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ATLANTA—Womble Bond Dickinson attorneys Laura Hester, Laura Kees, Nancy Kumar, Shaton Menzie, Emily Whittaker and Carolyn Wilson attended the Atlanta Women’s Foundation luncheon on Nov. 14. Former First Lady Laura Bush and former Second Lady Dr. Jill Biden were the keynote speakers for this event, which took place at the Georgia World Congress Center.
In addition, Womble Bond Dickinson was a Table Sponsor of the event.
Menzie was a member of AWF’s inaugural Inspire Atlanta program . Inspire Atlanta is AWF’s leadership development program, which also teaches women professionals how to become philanthropists. Menzie raised several thousands of dollars for AWF programs as a member of this class, and her class graduated shortly before she joined Womble Bond Dickinson.
As the only public foundation in Georgia dedicated solely to women and girls, the Atlanta Women’s Foundation’s mission is to be a catalyst for change in the lives of women and girls. The Foundation strives to ensure that all women and girls in metro Atlanta live safe, economically self-sufficient, successful lives.
Laura Kees concentrates her practice on managing trademark and copyright portfolios; counseling clients on risks associated with proposed names and marks; evaluating when applications for domestic and/or international registration should be filed and advising how and when to maintain those registrations.
Laura Hester is foremost a business lawyer with a practice centered on complex commercial real estate and corporate transactions. She represents owners, developers, investors and managers of hotel, multifamily, student housing, condominium, retail, office and industrial properties in multifaceted transactions. For corporate clients that do not have internal legal departments, Hester serves as general counsel, advising on private equity, finance, mergers and acquisitions, secured lending, and technology licensing, strategic restructurings and corporate governance.
Nancy Kumar is a member of Womble Bond Dickinson’s GCSolutions team, which provides affordable on-demand, scalable legal services to corporate law departments and small and medium companies. She has nearly 20 years of industry experience in-house counsel roles navigating a wide variety of legal issues including commercial transactions, compliance, data privacy and security, information governance, real estate, electronic discovery, internal investigations, and employment litigation.
Shaton C. Menzie focuses her practice on complex patent litigation before U.S. district courts, with an emphasis on strategically leveraging concurrent matters before district court and the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. In addition, she regularly advises emerging businesses on trademark, trade secret and copyright issues.
Emily Whittaker regularly counsels clients in trademark prosecution, preparing and filing trademark applications and trademark renewals with the US Patent and Trademark Office. She also performs trademark investigations and trademark searches for availability, both in international venues as well as in the US.
Carolyn Wilson
has more than 35 years of experience representing clients in commercial loan transactions and in commercial real estate acquisitions and dispositions. In the field of commercial lending, Carolyn represents financial institutions in structuring and closing complex secured and unsecured loans. As a veteran real estate lawyer, she helps clients buy and sell commercial, industrial, multifamily and leasehold properties. She is a member of the Commercial Real Estate Women of Atlanta Hall of Fame.
