Building a High-Value Corporate Legal Department in Transformative Times

Jeff Gusman is an experienced general counsel, operations leader and technology licensing attorney with more than 20 years of progressive responsibilities as a lawyer, negotiator and entrepreneur. He is Lead Counsel and Director of Capco, Americas and Canada (The Capital Markets Co.), on Wall Street, which has been a unit of publicly traded Fidelity National Information Services (NYSE: FIS) and Asst. General Counsel (through July 2017, then private again, including Capco RISC Consulting LLC and Capco Energy Solutions, Capco Brazil).

He negotiates, drafts and closes a high volume of commercial sales agreements ranging from complex financial and technology services, products, IP, to leading-edge software and digital content (on the Licensor or Licensee side of transactions); also handles general counsel matters in collaboration with Human Capital, Marketing, Finance, Operations, Facilities, IT, Governance/Risk/Compliance, Information Security, Vendor-Sourcing departments, counseling top management (CFO, COO, CEO), interfacing with colleagues at all levels of the organization and with customers; experience managing outside legal counsel, mentoring, coaching prot?g?s.

Jeff’s charitable, not-for-profit endeavors include serving as an Advisory Board member to the ArtsGlobal/Swiss Global Artistic Foundation. He also supports Capco/FIS charitable projects. Previously, he served as General Counsel and Executive Director of The Jazz Foundation of America.

Julie L. Cantor serves as Compass's Corporate Counsel. Compass is a tech-driven real estate brokerage whose mission is to help everyone find their place in the world. In September 2015, Compass’s 4-attorney legal team supported around 300 real estate agents in 2 cities. Today, Compass’s 6-attorney legal team supports over 1600 real estate agents in 43 offices in 8 cities. Each real estate agent is subject to an independent contractor agreement – Julie has drafted and negotiated over 1000 of these, and integrated free, efficient, and data-forward technology to foster each from a business team member’s eye-twinkle to fully executed, industry-competitive, company-growth-flexible agreement. Now, as Compass plans to enter its next phase –with its attendant increased agent numbers, city launches, and office openings, Julie and the Compass legal team are working to use the foundations they’ve created together to bring well known business growth technologies into the legal world. Julie previously served as a Private Client Associate at McDermott Will & Emery, and taught 7th and 8th grade math at a D.C. public charter school, as a Teach For America Corps Member.

Julie is an alumna of Columbia Law School (J.D.), American University (M.A. in Teaching Secondary Math), and Cornell University's School of Industrial Relations (B.S.).

Megan C. Ryan, Esq. serves as Executive Vice President and General Counsel for NuHealth/NUMC. She is the corporation’s chief legal officer, overseeing all legal, corporate governance, privacy and ethics functions. She is counsel to the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs (ORSB). Ms. Ryan has served as NuHealth/NUMC’s Chief Compliance, Privacy and Ethics officer responsible for investigating any suspicion of fraud, waste, or abuse and has been responsible for maintaining our strong compliance program. Additionally, she has served as the Chief Compliance Officer for the Nassau Queens Performing Provider System (“NQP”) in the New York State Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment Program (DSRIP) since 2015, implementing and overseeing the execution of DSRIP, compliance practices at the NQP level and its partnering hubs (NUMC, North Shore and Catholic Health System).

Ms. Ryan brings a wealth of experience and impressive achievements, with extensive academic and legal skills that have prepared her well for the challenges and opportunities of this crucial position. Ms. Ryan is admitted to the New York State Bar and the United States Supreme Court. Prior to joining the Nassau Health Care Corporation, Ms. Ryan served as in house corporate counsel for Liberty Mutual Insurance Company at the firm of Martyn, Toher and Martyn. She had previously worked as an associate attorney in the law firm of O’Reilly, Marsh and Corteselli, P.C., concentrating on banking, real estate, and litigation matters.

Ms. Ryan earned her Bachelor of Science degree from Fordham University as a Dean’s Scholar and Biology Chairman Circle honoree and earned her Juris Doctor from Saint John’s University School of Law. She is a member of the Nassau County Bar Association, Nassau County Women’s Bar Association, New York State Bar Association and the American College of Hospital Executives. Her paper entitled “An Examination of Regulations and Decisions Concerning the Mandatory Retirement of State Judges” was published nationally in Court Review and was awarded first prize by the AJA. She is also a member of the Nassau County Women’s Bar Association. Ms. Ryan is the recipient of the 2016 Long Island Power Woman Award. In 2017, Ms. Ryan presented at ALM’s national General Counsel Conference on the matter of “Building a High Value Corporate Legal Department in Transformative Times”. She was recognized as a Power Woman in Business in 2016 and a LIBN Leader in the Law in 2017. Megan was distinguished as a “Forty Under Forty “Award recipient in her role as General Counsel in 2018.

Ian Connett, Esq. is the current legal director of Collective, Inc. in New York.

Prior to joining Collective, Ian served as Corporate Counsel of Westcon Group, a $6B global technology distributor, where he oversaw Westcon’s Global Cloud and IT units. Ian is a passionate speaker and practitioner, who has completed implementations of enterprise level contract and legal matter management systems. In 2016, Ian was named “The Millennial General Counsel” by UpCounsel.

Ian is a graduate of Pace Law School and Trinity College and currently resides in New York.