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Prabha Sipi Bhandari is senior vice president, deputy general counsel & corporate secretary at AIG. In this role, she oversees AIG’s NYSE and SEC compliance, capital markets and M&A transactions, cyber/privacy, intellectual property, IT, procurement and real estate legal support and innovation, among other corporate matters. In her role as corporate secretary, she acts as the primary liaison to the AIG board on board and board committee-related matters.
Prior to AIG in June 2022, Bhandari was senior vice president and principal deputy general counsel at Freddie Mac, where she supervised a team of more than 125 attorneys and legal professionals advising the firm's business divisions, finance, the sustainability office and other enterprise functions, and directly managed a group of attorneys and legal professionals providing corporate securities advice and support, including in capital markets, derivatives, tax and SEC compliance/ financial disclosures. She supervised the full legal division of more than 200 colleagues and served as executive sponsor of the legal division’s diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, including robust internship and fellowship programs.
Prior to Freddie Mac, Bhandari was managing director and general counsel of Deutsche Bank Securities and global head of M&A for legal. Before joining Deutsche Bank in 2007, she was responsible for M&A at Viacom (now Paramount Global) and previously a corporate associate at the law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York. She began her legal career as a law clerk for the Honorable John Duhé of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Bhandari received her JD from New York University School of Law and her BS from Cornell University in industrial and labor relations. She is a member and co-chair of the fund-raising committee of the board of trustees of the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, chair of the board of directors of Teaching Beyond the Square, a member of the steering committee of the Women in M&A Network, NY chapter, and a member of the private sector steering committee of the South Asian Bar Association of New York.
Joan Conley has served as a senior adviser on corporate governance & ESG programs at Nasdaq since December 2020, when she retired from her role as senior vice president and corporate secretary following 19 years at the stock exchange, during which time she was responsible for corporate governance global ethics and corporate compliance, and the Nasdaq Educational Foundation.
She also served as a founding board member of the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center from 2014 to 2020.
Prior to joining Nasdaq in 2001, Conley served as senior vice president and corporate secretary (1994 to 2001) and director of human resources (1986 to 1994) at the National Association of Securities, now known as the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. In 2021, she was elected to the boards of EJF Acquisition Corp – as lead independent director as well as chair of the governance committee – and Tigo Energy.
Conley is a member of the Society of Corporate Governance Professionals, Extraordinary Women on Boards, the advisory board of the Harvard Law School Corporate Governance Forum and the Economic Club of Washington DC. She received a BA in economics from Dominican University and an MS in industrial & labor relations from Loyola University of Chicago. She studied economics at the London School of Economics.
Lucy Fato oversees AIG’s global legal, compliance and regulatory groups. She is also global head of communications and government affairs. Prior to joining AIG, she was managing director, head of the Americas and general counsel of Nardello & Co, a global private investigative firm, where she remains on the advisory board.
Previously, Fato was executive vice president and general counsel of S&P Global. Prior to that, she was deputy general counsel and corporate secretary at Marsh & McLennan Companies. She began her legal career at the law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell where she spent 14 years, including five as a partner in the capital markets group.
Fato is a member of the Department of Financial Services state insurance advisory board and a member of the Life Insurance Council of NY board of directors. From 2018 to 2021, she was included in the National Association of Corporate Directors’ Directorship list of the 100 most influential people in the boardroom community.
In 2015 and 2017, she was named by Ethisphere as one of the Attorneys Who Matter for her dedication to furthering corporate ethics.
Fato serves on the board of directors of Advocates for Children of New York, a nonprofit organization that works to ensure a high-quality education for children who are at risk for school-based discrimination or academic failure. She also serves on the board of directors of the Alfred E Smith Memorial Foundation and the board of trustees of the Randall’s Island Park Alliance and is a member of the board of the Coalition for the Homeless, the nation’s oldest advocacy and direct service organization helping homeless men, women and children.
Matt Geekie is senior vice president, secretary and general counsel for Graybar, a leading distributor of electrical and communications products and related supply-chain management and logistics services. In 2019, Graybar celebrated 150 years as a company and 90 years of employee ownership. A member of Graybar’s board of directors, Geekie is responsible for corporate governance and the legal and risk management functions of the company. He also serves as chairman of Graybar’s Canadian subsidiary.
Geekie’s broad-based legal experience includes corporate law, corporate governance, cyber-security, commercial and securities law, ethics, intellectual property, product liability, export/import law and risk management. Under his leadership, Graybar achieved national recognition for excellence in corporate governance in 2015, 2016 and 2018.
He currently serves as a member of the board of the St Louis Community Foundation, as chair of its executive and gift acceptance committees, and as a member of its finance & audit and strategic planning committees.
In addition, he is a member of the Saint Louis Zoo Association’s government relations, investment and long-range plan implementation committees, a member of the Saint Louis Zoo’s Marlin Perkins Society and a board member of The Oasis Institute, as well as serving on its executive and finance committees.
Geekie is also a member of the board of CK Power, a member of the St Louis/Chicago Regional FM global advisory board and a member of the board of the Missouri Law Institute.
Stephen Giove was a senior partner in the law firm of Shearman & Sterling for more than 25 years. He advised boards and senior management teams on a wide range of governance, finance, public company and strategic matters. He co-founded the firm’s corporate governance advisory group and was the driving force behind its annual corporate governance practices survey.
Giove's governance experience included advice with respect to board practices and structures, fiduciary duties, proxy access, anti-takeover defenses, shareholder proposals, dealing with activists, crisis management, annual board self-evaluations and dealing with external constituencies, including shareholders, ESG-focused organizations, proxy advisory firms and regulators.
He ran the firm’s global corporate finance practice and served as its hiring partner. He retired from the firm in 2020, having represented nearly 100 public companies, including CVS Health, Citigroup, Viacom/CBS, Apple, Con Edison, Raytheon, Corning, Quest Diagnostics, Boston Scientific and WebMD. After his retirement, he co-founded Ebullience, a corporate governance data analytics company, and Jupiter Governance Consulting, a corporate governance consulting firm.
Giove received his JD from the Cornell Law School and his MBA from the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. He also received a BS in accounting from SUNY Binghamton.
Eileen Kamerick consults and lectures on corporate governance and compliance matters and is a National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) board leadership Fellow and has completed the NACD Director Certification exam. She previously served as CFO of such leading companies as BP Amoco Americas, Leo Burnett, Heidrick & Struggles and Houlihan Lokey.
She began her career as a lawyer at the law firm of Skadden Arps and holds a JD and an MBA, with honors, in finance and international business from the University of Chicago. She also holds a BA from Boston College where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and was valedictorian.
Kamerick is a member of the board of directors for Associated Banc-Corp, ACV Auctions, Hochschild Mining and 23 closed-end Legg Mason mutual funds. She served on the board of directors for ServiceMaster and IRI before both companies were purchased by private equity firms. She is qualified as an SEC financial expert and chairs three audit committees and one corporate governance and social responsibility committee.
She was profiled as a Director to Watch in 2016 by Directors and Boards and in the book The Board Game: How smart women become corporate directors. She was named among the Most Influential Corporate Directors for 2019 by WomenInc. She also serves on the national board of directors of the Alzheimer’s Association.
Kamerick is a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, Georgetown Law Center, the University of Iowa College of Law and the NACD Battlefield to Boardroom board-readiness program.
Ben Maiden is editor-at-large of Corporate Secretary, having joined the company in December 2016. Based in New York, he was previously managing editor of Compliance Reporter from January 2007, covering regulatory and compliance issues affecting broker-dealers and asset management firms. Before that, Maiden was editor of International Financial Law Review as well as its Americas editor, working in London and New York.
