Success Stories
Juliette PryorJuliette Pryor is a public company corporate director and a skilled public and private company c-suite executive with 25+ years of business experience. She has deep experience in the board room of multiple corporations, providing key leadership in IPOs, multi-billion-dollar divestitures and acquisitions, corporate restructurings, and entity transformations. Juliette has lived in Brazil, speaks fluent Portuguese, and is proficient in Spanish. Juliette serves as a director of Genuine Parts Company, a Fortune 200 global service organization engaged in the distribution of automotive and industrial parts. Juliette is EVP, General Counsel, and Corporate Secretary of Albertsons Companies (NYSE: 55) a grocery retailer with retail, pharmacy, manufacturing, and distribution operations in 34 states, and approximately 300,000 employees. As a member of the executive leadership team of this newly public company, Juliette is responsible for all the company’s legal, compliance, and government affairs functions. Juliette’s board contributions include lead responsibility for the transformation of the corporate board from a controlled company board to a fully independent board, oversight for the board governance process, setting of board agendas, and framing policies for board tenure, composition, and recruiting. From 2016 to June 2020, Juliette served as General Counsel and Corporate Secretary for Cox Enterprises, a $20 billion, family-owned conglomerate with significant digital and traditional operations in the communications, media, and automotive sectors (Autotrader, Kelly Blue Book, wholesale automotive auctions, etc.). Juliette previously served as a c-suite officer of US Foods, Inc. (NYSE: 133), the second-largest foodservice distribution and supply chain company in the United States. Juliette joined US Foods in 2005 as part of a turnaround leadership team and was tasked with rebuilding the Company’s compliance and enterprise risk management programs and leading efforts to repair relationships with key government customers and oversight agencies. In 2007, Juliette was a strategic lead for the team that took the company private, and seven years later she co-led the team that took the company public after being held by private equity. Over the course of her 11-year tenure, Juliette led the legal, compliance, enterprise risk management, workforce safety, food safety, governance, government affairs, and public policy functions. At different points during her tenure, Juliette also held interim lead responsibility for human resources, diversity and inclusion, and corporate communications. Before US Foods, Juliette served as General Counsel for telecom start-up e.spire Communications, and remained on that leadership team throughout its NASDAQ delisting and Chapter 11 reorganization, and led the organization through its restructuring process that ended with all telecom assets being sold through an orderly wind down. Earlier in her career, she was in private practice with Skadden Arps, advising global clients on complex, international commercial transactions, in the energy, media, and telecom sectors. Juliette is a frequently sought-after speaker on leadership, strategy, governance, and compliance. She is an experienced nonprofit board member, including Fisk University, Georgetown Law Center, and Equal Justice Works. Juliette has received many prestigious awards and recognitions over her career such as her recent inclusion in Black Enterprise 300 Most Powerful Executives in Corporate America (2019).
Kellye L. WalkerKellye Walker, Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer of Eastman Chemical Company (NYSE: EMN), is a seasoned senior executive with over 25 years of experience helping publicly traded companies increase value through forward thinking, strategic discipline and a focus on continuous improvement.
Ms. Walker is a member of the board of directors of Lincoln Electric Company (NASDAQ: LECO), a $6 billion global manufacturing company, where she serves on the Nominating and Corporate Governance and Compensation and Executive Development Committees.
Additionally, she has been a leader and advisor to boards and an active and regular participant at both the board and committee levels at several publicly traded companies, from big box retail to global consumer products to companies in the highly regulated public utility, aerospace and defense and chemical industries.
In her current role at Eastman, Walker reports to the CEO and has overall leadership responsibility for Eastman’s legal organization of over 400 professionals, which includes corporate governance, compliance and litigation management, as well as government affairs, product stewardship and regulatory affairs, global business conduct and the company’s global health, safety, environment and security organization.
Walker was appointed to her current position in 2020 after having served as Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer of Huntington Ingalls Industries, Inc., America’s largest military shipbuilder (NYSE: HII). At HII she provided advice, guidance and counsel to the business on legal and regulatory matters as well as overall strategic direction, having led a team responsible for all aspects of the company’s legal affairs. Prior to joining HII, she was Chief Administrative Officer at American Water Works Co. (NYSE: AWK), the country’s largest investor-owned water and wastewater utility company where she led a team of over 200 professionals having responsibility for the human resources, information technology, government affairs, corporate communications and legal departments. As a member of AWK’s Executive Leadership Team, she led a $300 million multi-year strategic business systems transformation, including change management and culture transformation. Ms. Walker also previously served as Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Diageo North America and was one of the top leaders worldwide at London Stock Exchange traded Diageo, plc. During her tenure, she was responsible among other things for instituting a compliance program in the North American business operation which served as the model for the global compliance program, and for reorganizing the supply chain and procurement support process. Ms. Walker also previously served as Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary of BJ’s Wholesale Club and as a corporate partner in major law firms in Boston and in New Orleans.
Ms. Walker has a strong commitment to serving her community through a variety of civic and non-profit organizations, including serving as a gubernatorial appointee on the Board of Visitors of Christopher Newport University, as an Advisory Board member of the Georgetown Law Corporate Counsel Institute, serving on the National Constitution Center Corporate Council and as a member of the Board of Directors and Development Committee chair of ACHIEVEability, an organization dedicated to ending the cycle of poverty through education and promotion of home ownership. Walker has been broadly recognized for her achievements, including being a Fellow of the American College of Governance Counsel (2020), having been named by the Financial Times as a Global 20 General Counsel (2019), a “Legend in the Law” by the Burton Foundation (2014) and having also been named a Philadelphia Woman of Distinction (2011).
Ms. Walker received her B.S. from Louisiana Tech University in 1987 and her J.D. from Emory University School of Law in 1992.
Sarah C. Dodds-BrownSarah Dodds-Brown is a strategic business partner and enterprise thinker who effectively anticipates challenges and thoughtfully influences change and evolution. Over the course of her career at American Express, Sarah has been instrumental in redefining the culture and expanding the engagement of the legal function, and she currently serves as Executive Vice President & Managing Counsel leading Global Enterprise Services & U.S. Market (“GES”). In her role, Sarah focuses on ways to enhance the management of legal risk and the operation of the legal department and serves as a member of the company's enterprise risk management committee. Her team is located across multiple markets and operates with a global outlook providing legal expertise and advice across a range of subject matter and regulatory areas, including digital transactions, technology, intellectual property, antitrust, bank regulatory, advertising and marketing, and privacy and data law, and leading the support for many strategic and cross-functional initiatives. Prior to leading GES, Sarah served as the Executive Vice President & Managing Counsel of the U.S. Business Legal Group, a team of over 100 legal professionals which provide legal and regulatory support for the company’s U.S. Consumer, Commercial and Global Merchant and Network Services businesses. In 2019, these business divisions generated over $29B in revenue for American Express. Sarah has served as an independent director on the Board of Directors of Party City Holdco, Inc. (NYSE: PRTY) and as a member of its Audit Committee since 2020. She has also been active with educational and civic organizations since the beginning of her career. She was elected and served as a “Young Trustee” on the Duke University Board of Trustees following her undergraduate studies and went on to subsequently serve two terms on the Board of Advisors for Duke’s Trinity College of Arts & Sciences. Sarah has served as a member of the Planning Board of the City of New Rochelle since 2013. She took over as Chair in 2016 as the City implemented a novel, fast-track zoning process and use of generic environmental reviews to spark an unprecedented redevelopment initiative which has resulted in over 31 projects being approved through the City’s planning process. Sarah is also a member of the Board of Directors for DirectWomen, a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing the representation of women lawyers on corporate boards, the Board of Trustees of Rye Country Day School in Rye, NY, and the Board of Trustees of the WNET Group, a preeminent public media producer presenting and distributing content, programming and experiences for lifelong learners locally in the NY and NJ area and nationwide. Prior to joining American Express, Sarah was an M&A and private equity lawyer at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP in New York. She is a graduate of Duke University and Columbia University School of Law. She currently resides in New Rochelle, NY with her husband and three children.