Meet the judges
Lydia Beebe is a public company director and corporate governance expert. She is a board director of Kansas City Southern, a Class A railroad company, and a member of its nominating, governance and compensation committees. She also serves on the board of Aemetis, a renewable fuels and biochemical company based in Cupertino, California. She chairs the company’s compensation, governance and nominating committee and serves on its audit committee. In addition, she advises companies on corporate governance and performs external board evaluations through her consulting firm, LIBB Advisors.
Before its acquisition by Tokio Marine in 2015, Beebe served on the board of directors of HCC Insurance Holdings, a specialty insurance firm in Houston, Texas, where she chaired the firm’s nominating and corporate governance committee. From 1995 to 2015, she served as corporate secretary and chief governance officer at Chevron Corporation. She was senior of counsel in the San Francisco office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati from June 2015 until July 2017.
Beebe is co-chair of the Stanford Institutional Investors’ Forum at Stanford Law School. She has served on numerous non-profit boards of directors, including those for the National Judicial College, the Presidio Trust – to which she was appointed by former US president George W Bush – and the California Fair Employment and Housing Commission, to which she was appointed by former governor Pete Wilson and for which she was recognized as a civil rights hero by the State of California.
She is a past chair of the Society for Corporate Governance and its corporate practices and national conference committees, and chair of its northern California chapter. She also served as board chair of the northern California chapter of the National Association of Corporate Directors, and as an advisory board member of the Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University and the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware.
Douglas Chia is president of Soundboard Governance and a fellow at the Rutgers Center for Corporate Law and Governance. Until June 2019, he was executive director of The Conference Board ESG Center, where he continues to contribute as a senior fellow.
Before joining The Conference Board in 2016, Chia served as assistant general counsel and corporate secretary of Johnson & Johnson. Previously, he was assistant general counsel for corporate of Tyco International and practiced law at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and Clifford Chance, both in New York and Hong Kong.
Chia has held a number of central leadership positions in the corporate governance field, including chair of the board of the Society for Corporate Governance, president of the Stockholder Relations Society of New York, and member of the NYSE corporate governance commission. He is a member of the corporate laws committee of the American Bar Association and the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association.
Chia has received numerous awards and recognitions in corporate governance and has frequently appeared in the news media, including CNN, NPR’s Marketplace, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times and the New Yorker.
Chia received an AB degree from Dartmouth College and a JD degree from the Georgetown University Law Center. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey with his wife and their four children. He is a trustee of the Historical Society of Princeton and the McCarter Theatre Center.
Lucy Fato is executive vice president and general counsel of AIG where she oversees the global legal, compliance and regulatory functions. 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 board.
Previously, Fato was executive vice president and general counsel of McGraw Hill Financial (now S&P Global), and before that she was vice president, deputy general counsel and corporate secretary at Marsh & McLennan Companies. She began her legal career at Davis Polk & Wardwell where she spent 14 years, including five as a partner in the capital markets group.
In 2009 Fato was inducted into the YWCA-NYC Academy of Women Leaders. In 2015 she was a business honoree of Randall’s Island Park Alliance and was named by Ethisphere as one of the Attorneys Who Matter in 2015 and 2017 for her dedication to furthering corporate ethics. In 2017 she was recognized as an Outstanding Woman in the Legal Profession by the New York County Lawyers Association. In 2018 she was included in NACD Directorship’s list of the 100 most influential people in the boardroom community, including directors, corporate governance experts, regulators and advisers.
Fato is a frequent speaker on such topics as corporate governance, risk & crisis management and legal and compliance operations and best practices. She graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a BA in business and economics and received her JD from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. She is admitted to the state bars of New York and California.
Matt Geekie is senior vice president, secretary and general counsel for Graybar, a distributor of electrical and communications products and related supply chain management and logistics services. Geekie is responsible for corporate governance and the legal and risk management functions of the firm and is a member of Graybar’s board of directors. He also serves as chair of Graybar’s Canadian subsidiary.
Geekie started his career as a trial lawyer at St Louis firm Moser & Marsalek, before moving in-house to Siegel-Robert and later Blackwell Sanders Peper Martin (now Husch Blackwell). From there, he was appointed assistant general counsel at Emerson, and then served as general counsel and secretary at XTRA Corporation, a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary. He joined Graybar in 2008 as deputy general counsel and was elected to his current position later that year.
Geekie’s broad-based legal experience includes corporate law, corporate governance, commercial and securities law, Sarbanes-Oxley, 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 and 2016.
A native of St Louis, Geekie received both his law degree and undergraduate degree from Saint Louis University. He serves as board chair of The Oasis Institute and sits on its executive and finance committees. He is also chairman of the board of the St Louis Community Foundation, chair of its executive and gift acceptance committee and a member of its finance and audit committee, and serves as a member of the St Louis Zoo Association board and its government relations, investment, finance and major gifts committees.
Carol Strickland serves as a director of Trireme Energy Holdings, the holding company for Terra Firma’s US renewable energy assets, and is a member of its nominating and remuneration committee.
From 2008 until 2018 when the company was sold, she served as chief administrative officer of EverPower Wind Holdings, a private wind energy company with 752 MW of spinning assets and a 3.5 GW development pipeline. At EverPower she oversaw the corporate secretarial function, HR, IT, real estate, corporate policies & procedures and insurance. Previously, she was corporate secretary and chief of staff of US Trust Corporation, a wealth management firm now owned by Bank of America. She also headed the US Trust Foundation and the Community Reinvestment Act committee at the bank.
Strickland is a former chair of the Society for Corporate Governance and a past chair of the society’s national conference and budget committees, as well as a former president of its New York chapter. In addition, she is a fellow of the National Association of Corporate Directors and has more than 40 years of experience in the corporate governance arena.
She is a graduate of Skidmore College and New York University’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. She has served on the board of numerous non-profit organizations including Greenwich House, Martha Graham Dance Company, Counterpoint Theatre and the Paul Taylor Dance Company.
She was inducted into the YMCA Academy of Women Achievers in 1997 and currently serves on the Skidmore College Presidents Society Advancement Council.
Paul Washington is executive director of The Conference Board ESG Center. Before joining The Conference Board, he served as senior vice president, deputy general counsel and corporate secretary of Time Warner, as well as chief of staff for the company’s chair and CEO after holding positions of assistant general counsel and litigation counsel.
Prior to working at Time Warner, Washington practiced law at Sidley & Austin and served as vice president and corporate secretary of The Dime Savings Bank of New York. A long-time active member of The Conference Board, from 2013 to 2014 he chaired its advisory board on corporate/investor engagement.
Washington’s career also includes extensive work in public service. He served as a law clerk for former US Supreme Court associate justices William Brennan and David Souter, and for circuit court judge David Tatel. In addition, he was the principal staffer on tax matters for former congressman Stanley Lundine and, later, his principal speechwriter when Lundine served as New York’s lieutenant governor.
Washington has served on the boards of numerous cultural, civic and professional non-profit organizations, including the Legal Aid Society and American Folk Art Museum. He is also a former chair of the Society for Corporate Governance. He is a resident fellow at the Fordham University School of Law, where he has taught corporate governance for more than a decade.
