About the Speakers
Howard Brod Brownstein
President of Brownstein Corporation
Howard Brod Brownstein, CTP, is a nationally-known turnaround and restructuring professional, and regularly provides programs for Women in the Boardroom. He is President of Brownstein Corporation, which provides turnaround management and advisory services, as well as investment banking, fiduciary services, litigation consulting, investigations and valuation services. He regularly serves on the boards of directors of public and private companies, and currently serves on the boards of: P&F Industries (Nasdaq: PFIN) where he chairs the Nominating/Governance and Strategic Planning & Risk Assessment Committees, and Merakey, a nonprofit with over 10,000 employees. He is a Certified Turnaround Professional, and also an NACD Board Leadership Fellow and Immediate Past President and Board Chair of the NACD Philadelphia Chapter. He has authored ninety articles and textbook chapters, is a Contributing Editor at two publications, and is a regular guest-lecturer at Harvard Business School, Wharton, NYU and elsewhere. He received JD and MBA degrees at Harvard, and B.S. (Wharton) and B.A. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania.
Frederick (“Rick”) Alexander
CEO of Shareholder Commons
Rick Alexander is CEO of Shareholder Commons, a nonprofit organization seeking a shift from unbridled profit-seeking, to a capitalism that values only those profits that are good for the planet and its inhabitants. It seeks to catalyze a movement of shareholders that insists on responsible business practices, through engagement with companies, regulators and the public.
Following graduation from Georgetown Law School, Rick practiced law for 26 years at Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell LLP in Wilmington, DE, including four years as managing partner. During that time, he was selected as one of the ten most highly regarded corporate governance lawyers worldwide, as Delaware Mergers & Acquisitions Lawyer of the Year, as Delaware Corporate Law Lawyer of the Year, and as one of the 500 leading lawyers in the United States.
In 2015, he became the Head of Legal Policy at B Lab, a nonprofit organization dedicated to enabling people to use business as a force for good. In that position, I worked with lawyers, companies, investors, legislators and regulators around the world, seeking to create corporate governance structures that lead corporations to contribute to a healthy and stable society and planet.
After 26 years as a corporate lawyer and four years working on policy issues for a leading non-profit organization, Rick saw the need for a new private governance initiative to accelerate a shift from unbridled profit-seeking to a capitalism that values only those profits that are good for the planet and its inhabitants. This led him to found The Shareholder Commons.
He prepared the initial drafts of both the Delaware public benefit corporation legislation and the American Bar Association’s Benefit Corporation White Paper, and serves as Special Consultant to the ABA’s Corporate Laws Committee. Rick am also a member of the Delaware Access to Justice Commission, co-chair the Content Committee of the American College of Governance Counsel, and is a member of the Commonwealth Climate and Law Initiative Advisory Board. He also serves as a board member and Secretary of the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund.
Rick lives in Wilmington, Delaware with his wife Elly, in an emptied nest.
Dr. Andrea Bonime-Blanc
CEO & Founder of GEC Risk Advisory
Andrea Bonime-Blanc, JD/PhD, is CEO and Founder of GEC Risk Advisory and a global governance, risk, ESG, ethics, cyber and crisis strategist, serving business, nonprofits, and government. Since 2017, she has served as the Independent Ethics Advisor to the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico. She serves on several Boards and Advisory Boards including Greenward Partners (a Spanish green energy firm), Ethical Intelligence (an EU-based AI ethics firm), ProtectedBy.AI (A US based AI cybersecurity firm), Epic Theatre Ensemble (a NYC nonprofit), the NACD New Jersey Chapter and NYU Stern-based think tank, Ethical Systems. She also serves as a Governance Mentor at Plug & Play Tech Centre, a global start-up eco-system. She is a NACD Board Leadership Fellow and Governance faculty and holds the Carnegie Mellon CERT Certification in Cyber-Risk Oversight.
Dr. Bonime-Blanc spent two decades as a c-suite global corporate executive at Bertelsmann, Verint, and PSEG overseeing legal, governance, risk, ethics, CSR, compliance, audit, InfoSec and environmental health and safety. She began her career as an international corporate lawyer at Cleary Gottlieb, was born and raised in Europe and is multi-lingual.
She is a global keynote speaker and graduate faculty at NYU teaching “cyber-leadership, risk & resilience”. She is an extensively published author of many articles and several books including The Reputation Risk Handbook, Emerging Practices in Cyber-Risk Governance and The Artificial Intelligence Imperative. Her latest book, Gloom to Boom: How Leaders Transform Risk into Resilience and Value (Routledge 2020) debuted as an Amazon #1 Hot Release in Business Ethics and Game Theory. She lives in New York City with her family and is an avid photographer and artist.
