Success Stories
  • Malissia R. ClintonMalissia R. Clinton
    Malissia Clinton is an executive with considerable board experience and over 25 years of practice across multiple industries, including defense, aerospace, intelligence, advanced technologies and health care.  Clinton is Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary at Los Angeles-based The Aerospace Corporation, the preeminent DoD advisor for the space enterprise.  At Aerospace, Clinton serves as a strategic partner to the C-Suite on a broad range of transactional and governance issues. She is cleared at the TOP SECRET/Sensitive Compartmented Information level. Clinton serves on the board of 3D Systems (NYSe: DDD), a leading additive manufacturing solutions company, and is the chair of the compliance committee of 3D Systems. Clinton has specific expertise in ethics and compliance with an emphasis on consent decrees and administrative agreements.  Clinton was named the Nonprofit Leader in Law of the Year (2020) by Los Angeles Business Journal. Clinton has significant board experience at both for-profit and non-profit organizations. In addition to 3D Systems, she serves on the boards of Progyny (Nasdaq: PGNY), the leading fertility benefits management company in the U.S. and Pacaso, an innovative private company that sales second homes as LLCs with 8 owners co-sharing expenses and equity increases.  Since 2016, she has served on the board of City of Hope, a leading independent research and treatment center for cancer, diabetes and other life-threatening diseases. In her role at The Aerospace Corporation, Clinton provides leadership and oversight to the senior management team on issues related to compliance, strategy, ethics, mission and culture.  Clinton acts as a consigliere to the board of trustees and its committees facilitating communications with the executive team and helping the board guide the Company’s strategy. She reports to the audit committee quarterly and is the management liaison for the governance and nominating committee responsible for identifying board candidates, vetting conflicts-of-interest, and ensuring the board is compliant with its fiduciary duties.  From 1998 to 2009, Clinton served in multiple management positions at Northrop Grumman, rising through the leadership ranks to become senior counsel for special projects in the Office of the General Counsel. From 1993 to 1998, Clinton worked at the law firm Tuttle and Taylor.  Clinton, a member of Phi Beta Kappa, earned a bachelor’s degree, summa cum laude, in political science from Arizona State University. She earned her J.D. at Stanford Law School, where she was an editor of the Stanford Law Review. She is a graduate of the UCLA Anderson School’s Executive Program in Business Management.
  • Mary Ann HynesMary Ann Hynes

    Global C-suite Leader, Board Member, Trusted Advisor
    Adept with private and public company board structures/cultures.    MBA; LLM, Taxation; JD
    A track record of consistently achieving innovative solutions for companies and boards
    Strategic governance for business disruptors and platform shifts, global growth, compliance, M&A

    BOARD EXPERIENCE

    Dr. Scholl Foundation: private independent foundation assisting organizations committed to improving our world Board of Directors:  Lead Director and Chair, Audit/Governance/Nominating/Compensation    2002 – present Engaged in strategic planning for the Foundation.

    GHD Pty: $1B global engineering, architecture, environmental consulting ESOP Australian firm on five continents
    Board of Directors:  Non-executive Director and Member, Risk Committee    2013 – 2016
    Assisted in the acquisition of the Firm’s largest merger with a Canadian-based North American private corporation, including: vetting; structuring; and explaining the three countries’ boards/corporate cultural and legal differences.

    Participated in succession planning of GHD Chair and senior leadership.
    Contributed to strategic planning of new lines of businesses, resulting in Firm gaining additional profitable returns. Aided Firm with successfully implemented compliance approaches to different world regions and cultures.

    CORPORATE EXPERIENCE

    DENTONS privately held—awarded “Most Innovative” last two years—70 international locations    2013 – present
    First career GC hired for Advisory Practice for global firms wanting senior governance, strategy, or compliance advice.
    Recommended Firm commence extensive international expansion: Firm now has offices across China—beyond Beijing and Shanghai—throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, and in Australia/New Zealand.

    INGREDION, INC. NYSE listed $6.3B ag-based ingredients for food, beverage, health, paper, pharma, and textiles Assisted Board with CEO succession planning and rebranding Firm through name change.
    As Corporate Secretary, Board Director on numerous Firm boards, including Rahfan Maize, Karachi Exchange.
    Won the largest NAFTA case in history before international panel at the World Bank, involving a trade issue that had created significant financial geopolitical concerns for the Firm, which this win resolved in Firm’s favor.
    More than quadrupled stock value with NAFTA win and National Starch transformative acquisition, a relationship developed over time that added a seed bank, natural technologies, and talented executives who rocketed growth.

    IMC GLOBAL INC. NYSE listed $4B+ agricultural fertilizers, animal feed, oil and gas, salt, specialty chemicals, sulphur
    Served on numerous Firm boards including: IMC Phosphates; MP, Inc.; the Administrative Managing General Partner, Phosphate Resources Limited Partnership—a publicly traded company with independent directors under PLP.
    Merged acquired firms into IMC Global brand, then merged IMC Global and Cargill Crop Nutrition into Mosaic, Inc.

    SUNDSTRAND CORPORATION $2B global supplier of technologically advanced aerospace/industrial products
    Acquired 11 companies in 15 months—company is now part of United Technologies.

    WOLTERS KLUWER U.S. (acquired CCH, Inc.) Amsterdam Exchange listed global information services company First GC and Management Committee Member; first woman in American corporate history to become Fortune 500 GC.
     

  • Kathleen M. FranklinKathleen M. Franklin
    Ms. Franklin is the Global Ethics and Compliance Strategy Leader for the Sony Group companies where she is responsible for promoting a culture of ethics and devising enterprise-wide solutions for its critical risk areas. She also acts as the chief ethics & compliance officer for Sony Corporation of America and its operating subsidiaries.  Prior to joining Sony, Kathleen was a Partner and Co-Chair of the Corporate Governance Group for Boies, Schiller and Flexner, LLP where she served as a strategic advisor to public and private companies on a wide range of issues related to mergers and acquisitions, executive compensation, corporate governance and crisis management. Ms. Franklin also serves as an independent director of Bank OZK (NASDAQ: OZK), a regional bank with total assets of $26 billion as of August 2021.  She currently serves as the Chair of the board’s Nominating and Governance Committee and is a member of the board’s Executive and Compensation Committees. She previously served as a member of its Risk Committee. Ms. Franklin is engaged in various professional and civic organizations and has provided board leadership on several nonprofits throughout her career, including the Northeastern New York Chapter of the American Red Cross and Wildwood Programs, Inc. (a social services organization that provides educational, recreational and community based residential services to over 1500 individuals with autism and learning disabilities).  During her tenure at Wildwood, she served as a member of the Board’s Finance and Audit, Legislative and Advocacy and Planned Giving Committees.  She is a frequent panelist and speaker on a variety of issues including corporate governance, and ethics and compliance and has been a frequent guest lecturer at Fordham Law School’s Corporate Compliance Program. Ms. Franklin graduated magna cum laude from Siena College, Loudonville, New York, where she received a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration.  She graduated magna cum laude from Albany Law School of Union University and earned an LL.M in Taxation from New York University School of Law. Ms. Franklin is an alumna of the DirectWomen Board Institute Class of 2007.