2016 Rising Stars of Corporate Governance

The 2016 awardees are:

Cambria Allen

Corporate Governance Director, UAW Retiree Medical Benefits Trust

Cambria Allen is Corporate Governance Director for the $61 billion UAW Retiree Medical Benefits Trust, the largest non-governmental purchaser of retiree health care benefits in the United States. Cambria’s responsibilities at the Trust include engagement strategy development and execution, oversight of the Trust’s global proxy voting compliance program, and monitoring legislation and regulations that impact shareholder rights.

Cambria currently leads a global coalition of 25 institutional investors representing over $2.5 trillion in assets to elevate effective human capital management as a critical driver of long-term shareholder value. Cambria’s other areas of expertise include board leadership structure and accountability, governance risk management and mitigation, and the relationship between U.S. and global public policy choices and long-term value creation in the capital markets.

Cambria joined the Trust in 2011 after serving as Senior Corporate Governance Analyst for the Office of Connecticut State Treasurer Denise L. Nappier. Cambria received her A.B. in Political Science from Bryn Mawr College in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania and her M.A. in Public Policy from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.

Richard Brand

Co-Chairman of Corporate Practice, Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP

Richard Brand is co-chairman of the Corporate Group at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP. He is widely recognized as a leading advisor to public companies, hedge funds, private equity firms and investment banks. His experience includes mergers and acquisitions, takeover preparedness and defense, shareholder activism and defense, general corporate advisory work and securities offerings. Before joining Cadwalader, Brand was a partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP and, previously, an associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP and a staff writer for The Miami Herald.

Described by The American Lawyer as "a takeover and defense specialist" who is "no stranger to billion-dollar deals," Brand was named a New York “Rising Star” by Super Lawyers magazine each year from 2011 to 2016 for his corporate practice. He is a member of the advisory board of The Harvard Law School's Program on Corporate Governance. He holds a B.A. from Princeton University and received his J.D., cum laude, from New York University, where he served on the New York University Journal of International Law and Politics.

Serdar Çelik

Senior Economist, OECD

Serdar Çelik is Economist at the OECD Corporate Affairs Division. Prior to joining the OECD, he worked at the Capital Markets Board of Turkey, with responsibility to oversight of IPOs, SPOs and M&As and review IFRS financial reports of listed companies.

Serdar is currently managing the OECD’s project on Corporate Governance, Value Creation and Growth which aims to analyse developments in capital markets that are relevant for the design of corporate governance policies. This initiative was key in the 2015 update of the G20/OECD Principles of Corporate Governance. A Turkish national, he holds a Business Administration degree and a graduate degree in Public Economics from Ankara University, Turkey.

Aurelio Gurrea-Martínez

Fellow of the Program of Corporate Governance, Harvard Law School

Aurelio Gurrea-Martínez is Executive Director of the Ibero-American Institute for Law and Finance and Fellow of the Program on Corporate Governance at Harvard Law School. Aurelio studied law and business (LLB, BA, PhD) in Spain, where he is also a qualified auditor. He holds a Master of Science in Law and Finance from the University of Oxford and a Master of the Science of Law from Stanford Law School. He is also a Lecturer in Law, Finance and Accounting at the Centro de Estudios Garrrigues, as well as a founding partner at Dictum Abogados –a business law firm with offices in Spain and Hong Kong. Aurelio acts as an Advisor to the Spanish Ministry of Justice and he was proposed by the Ministry of Economy to act as a national expert for the asesssment of the Spanish insolvency and secured transaction regime for a program conducted by the International Monetary Fund.

In 2014, Aurelio decided to launch the Ibero-American Institute for Law and Finance, a non-profit organization formed by a group of experts from Spain, Portugal and Latin America committed to both the improvement, cooperation and internationalization of legal scholarship in Ibero-American countries, as well as the interdisciplinary study of law, economics and finance with the purpose of proposing legal reforms that may improve the competitiveness, innovation and growth of the economy in Spain, Portugal and Latin America. He has been a Lecturer in Business Law at CEU San Pablo University (Spain) and Academic Director of the Program of Accounting for Lawyers at the Madrid Bar Association. Aurelio is a regular visiting lecturer in Comparative Corporate Law at the University of Los Andes (Colombia), and he has been a visiting researcher at several institutions in Europe, Latin America and the United States, including Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School, Yale Law School, University of Sao Paulo, and the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg (Germany). Aurelio´s research interests are corporate governance, corporate insolvency, capital markets, corporate finance and accounting law. He has been the recipient of several awards, including the Medal of the San Raimundo de Peñafort’s Order granted by the Minister of Justice to people who contribute to the development of law and jurisprudence in Spain, the FPU Fellowship given by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science to pursue doctoral studies, the Talentia Fellowship given by the Andalusian Government to conduct studies at Oxford, and the Class Prize for the Best Paper in Law and Economics at Stanford Law School. 

Miguel Padró

Senior Program Manager, Aspen Institute's Business & Society Program

Miguel joined the Aspen Institute Business & Society Program (Aspen BSP) after working in business for 10 years, primarily in in the healthcare technology and education sectors.  He currently leads the program’s Purpose of the Corporation work.  Miguel brings a deep curiosity about the intersection of capitalism and democracy, an interest that first emerged in his undergraduate studies of Eastern European transitions out of communism and evolved further during his subsequent global travels and pursuit of an MA in International Relations. 

He has managed a range of projects for Aspen BSP including a business faculty network focused on low-wage worker issues, Corporate Values Strategy Group research into the practice of quarterly earnings guidance and investor communications, and a series of academic-practitioner roundtables on “Rethinking Shareholder Value and The Purpose of the Corporation.”  Miguel authored BSP’s business faculty conversation paper, “Unrealized Potential: Misconceptions of Corporate Law and New Opportunities for Business Education” and managed a research project culminating in the 2014 report, “Unpacking Corporate Purpose: A Report on the Beliefs of Executives, Investors, and Scholars.”  Miguel is an avid reader, a passionate but middling musician, and proud father.  He lives with his wife, Rebecca, and their two children in Pennsylvania.