Sheila L. Birnbaum
Co-Head, Global Products Liability and Mass Torts, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP
Sheila L. Birnbaum, Co-Head of the Global Products Liability and Mass Torts practice at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan has been national counsel or lead defense counsel for numerous Fortune 500 companies in some of the largest and most complicated tort cases in the country.
She was the first tenured woman professor at Fordham University Law School, and a Professor and Associate Dean at NYU Law School. She was a Founder and Director of NYWBA and the first Co-President of JALBCA. She has received numerous awards, including the ABA Margaret Brent Achievement Award.
She was chosen as the leading products liability lawyer in the world by The International Who's Who of Product Liability, one of the 10 most admired product liability attorneys in 2010 by Law 360 and one of the 25 most influential women in New York by Crain's New York Business.
In 2011, Attorney General Eric Holder appointed Ms. Birnbaum to serve as Special Master of the reactivated September 11th Victim Compensation Fund program. She oversees the administration of the $2.7 billion fund created under the James Zadroga 9/11Health and Compensation Act.
Kirsten gillibrand
United States Senator for New York
Kirsten Gillibrand was sworn in as U.S. Senator from New York in 2009 and elected to her first six-year Senate term with 72 percent of the vote, winning 60 of 62 counties. Prior to the Senate, she served in the House of Representatives, the first Member of Congress to post her official schedule and tax returns The New York Times called her transparency a "quiet touch of revolution" in Washington.
She led the effort to pass the STOCK Act and was hailed by the Washington Post as the “most substantial debate on congressional ethics in five years.” She led the fight to repeal "Don't Ask Don't Tell”, provided 9/11’s responders with health care and compensation and was named “150 Women Who Shake the World”, by the Daily Beast. An advocate for our armed services, she held the first Senate hearing on sexual assault in the military, building a coalition of 55 Senators. In April 2014, she was named one of Time Magazine's "100 Most Influential People In The World."
Her priority is rebuilding the economy, by creating good-paying jobs, helping small businesses, stamping more products with “Made in America,” and creating jobs. A champion for women & families she proposed her Opportunity Agenda, providing paid medical leave, raising the minimum wage and ensuring equal pay for equal work. She is the first New York Senator to sit on the Agriculture Committee.
A magna cum laude graduate of Dartmouth College, she received her law degree from UCLA’s School of Law. Senator Gillibrand served as Special Counsel to United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under Andrew Cuomo, before becoming a member of Congress.
Elizabeth D. Moore
Senior Vice President & General Counsel, Con Edison
Elizabeth D. Moore is Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc. Prior to joining Con Edison, Ms. Moore was a partner of Nixon Peabody LLP and served in the administration of former New York Governor Mario Cuomo for 12 years, culminating as Counsel to the Governor from 1991-94. Ms. Moore was named to Savoy magazine’s list of 2015 Top Black Lawyers and to the Lawyers of Color’s Fourth Annual Power List. In 2013, she received the 11th Annual Ida B. Wells-Barnett Justice Award from the New York County Lawyers’ Association and the Metropolitan Black Bar Association. She was also honored by The Network Journal as one of the “25 Influential Black Women in Business” and recognized as a “Leader for a New Century” by the Association of Black Women Attorneys.
Earning a law degree from St. John’s University, she holds a Bachelor of Science from the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University. Ms. Moore served on Cornell’s Board of Trustees for 14 years and in 2013 was elected Trustee Emeritus and their highest recognition of Presidential Councillor. Ms. Moore also serves on the Board of Directors of the National Action Council of Minorities in Engineering.
Sheila Nevins
President, Documentary Films, HBO
Sheila Nevins, President, HBO Documentary Films, is responsible for overseeing the development and production of all documentaries for HBO, HBO2 and Cinemax.
As an executive producer or producer, she has received 31 Primetime Emmy Awards, 33 News and Documentary Emmys and 40 George Foster Peabody Awards. During her tenure, HBO has won 25 Academy Awards, the most recently of which are Citizenfour and Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1 in 2015. Other Oscar winners include Saving Face, Strangers No More, Music By Prudence, Smile Pinki , The Blood of Yingzhou District, Born Into Brothels, Chernobyl Heart, Murder on a Sunday Morning, King Gimp, The Personals: Improvisations on Roman in the Golden Years, One Survivor Remembers, I Am a Promise, Educating Peter and You Don’t Have To Die. The series Cinemax Reel Life has featured numerous -f award-winning documentaries including Big Mama, and Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O'Brien.
Nevins has been honored with the Governors Award from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and was made an NYU Tisch School Arts Honoree. She is the recipient of a Gotham Awards Tribute; an Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award and a Personal Peabody Award. She was presented with Women in Film’s Lucy Award for advancing documentary filmmaking and The National Board of Review’s Humanitarian Award for the promotion of human welfare through film. She has been inducted into Broadcasting & Cable’s Hall of Fame, garnered the IDA Career Achievement Award and the New York Women in Film & Television Muse Award for Outstanding Vision & Achievement.
Sheila has supervised the production of more than 1,000 documentary programs and won the first George Foster Peabody Award ever presented to a cable program. She is a member of the Writers Guild of America, the Producers Guild of America and The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Nevins holds a BA from Barnard College and an MFA from Yale University School of Drama in Directing.