the major arbitral institutions and has handled arbitrations with seats throughout the United States, Europe, and Latin America governed by a wide variety of national laws. He has also served as an arbitrator in multiple commercial cases.
New York
Jacob S. Herzek is a member of the Real Estate Group in New York and Miami. His practice emphasizes helping investors, developers, operators, and lenders navigate commercial real estate finance, acquisition, and development in a wide range of projects, including multi-family, mixed-use, hospitality, health care, industrial, warehouse, and retail. Herzek is experienced in joint ventures, portfolio transactions, and real estate fund formations.
Ian M. Turetsky is a litigator in the Global Commercial Disputes Group. His practice is focused on complex commercial disputes, including breach of contract, fraud, tortious interference, misappropriation, and breach of fiduciary duty claims before state and federal courts, JAMS and the American Arbitration Association. He has experience litigating all types of disputes with a particular focus on complex business disputes, sports and entertainment disputes, and class action defense.
Philadelphia
Kristen M. Ashe is a member of the firm’s Global Commercial Disputes Group. Her practice focuses on a wide array of commercial litigation matters primarily for clients in the health care and financial services sectors. She has significant experience in all aspects of pretrial and trial litigation, including briefing complex dispositive motions, coordinating discovery, taking and defending depositions, and preparing expert and fact witnesses for deposition and trial.
Brent K. Beissel is a member of the State Tax Group. He focuses his practice on dispute resolution and litigation across all 50 states, with a particular emphasis on sales and use tax and income tax issues in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. Beissel helps his clients tackle questions and issues involving taxability, situs, exemptions, and practical applications (sales and use tax) as well as apportionment, sourcing, deductions, non-business income, and net operating losses (income tax). He has also focused his efforts on expanding Reed Smith’s tax practice related to the taxation of the aviation industry and natural gas drilling and extraction in the Marcellus Shale region of Pennsylvania. Beissel is passionate about incorporating emerging technologies, such as data analytics and visualization; he embraces technology as a way to help clients fix or modify their internal tax practices to avoid future controversy and as a tool to advise them in a cost-effective manner.
Mark W. Fidanza, a litigator in the Global Commercial Disputes Group with experience in a wide range of commercial litigation, represents plaintiffs and defendants in federal and state courts, as well as in complex arbitration proceedings. He has a particular focus on real estate litigation, financial services litigation, and domestic and international commercial litigation. In addition, he litigates claims for emergency and injunctive relief. He recently first-chaired a federal jury trial resulting in a complete verdict and damages award in favor of his client. Additionally, Fidanza maintains an active pro bono practice in which he represents Philadelphia-area, low-income individuals who face the uncertainty of litigation. He is the 2023 recipient of the prestigious MVP of VIP Award, given by the city’s leading pro bono legal services agency, Philadelphia VIP.
Abigail M. Pierce is a member of the Global Commercial Disputes Group. Her practice is focused on complex litigation for clients in the health care and financial services sectors. Pierce has significant experience in all facets of litigation, including developing and implementing strategy, coordinating with opposing and co-counsel, taking and defending depositions, working with expert witnesses, and handling pretrial preparation and trials. Before joining Reed Smith, Pierce was a law clerk in the Fraud and Public Corruption Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney's office in Washington, DC.
Alexandra L. Sheedy-Rodriguez, a member of the Real Estate Group, represents commercial real estate developers and investors, real estate investment trusts, private equity investors, financial institutions, and individuals in the acquisition, financing, development, and leasing of real estate across the nation. Her practice focuses on the representation of purchasers/landlords in the acquisition, development, and triple net leasing of single-tenanted sites to credit and non-credit tenants. Sheedy-Rodriguez also frequently assists in corporate transactions, including business risk assessments in mergers and acquisitions. She routinely handles franchising transactions across industries and asset classes, including restaurants, fast-food establishments, gyms, and day care facilities. Her work includes taking a lead role in representing some of Reed Smith’s most significant and sophisticated clients in commercial real estate transactions, including some of the top publicly traded REITs in America.
Pittsburgh
Victoria Becker is a member of the Real Estate Group and concentrates her practice on real estate transactions, zoning, and land use matters. She represents corporate clients, developers, real estate investment trusts, lenders, and institutions with acquisitions, dispositions, leasing, and financing of commercial real estate. Her practice includes counseling clients on real estate development issues, governmental approvals, and construction of improvements. Becker also assists buyers and sellers with sales-leasebacks for single tenant and multi-property portfolio transactions nationwide, and represents landlords and tenants in lease and sublease transactions for office buildings, shopping centers, retail spaces, and warehouse properties.
James Doerfler, a member of the Global Commercial Disputes Group, focuses his practice on construction and capital projects, which encompasses both contract drafting/capital projects transactional services and claims-related litigation and arbitration work. The transactional side of Doerfler’s practice regularly involves project counsel work for private and public commercial and industrial construction projects, including large-scale commercial building and manufacturing projects. His claims-related work focuses on advising owners, developers, and contractors on commercial contract claims, which may involve general commercial disputes, construction change order disputes, construction defects, construction delays, insurance coverage, and/or bond-related matters. He represents clients nationwide in federal and state courts and in domestic and international arbitral forums.
Richmond
Nicole L. Brenner, a member of the Global Regulatory Enforcement Group, focuses her administrative practice before all state agencies and her legislative and lobbying practice before the Virginia General Assembly, the Governor’s Office, and the Office of the Attorney General. She regularly partners with clients on drafting legislation, creating and implementing legislative strategies, testifying before legislative committees, lobbying legislators and other government officials, and developing creative solutions to help solve problems within state and local government. Brenner joined Reed Smith after several years of working for the Virginia legislature. She has volunteered with the Junior League of Richmond for the past 10 years and previously served on the board as the vice president of fund development, overseeing all volunteer fundraising efforts.
San Francisco
Thuy T. Nguyen is a member of the Real Estate Group. With a focus on complex commercial real estate transactions, she represents institutional developers, owners, lenders, buyers, and sellers in transactions involving acquisition, disposition, leasing, and secured finance throughout California and the United States. Nguyen specializes in representing real estate investment trusts and other institutional clients in acquisitions and sale-leaseback transactions of net lease properties, often involving major multistate portfolios of properties and under extremely aggressive timelines. She advises clients in all stages of a transaction, from the structuring of the deal, to the management of diligence, to the negotiation of key documents, including purchase and sale agreements and long-term lease agreements. She also has experience in transactions involving the acquisition and development of renewable energy facilities, including wind, solar, and battery storage projects.
Tysons
John A. McWilliams, a member of the Global Corporate Group, advises clients across multiple industries in the areas of corporate governance, mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance, and investment management. He represents buyers and sellers in acquisitions and has experience structuring partnerships and joint ventures. For public pension systems and private investors, McWilliams negotiates limited partnership agreements, investment management agreements, and side letters for investments into private funds. He also regularly negotiates commercial agreements such as vendor and supplier contracts.
Washington, D.C.
Stephen T. Raptis, a member of the Insurance Recovery Practice, represents commercial policyholders in complex insurance disputes, with a focus on resolving their disputed claims through negotiation and mediation. With thorough claim analysis and advocacy, Raptis has helped policyholder clients successfully obtain reversals of scores of adverse coverage determinations without the need for litigation; when necessary, he aggressively litigates coverage lawsuits in state and federal courts throughout the country. To prevent coverage disputes on the front end, Raptis regularly reviews clients’ insurance programs, identifies potential coverage gaps, and recommends areas of possible improvement. He counsels clients on assessing and preserving the value of potential insurance claims and obtaining defense coverage even if damages may not be covered.
United Kingdom
London
Mike Adamson, a member of the Transportation Industry Group, advises shipowners, operators, and charterers and their insurers with disputes, including under charterparties, bills of lading, sale contracts, and shipbuilding contracts, as well as with related security and enforcement issues. He has particular experience supporting clients in the LNG sector with the drafting and negotiation of charters for LNG vessels and dispute resolution. Adamson’s practice also includes work for clients in the mining and offshore sectors (including offshore wind), and he regularly advises on environmental regulations applicable to shipping, including the EU Emissions Trading System. Adamson has close connections with the Japanese market, having lived and worked in Japan.
Moya Burns is Reed Smith’s general counsel EMEA and a member of the firm’s legal and risk team. Burns has over 20 years’ experience in providing advice to the firm’s lawyers on regulatory compliance, professional standards and ethics, and conflicts management, assisting them in the provision of complex, multi-jurisdictional, legal services. She provides legal advice to the firm’s senior management team on risk management issues and assists the firm’s business services teams on contract terms and data protection.
Josh Hughes is a member of the Financial Industry Group, and his core practice focuses on real estate finance. He advises sponsors, lenders, facility agents, security agents/trustees, servicers, and special servicers on all forms of real estate finance across a wide range of asset classes in the UK and EU markets. Hughes’s work spans the full life cycle of real estate finance transactions – including structuring/origination/loan closing, administration/servicing, exit/syndication (including loan trading/loan participations and securitization) and restructurings, workouts, defaults, and enforcement. In addition, Hughes advises both sellers and investors on loan portfolio transactions covering a variety of asset classes, including commercial real estate, shipping, and aviation.
Nick Moon, a member of the Energy & Natural Resources Group, advises on contentious and non-contentious matters in the energy and commodities sector. He supports trading houses, financial institutions, NOCs, and renewable energy companies on complex, multi-jurisdictional disputes and with negotiating commercial contracts involving various commodities, such as LNG, crude oil and products, coal, base metals, and renewables.
Chu Ting Ng, a member of the Financial Industry Group, acts for borrower- and lender-side clients, with a primary focus on banks and other financial institutions. She concentrates on fund finance, and her practice covers the full range of fund finance products – from capital call, NAV/hybrid to co-investment and GP support facilities. With a background in fund formation, she has in-depth knowledge of fund documentation and the business needs of private equity, credit, and secondary and real estate funds. Ng is also experienced in advising lenders on tailoring security packages for various fund structures, as well as assisting sponsors in initial fund structuring to take into account specific financing needs at each stage of a fund’s life cycle.
Laura-May Scott is a member of the Global Commercial Disputes Group and the Insurance Recovery Group. She has worked on a range of commercial disputes representing global companies – predominantly banks – on claims at the pre-action stage right through to trial. Her experience includes acting for claimants and defendants on cases before the English courts in the High Court and Court of Appeal. In her insurance recovery work, she acts exclusively for policyholders in a range of disputes with insurers, including representing clients in arbitration and court proceedings, with particular experience in coverage disputes involving finance insurance, marine cargo insurance, directors’ and officers’ insurance, and political risk and trade credit insurance. As well as having significant insurance recovery and banking litigation experience, Scott also advises companies dealing with a broad range of regulatory and compliance issues and has represented financial institutions and individuals in contentious regulatory proceedings before the Financial Conduct Authority.
Elizabeth Stroud is a member of the Energy & Natural Resources Group and On Chain, the firm’s Crypto and Digital Assets Group. With experience across a range of derivatives, structured finance, and structured and crypto products transactions, she focuses her practice on commodity finance structures and strategic equity and financing transactions. Stroud has experience across a broad range of derivatives, structured finance, digital asset products, and structured products transactions. She has a particular focus on structured commodity finance structures (specifically, inventory monetization transactions and strategic equity and financing transactions, such as collar financing structures, stakebuild total return swaps, and margin loans). Before returning to private practice in 2019, she worked in-house at an investment bank in London, where she advised on a wide range of global markets transactions and products.
New Counsel
Reed Smith’s 35 new counsel include 26 lawyers in its U.S. offices and nine in its offices in the UK, Continental Europe, and Asia: four each from London, Pittsburgh, and New York; two each from Dallas, Dubai, Houston, Los Angeles, Paris, Philadelphia, Richmond, and San Francisco; and one each from Chicago, Miami, Princeton, Silicon Valley, Singapore, Washington, D.C., and Wilmington, DE.
In the United States, the new counsel for 2024 are Michael P. Sandusky (Real Estate) in Chicago; E. Steve Smith (Global Commercial Disputes) and Lindsey L. Robin (Financial Industry Group) in Dallas; A.J. Wissinger (Energy & Natural Resources) and Michael J. Forbes (Intellectual Property) in Houston; and Margaret C. McDonald (Insurance Recovery) and Rafael N. Tumanyan (Labor and Employment) in Los Angeles.
Other new counsel are Daniel A. Sox (Global Commercial Disputes) in Miami; and Alice D. Colarossi (Transportation Industry Group), Ari Byk (Global Corporate Group), Kiriaki Tourikis (Global Corporate Group), and Zachary B. Kaye (Global Commercial Disputes) in New York.
Additional new counsel in the United States include Arielle R. Lusardi (Life Sciences Health Industry Group) and Joshua M. Peles (Global Commercial Disputes) in Philadelphia; and Aaron J. Yonash (Real Estate), Alexis A. Leventhal (Financial Industry Group), Thomas J. Galligan (Energy & Natural Resources), and David A. Ledet (Insurance Recovery) in Pittsburgh.
Also among new Reed Smith counsel in the United States are David G. Murphy (Financial Industry Group) in Princeton; Christine C. Noonan (Global Regulatory Enforcement), and Noah S. Oberlander (Labor and Employment) in Richmond; Christopher J. Pulido (Intellectual Property) and Connor O’Carroll (Insurance Recovery ) in San Francisco; Justine J. Lee (Intellectual Property) in Silicon Valley; Will Atherton (Financial Industry Group) in Washington, D.C.; and Mark W. Eckard (Financial Industry Group) in Wilmington, DE.
Reed Smith’s new counsel in London are James C. Scott (Transportation Industry Group), Liam Hart (Energy & Natural Resources), Lucy M. Winnington-Ingram (Global Commercial Disputes), and Matthew Bowen (Global Corporate Group).
In Continental Europe and the Middle East, new counsel are Pierre-Céols Fischer (Global Commercial Disputes) and Romain Farnoux (Transportation Industry Group) in Paris; and Chris Edwards (Energy & Natural Resources) and Umbreen F. Meenai (Financial Industry Group) in Dubai.
New counsel in Asia is Philip R. Orme (Energy & Natural Resources) in Singapore.