2011 Panel to come
2010 Panel
 Professor Janet Kerr
Professor of Law, Founder & Executive Director of Geoffrey H. Palmer Center for Entrepreneurship & The Law, Pepperdine University School of Law
A member of the state bar in both California and New York, Professor Kerr is admitted to practice in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. She has been a staff attorney for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission at both the Los Angeles and New York regional offices, and served a stint in the private sector as an associate at the Los Angeles firm Hahn & Cazier.
Professor Kerr is a nationally recognized entrepreneur, technology adviser and corporate governance expert. She has founded several technology companies. One of her companies, X- Labs, was co-owned with HRL (Hughes Research Laboratories) and was one of the first companies to commercialize technologies from a research institution. Additionally, Professor Kerr is a board member of Larta Institute, a national non-profit organization, which enables the creation, development and commercialization of cutting-edge technologies in the areas of digital media, life sciences, and alternative energy as well as in other fields.
Professor Kerr has authored numerous articles in the areas of Corporate Governance, Securities Regulation, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Sustainability. Currently, she is Chair of the Corporate Governance/Nominating Committee of a publicly-held corporation and has compensation and audit committee experience as well.
Professor Kerr has consulted with numerous countries such as China, France and Thailand on various issues dealing with the development of entrepreneurial start-ups and the establishment of business alliances with the United States. Additionally she has been selected as a consultant with the U.S. Department of Commerce to facilitate business objectives between foreign countries and U.S. companies.
 Renee LaBran
Partner, Rustic Canyon/ Fontis Partners, LP
Renee LaBran is a Partner with Rustic Canyon/ Fontis Partners, LP, where she brings 25 years of operating, strategic, and financial experience. Ms. LaBran is also a Partner with Rustic Canyon Partners, an early stage venture capital firm, which she helped form in 1999. Prior to Rustic Canyon, Ms. LaBran held a variety of executive positions with the Los Angeles Times/ Times Mirror in the areas of digital media, advertising sales, investments, and strategic planning. During her tenure, she managed revenues in excess of $300 million and oversaw more than 200 employees. She was also a co-founder and served as Chief Executive Officer and later board member of CareerPath.com (now CareerBuilder), and a co-founder and board member of Classified Ventures. Prior to Times Mirror, Ms. LaBran was a management consultant with the Monitor Company in the U.S. and Europe and managed its Los Angeles office.
Ms. LaBran has extensive board experience with private companies. Ms. LaBran currently serves on the boards of Cabrera Capital Markets, Preferred Brands, and Sambazon, Inc. on behalf of RC/Fontis.
Ms. LaBran graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of California at Berkeley, and earned an M.B.A. with honors from the Harvard Business School. Her non-profit activities include the La Canada Flintridge Educational Foundation, where she is former President, and current Endowment Trustee, and Vice-Chair of Hathaway - Sycamores, a child and family services agency. She is also a member of the Women's Leadership Board at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, and an advisor to the Women's Student Association at Harvard Business School. 
Eva Davis
Partner, Kirkland & Ellis
Eva H. Davis is the founding partner of the Los Angeles Corporate Practice Group of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. Ms. Davis concentrates her practice in the areas of mergers and acquisitions, private equity and corporate finance. Ms. Davis also regularly advises public companies and their boards of directors, audit committees, compensation committees, nominating and corporate governance committees and special committees on corporate governance matters and regulations of The Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.
During her career, Ms. Davis has advised the Boards of Directors of AutoZone, Inc., Beverly Enterprises, Inc., ChipPAC, Inc., DDi Corp., Fuel Systems Solutions, Inc., GT Solar International, Inc., Guitar Center, Inc., Guess?, Inc., STATS ChipPAC Ltd. and ThermaWave Inc.
Ms. Davis has negotiated and completed transactions in a wide variety of industries including manufacturing, consumer products, semiconductor, retail, energy, financial services, technology, medical devices, telecommunications and entertainment. Her transactional experience includes deals ranging from a few million dollars to over $1 billion. Ms. Davis is consistently named a “Southern California Super Lawyer,” and was profiled as one of the top “20 under 40” attorneys in California by the Daily Journal.
Ms. Davis has published several articles on federal and state corporate law topics and is also a frequent lecturer inside and outside of the Firm on corporate law topics and topics relating to the recruitment and retention of women and others with diverse backgrounds.
Ms. Davis serves as the Co-Chairwoman of the Board of Director of Everybody Wins!, as an Advisory Board Member of the Institute for Corporate Counsel, as an Advisory Board Member of the Duke University Alumni Club of Southern California, and as General Counsel to the Intellectual Property Owners Association.
Ms. Davis graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School and summa cum laude from Duke University where she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
 Karen M. Miles
Managing Director, Houlihan Lokey
Ms. Miles is a Managing Director in Houlihan Lokey’s Los Angeles office, where she heads the Financial Advisory Services business for Southern California. She co-chairs the firm’s Technical Standards Committee, which determines the appropriate methodologies for dealing with valuation issues. Ms. Miles has over twenty years of experience in valuation and financial consulting, with emphasis on the valuation of businesses, securities and intangible assets. Her experience includes fairness opinions, solvency opinions, purchase price allocations, goodwill impairment analyses, valuations for transactions, financings, gift & estate tax planning, ESOPs, dissolutions and litigation. She has consulted on ownership transition issues and liquidity alternatives. She has also testified as an expert witness in depositions and trials, and has served as a court-appointed referee.
Before joining Houlihan Lokey, Ms. Miles was a principal at a Big Four accounting firm, in its economic and financial consulting division, where for 10 years she specialized in valuation and litigation consulting. Before that, she was a financial analyst at a Fortune 500 corporation. Ms. Miles currently serves on the International Valuation Standards Council (IVSC) committee on “Discounted Flow Analysis for Market Valuations and Investment Analyses”. She has also been a guest lecturer in the Mergers and Acquisitions Program at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management. Ms. Miles earned her bachelor’s degree in business administration at the University of Southern California and her M.B.A. at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management. She is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA). She is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and the American Society of Appraisers (ASA), and she is registered with FINRA as a General Securities Representative (Series 7 and 63) and a Limited Representative – Investment Banking (Series 79).
Panel Facilitator
Elizabeth Ghaffari, the author, is a business professional with twenty years’ experience as President/CEO of Technology Place Inc, her own technology consulting business, and another fifteen years’ experience in corporate data processing, operations, economics and project management in the U.S. and abroad.
Ms. Ghaffari presents her research and survey findings at corporate, academic and public conferences dealing with the challenge of women’s advancement to leadership and board service. Through Champion Boards, she applies her research and analyses to entrepreneurial advocacy and advisory consulting with businesses and entrepreneurs who want to build boards as a tool to foster effective strategic planning and promote business growth.
With extensive online knowledge-based resources in the governance field, Ms. Ghaffari’s market research and public presentations currently support nationwide efforts to promote economic opportunities for women and to advance their candidacy as directors on corporate and entrepreneurial boards. Her web site, www.championboards.com, is recognized as an authoritative resource for innovative and creative analysis of the women on boards challenge, and her writings have been recognized by other web-based resources including NewsOnWomen.com.
In 2004, Ms. Ghaffari began analyzing the changes arising in the public corporate marketplace as a result of federal laws mandating greater transparency and accountability of U.S. stock-based companies. Her Surveys of Women on Boards of Directors at California-Based Fortune 1000 Firms in 2004 and 2005 provided the biographical and research foundation for Outstanding in Their Field.
A draft of the Introductory Chapter of the book was published in the March/April 2007 issue of THE CORPORATE BOARD under the title, "How Women Directors Succeed," (Vol. XXVIII, No. 163). THE CORPORATE BOARD is one of the oldest and most highly-regarded journals in governance and is edited by Ralph Ward, a leader in the field.
Ms. Ghaffari's educational background includes governance, economics, and political science at Stanford University, University of California at Los Angeles (Anderson Graduate School of Business) and American University (DC) and Wheaton College (MA).
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