The GC & CEO Panel: Reshaping Corporate Law Departments to Focus on Business Goals

Lauren McGinley is Vice President, General Counsel & Secretary of Noblis, a nonprofit scientific, technology, and strategy organization that helps its clients solve complex scientific, systems, process, and infrastructure problems in ways that benefit the public. She also serves as the Corporation’s Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer. Mrs. McGinley has responsibility for all legal, security and ethics matters within the Corporation including corporate governance, corporate transactions, tax compliance, government contract compliance, intellectual property, litigation management, employment issues and real estate.

Mrs. McGinley received her Juris Doctorate from the University of Virginia School of Law and graduated magna cum laude from the Honors College of the University of South Carolina with a degree in International Studies and Economics.

Kristy L. Balsanek is the General Counsel of gategroup NA based in the company’s North America headquarters in Reston, Virginia.

Ms. Balsanek joined gategroup as Corporate Counsel in 2012 following six years with the Washington, DC offices of Mayer Brown LLP and two years with Coudert Brothers LLP and rising to General Counsel in 2016. In this role, Ms. Balsanek advises the global airline catering company on all legal areas in the US and Canada, including commercial, employment, labor, litigation, regulatory, IT, IP and property. Created in 2008, gategroup is headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland operating numerous companies with forty-three thousand employees in more than sixty countries and territories. Ms. Balsanek was a former Peace Corps Volunteer in Sichuan, China during the 1990s.

Responsible for the commercial legal operations of the $13.5 billion Medical Segment at Cardinal Health, a leading provider of medical products and supply chain services to hospitals, laboratories, surgery centers and other sites of care across the health care continuum. The Medical Segment is comprised of business teams including Global Commercial Solutions, Global Products and Services, Global Manufacturing and Supply Chain, Cordis, Cardinal Health at Home and naviHealth. The Medical Segment operates more than 80 medical-surgical distribution, assembly, manufacturing, research and other operating facilities in the United States and Puerto Rico as well as in Canada, the Dominican Republic, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico and Thailand.

Tara K. Giunta is a partner in the Litigation practice of Paul Hastings and is based in the firm’s Washington, D.C. office. Ms. Giunta is also Vice Chair of our Investigations and White Collar Defense practice and Chair of the firm’s Women’s Initiative. Ms. Giunta has extensive experience in advising companies in sensitive industries, including life sciences/healthcare, technology, telecommunications, defense, manufacturing, and more.

Gail Levine is Uber’s Director of U.S. Competition Law. She oversees antitrust litigation, deals, competition advocacy and counseling nationwide. Gail joined Uber in 2016 as the head of U.S. regulatory affairs, overseeing advocacy nationwide on a wide range of regulatory issues.

Before joining Uber, Gail was Vice President and Associate General Counsel at Verizon Communications Inc., where she shaped the company’s patent policy program, led the patent prosecution team, directed the company’s Federal Trade Commission initiatives, and handled antitrust matters. Before joining Verizon, Gail was an attorney advisor to the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, advising on antitrust and intellectual property issues. Before joining the Chairman's office, Gail was the FTC’s Deputy Assistant General Counsel. She was a significant contributor to the FTC’s report on intellectual property and innovation, and she co-authored many other FTC reports on antitrust and high-tech issues.

Before joining the FTC, Ms. Levine was a trial lawyer in the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. Gail serves on the advisory board of Harvard Law School’s Access to Justice Lab. She also serves on the Business Steering Committee of George Washington University’s Antitrust Writing Awards. Gail has served on the Council of the Antitrust Section of the American Bar Association, the ABA Presidential Transition Task Force, and the ABA Presidential Task Force on Pleading Standards. Ms. Levine clerked for Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and Judge Patrick Higginbotham of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.