Harvard Law School Association Women's Alliance Network

Dorothy DeWitt '94

Immediate Past President

Dorothy D. DeWitt is an attorney with Davis Polk. Her career has focused on investment management and financial regulation. Dorothy currently advises broker-deal and investment management clients on financial regulation and regulatory change. Previously, she worked for S&P and JP Morgan, where she advised on financial regulation and oversaw major regulatory change initiatives. Prior to that, Dorothy spent a decade as a portfolio manager, Director of Research and analyst at Global Asset Management (GAM) in London, Cadogan Management and ING Furman Selz in NY, respectively, specializing in arbitrage and event driven investment strategies. Dorothy later served as General Counsel of Cadogan Management, an investment firm with $8B in assets under management. Dorothy began her career as an associate at Davis Polk, following a federal judicial clerkship in the Southern District of New York. Dorothy received a J.D. from Harvard Law School (cum laude) and a B.A. (Plan II) from the University of Texas at Austin (summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa).

Past Presidents

Maria Stearns '02

PAST PRESIDENT
Maria Stearns is a Partner at Rutan & Tucker, LLP in Orange County, California, where she represents employers in all aspects of the employment relationship. Maria is passionate about using her role as a leader within the firm, the legal community and the HLSWA to encourage and support the advancement of women in the legal profession. Maria believes that, with the proper support system, it is possible to have it all, recognizing that “all” differs by person and life/career stage.

Stacey Austin '04

FOUNDING PRESIDENT

Stacey Austin is a Partner at Wang Kobayashi Austin, LLC, an employee benefits and executive compensation boutique law firm in Chicago, Illinois. Prior to joining WKA she practiced in the employee benefits and executive compensation group at Winston & Strawn LLP. Stacey is  a past president of HLSWA and previously served as Vice President of the Executive Committee of the Harvard Law School Association.

Board Members

Paavani Garg '18

Paavani Garg is an associate in the Business, Finance, and Restructuring group at Weil, Gotshal, & Manges. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School '18 where she served as President of the Women's Law Association.

Maryna Kavaleuskaya '13

Maryna is a Senior Integrity Counsel, Lead for Africa (based in Nairobi), at the International Finance Corporation (IFC, World Bank Group), spearheading its regional integrity due diligence efforts. Prior to joining IFC, she served as a Senior Counsel at Miller & Chevalier (Washington D.C.-based law firm), where she focused on matters involving the Foreign Corrupt Practice Act (FCPA), anti-corruption due diligence reviews and compliance audits, business and human rights, and other areas of international corporate compliance. Maryna also served as a human rights and development consultant at the World Bank and as a rule of law consultant at The Rule of Law Initiative of the American Bar Association.

Prior to obtaining her LL.M. and J.D. in the U.S., Maryna practiced law in Belarus, where her work on high-profile cases included the defense of a former presidential candidate. In addition to her practice in the area of Belarus' national law, she prepared complaints to the United Nations Human Rights Committee on violations of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and participated in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) as an expert on human rights in 2012.
On a pro bono basis, Maryna worked with the Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative (CEELI) Institute, a post-graduate lawyer and judicial training institution in Prague. In the spring of 2014, she helped organize an anti-corruption training for a diverse group of some of the world's most experienced judges, prosecutors, and investigators. In the scope of her pro bono work, Maryna also worked on human rights-related multi- stakeholders initiatives in the high-tech sector.

Patricia Lopez Aufranc '85

Patricia Lopez Aufranc has been a partner with Marval O’Farrell & Mairal in Buenos Aires since 1987. Her practice focuses on corporate matters, M&As, finance and a wide range of business contracts. She has been singled out as a leading lawyer in banking, capital markets and international trade by Euromoney Publications, Chambers, Global Counsel 3000 and Latin Lawyer. More recently she has focused on leadership development and in particular women's leadership. She was awarded the First Edition of the Diversity Award granted by Latin Lawyer for her work towards the advancement of women lawyers in Latin America.

Michelle Sicula '92

U.S. CHAPTERS LIAISON
Michelle Sicula is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, (Lic. 90053) with a private practice in Berkeley and San Francisco, CA.  Michelle provides individual therapy, couples therapy, and reproductive counseling to a diverse array of clients.  Prior to becoming a psychotherapist, Michelle practiced law for more than 20 years working as an associate, and later contract attorney, with Saltzman & Johnson, Law Corp., in San Francisco, CA; a Career Law Clerk to the Honorable Wayne D. Brazil with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California; and an associate with Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison, LLP, in San Francisco, CA.  In addition to her work with HLSWA, Michelle volunteers on the Inclusion and Anti-racism Task Force for the Mental Health Providers subgroup of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.  Michelle also is a past Board Chair for the Northern California Community for Emotionally Focused Therapy (NCCEFT).

Shannan Stamper '97

Shannan Stamper is Associate General Counsel at the University of Kentucky, serving as primary in-house counsel for the University's wide range of business and finance matters, including complex health care business transactions, employee benefits, endowment investments, real estate, procurement and athletics. Prior to joining the University in 2013, Shannan practiced in a wide variety of public and private practice settings, including large law firms in Washington, D.C. and Cincinnati, a three-attorney firm in southeastern Kentucky, a federal judicial clerkship, and in the general counsel's chair at a state government agency. Having spent most of her career outside large metropolitan areas, Shannan enjoys the opportunity HLSWA gives her to build relationships with HLS alumna across the nation and world, and wants to extend that opportunity to other HLS alumna working and living in smaller cities, towns and rural areas.

Natalie Vernon '17

Natalie Vernon is an associate at Cooley LLP, where she focuses on mergers and acquisitions and represents strategic and financial buyers and sellers in public and private transactions across a range of industries. Prior to joining Cooley, Natalie was an associate at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP in New York and clerked for the Honorable Michael J. Melloy of the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

Heather White '95

Heather G. White ’95 is Counsel for Nixon, Peabody, LLP, for whom she has worked remotely from Waimea (Hawaii Island), Hawaii since 2006. Heather represents state and local governments, investment banks, nonprofits, and others in public finance transactions. She has been involved in a wide range of financings, including tax-exempt and taxable revenue bonds, general obligation bonds, letters of credit, revolving credit facilities, and other instruments. She also has been involved in project financings with a tax-exempt bond component.
Representative clients include the State of California, the Airport Commission of the City and County of San Francisco, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Western University of Health Sciences, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, and a number of underwriting firms.