News

Susan Mac Cormac JD/LLM ’93 received the California Lawyers Association Business Law Section’s 2025 Roland E. Brandel Lifetime Achievement Award. Suz, a partner in the San Francisco office of Morrison Foerster, co-chairs the ESG + Sustainability and Social Enterprise + Impact Investing practices. Her practice focuses on late-stage financings, secondaries, and other corporate transactions for investors and on investments for some of the top investors dedicated to impact, from “impact first” foundations to family offices to private equity funds. The award recognizes Suz's groundbreaking contributions, particularly in the field of sustainable and impact-driven finance. 

Suz co-led the drafting group for the Social Purpose Corporation in California, has created hybrid/tandem corporate structures and crafted debt and equity instruments that blend impact with traditional financial terms, and has used corporate law to develop creative capital market solutions to pressing environmental problems. She also has been a driving force in Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG). She was a founding board member of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board and an advisor to the UN report that coined the term. 

For 25 years, Suz has served as primary corporate counsel to Business for Social Responsibility and sits on its board of directors, helping to advise large public companies on how to look beyond compliance to embed sustainability and ESG into their business practices and operations. She structured and launched the California Rebuilding Fund, which raised more than $200 million during COVID for small businesses in underserved communities in all 58 counties in California.

Elena Babinecz JD '02 has joined Baker Donelson's Financial Services Litigation and Compliance Group in Washington, D.C. Elena served more than 12 years at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as a regulatory expert on fair lending, small business lending, and language access. Prior to her work at the CFPB, Elena was in private practice for more than a decade. She counseled financial services clients in fair lending examinations and investigations by federal and state government agencies, including state attorneys general, as well as enforcement matters related to the mortgage banking industry.

D. Todd Christofferson JD ’72 was named Second Counselor in the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the third most powerful position in the church.

Prior to his full-time church service as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and the Presidency of the Seventy, he was in-house counsel for NationsBank (now Bank of America) in Charlotte and senior VP and general counsel for Commerce Union Bank of Tennessee in Nashville.

Chip Gage JD ’93 has joined Norton Rose Fulbright as a corporate finance partner in its Dallas office. With more than 30 years of experience, most recently at Winston & Strawn, Chip represents private equity sponsors and their portfolio companies in complex domestic and cross-border debt financing transactions. His practice spans leveraged buyout financings, acquisition financings, leveraged recapitalizations, working capital facilities, workouts, and restructuring.

Faith Kasparian JD/MA ’97 opened her one-woman cabaret show Law of Imagination at Don’t Tell Mama in New York's theater district. By day, Faith chairs the Privacy and Data Security Practice Group at Morse in Waltham and is a Certified Information Privacy Professional/United States (CIPP/US). She is also a member of the Firm’s Licensing & Commercial Contracts Group. 

Faith counsels clients on compliance with state, federal, and international privacy laws. She also negotiates commercial agreements involving privacy and data security; develops privacy and security policies and information management best practices; advises on incident and breach response; and handles privacy risk allocation and due diligence in the context of M&A and investment transactions. Faith’s transactional practice focuses on the structuring, drafting, and negotiation of agreements surrounding the development and commercialization of technology and other intellectual property assets. Prior to joining the firm, she was assistant college counsel to Emerson College and was an associate at Covington & Burling. In addition to her JD, Faith holds a degree in vocal performance from New England Conservatory of Music.

James Mullen JD '25 has joined Fish & Richardson as an associate in its Dallas office, representing clients in patent litigation involving transportation, aerospace and defense, and electrical and computer technologies. James earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Utah State University and at Duke Law was managing editor of Duke Law Journal. 

R. Wade Norris JD ’74 has joined Dinsmore & Shohl as a partner in its Washington, D.C. office. Wade is an authority in multifamily housing bond finance and brings nearly five decades of experience and innovation in affordable housing finance and has been at the forefront of developing new financing structures and public-private partnerships. He played a major role in creating HUD’s 11(b) refunding program, served as HUD’s private consultant on bond refunding policy, and advised on the disposition of HUD’s multifamily mortgage portfolio. He spent nearly a decade as a managing member of a boutique firm he helped form.

Daniel Rice JD '15 began this year as a faculty member at the University of North Carolina School of Law, where he will teach Federal Indian Law and First Amendment courses this fall, and Constitutional Law in the spring. Daniel is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation whose scholarship examines the intersection of cultural and legal change. His work appears in journals including Michigan Law Review and Virginia Law Review.

Before joining Carolina Law, Daniel taught at the University of Arkansas School of Law and served as a clerk for Judge Sri Srinivasan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He also worked as a public interest lawyer at Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection. 

Sterling Spainhour JD/MBA ’94 has been elected to the board of directors of Flowers Foods, where he will serve on its audit and finance committees. Sterling is executive vice president and chief legal officer of Atlanta-based Southern Company, one of America’s largest energy providers, where he oversees the legal, compliance, corporate governance, internal audit, aerial services, and security organizations. He has also held senior positions at Jones Day and CNN. As a partner at Jones Day, his practice focused on a wide range of transactional matters including mergers and acquisitions and corporate governance.