Interviewees

Victor J. DeNoble

Dr. DeNoble received his Doctorate degree in 1976 in the field of Experimental Psychology from Adelphi University. He held postdoctoral fellowships from both the National Institute of Alcohol and Alcohol Abuse at Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York and the National Institute of Drug Abuse at the University of Minnesota. In 1980, while still a postdoctoral fellow, DeNoble was recruited by Philip Morris Inc. to establish a Behavioral Pharmacology Laboratory to support a nicotine analogue program to study the behavioral and physiological effects nicotine. Following his abrupt dismissal from Philip Morris in 1984, DeNoble worked in drug discovery for the DuPont Merck Pharmaceutical Company and Ayerst Research Laboratories, specializing in the area of Central Nervous System Diseases. In 1994, after a congressional release from his confidentiality agreement with Philip Morris, DeNoble became the first “whistle-blower” to begin tearing down the wall of secrecy built by the tobacco industry. He was a key witness in the federal government’s case against the industry and has testified before Congress, the Food and Drug Administration and former Vice President Al Gore’s Tobacco Settlement Committee. Currently, DeNoble is the Vice President of Hissho, Inc., a scientific and medical communications company. [videos…]

Paul C. Mele

Paul Mele, Ph.D., received a B.S. in biology and psychology from Union College, and a Doctorate in Experimental Psychology from Adelphi University. He held research positions at the University of Wisconsin, the Philip Morris Inc., and the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute. In 1995, Dr. Mele moved into technology transfer as Chief, Office of Research and Technology Applications, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR), where he guided WRAIR’s technology transfer program on the development and commercialization of drugs, vaccines and medical devices in support of the Army’s mission. In 2000, he became the first Director of Technology Transfer for the Army’s Medical Research and Materiel Command at Fort Detrick. In this capacity, Dr. Mele oversees the Army Medical Command’s patent licensing program and coordinates technology transfer activities among its component laboratories, hospitals and health care centers. Dr. Mele is a member of the Association of University Technology Managers, the Federal Laboratory consortium, and the Association of Government Toxicologists. He has published and presented the results of a variety of scientific investigations, and he is the recipient of the 2005 Department of Defense Technology Transfer Award. [videos…]

Daniel G. Abel

A prominent New Orleans attorney, Daniel Abel has worked on numerous complex litigations throughout the U.S. and the world. He teaches on the skills faculty of Loyola University Law School, and is the co-author, with Peter Harry Brown, of “Outgunned: Up Against the NRA” (Simon & Schuster). Abel has also maintained a lifelong interest in food and cooking. At a young age he began working in Cajun restaurant kitchens like Thelma’s of Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. He then moved to New Orleans, where he managed jazz musician Al Hirt’s Cafe St. Cecile, and later served as Proprietor and Executive Chef of the Chicory Farm Cafe. Under his management the Chicory Farm Cafe received recommendations from Fodor’s and Zagat’s, and received an invitation to the James Beard House in New York. Abel received his B.A. in history and M.A. summa cum laude in English literature from the University of Southwestern Louisiana. After studying for two years at Gregorian University in Rome, he earned a law degree from Loyola University. He currently directs the Nova Scotia Seafood Cooking School and is a Managing Director of Trout Point Lodge. [videos…]

Philip S. Barnett

From 2009 to 2010, Philip Barnett served as Staff Director of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. He became the Minority Staff Director in 2011. Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) is the Ranking Member of the Committee. A graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, Barnett served from 1983 to 1984 as law clerk to Judge William C. Canby, Jr., of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. From 1984 to 1988, he was a staff attorney in the Alaska office of the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund. From 1989 to 1994, he served as counsel to the House Subcommittee on Health and the Environment, where he was responsible for environmental and tobacco issues. In 1996, he was the Director of Policy Research for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. From 1997 to 2008, he served successively on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform as Minority Chief Counsel, Minority Staff Director, and Staff Director. [videos…]

Neal L. Benowitz

Neal Benowitz, M.D. is a longtime affiliate of the University of California, San Francisco, where he serves as Professor of Medicine, Psychiatry, and Biopharmaceutical Sciences; Chief of the Division of Clinical Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics; and Vice Chair of the Department of Biopharmaceutical Sciences. An internist and clinical pharmacologist, Dr. Benowitz began his career at UCSF in 1971 as a fellow in clinical pharmacology in the Department of Medicine, becoming a clinical instructor 1973. He currently conducts research on the effects of nicotine and tobacco on human health, with an emphasis on the role of nicotine and maintaining nicotine addiction in causing tobacco-related diseases, including cardiovascular disease and cancer. Benowitz also studies the questions related to the safety of low tar cigarettes, safety of medications used to treat nicotine addiction, smoking and heart disease, smokeless tobacco, and the genetics of nicotine addiction. He’s actively involved in the development of public health policies related to tobacco regulation and serves as a distinguished member of the FDA’s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee. Benowitz is a graduate of Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of Rochester. [videos…]

Walt Bogdanich

Walt Bogdanich became the investigations editor for the Business and Finance Desk of The New York Times in January 2001. He was named an assistant editor for the paper’s newly expanded Investigative Desk in 2003. Before joining The Times in 2001, he was an investigative producer for “60 Minutes” on CBS and before that for ABC News. Previously, he worked as an investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal in New York and Washington. He has also worked for The Cleveland Press and The Plain Dealer. Bogdanich received the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for his articles in The Wall Street Journal on substandard medical laboratories. He received another Pulitzer Prize for national reporting in 2005 for his series, “Death on the Tracks,” and in 2008 he was honored yet again for the series “A Toxic Pipeline,” which tracked how dangerous and poisonous pharmaceutical ingredients from China have flowed into the global market. He has also won four George Polk Awards, an IRE Award, and an Overseas Press Club award. Bogdanich graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1975 with a degree in political science. He received a master’s in journalism from Ohio State University in 1976. [videos…]

Joseph M. Bruno

As the Managing Partner of Bruno & Bruno in New Orleans, Joe Bruno is widely regarded as a creative, energetic and outspoken advocate of victims’ rights, particularly in difficult and complex cases of liability. He is a defender of class action procedures, seeing them as an important balancing tool in our complex society. Bruno is recognized as an authority in class actions, and particularly, in class action management. His expertise in difficult and complex litigation has led to his representation of numerous claimants in class action and mass joinder proceedings involving racial discrimination, occupational lung disease, products liability, and wage and hour violations. Bruno has been active in the Louisiana Trial Lawyers organization, having served on the Board of Governors for over twenty years. His goal is to build and maintain an aggressive firm that has the courage to fund and handle all types of complex and difficult litigation. Bruno is a 1977 graduate of Tulane University and at 1978 graduate of Tulane Law School. [videos…]

David M. Burns

David Burns, M.D. is a Professor Emeritus, Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine.  Dr. Burns has been an author, editor or reviewer for each of the annual reports of the Surgeon General on Health Consequences of Smoking since 1975. In addition, Burns has been a consultant to the National Cancer Institute, served on the Policy Advisory Committee for the COMMIT trail being conducted by the National Cancer Institute and has edited a series of tobacco control monographs for the NCI. He also serves on the World Health Organization Working Group on Tobacco Product Regulation (TobReg) and has written extensively on issues of the disease consequences of smoking, including modeling of disease risks and projection of those risks with changes in smoking behavior. He has also developed several approaches to the use of survey research to evaluate the impact of public policy changes on smoking initiation and cessation. Dr. Burns received his doctorate in medicine at Harvard Medical School in 1972 and trained in Pulmonary Medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine from 1976 to 1979. Between these two periods of training he was medical officer for the National Clearinghouse for Smoking and Health at the Centers for Disease Control. [videos…]

John P. Coale

John Coale has long been a crusader for private citizens adversely affected by the negligence of large corporations, and a leading advocate of social and institutional reform through the court system. Coale entered the ranks of the nation’s top tort lawyers in 1984, when he took on Union Carbide on behalf of thousands of victims of the tragic gas leak in Bhopal, India, and his resume since then is a testament to his dedication to the rights of tort victims and his quest for corporate accountability. Most notable among Coale’s accomplishments is the role he played in obtaining billions of dollars in payments from the tobacco companies to the states and forcing a major change in the way tobacco companies do business. As a member of the Executive Committee for the Castano Tobacco Litigation, Coale was part of a pioneering effort to hold the tobacco companies responsible for misleading the public about the dangers of cigarettes and nicotine addiction. Coale was one of the principal negotiators in the $386 billion dollar tobacco settlement reached in June of 1997, which ultimately led the tobacco companies to agree to pay billions of dollars to the states and to reform their advertising and marketing practices. Coale was profiled on CBS’s “60 Minutes” by Ed Bradley, and his work has been showcased in a number of books, magazines and newspapers, including The National Law Journal, GQ, People Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. Coale was named a life member in the National Registry of Who’s Who and was listed in Who’s Who in Executives and Professionals. He’s married to his former law partner, Greta Van Susteren, who is the host of the Fox News program “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren”. [videos…]

Gregory N. Connolly

Gregory Connolly, D.M.D, M.P.H. is Professor of the Practice of Public Health and Director of the Center for Global Tobacco Control at Harvard School of Public Health, where he teaches and conducts research on tobacco and health issues. Dr. Connolly is the former director of Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s Tobacco Control Program where, during his ten-year tenure, statewide cigarette consumption fell 50%, three times the U.S. average. Connolly was the second American to be awarded the Surgeon General’s Medallion by Dr. C. Everett Koop for his leadership in passing the federal Comprehensive Smokeless Tobacco Health Education Act. He’s recognized as an international expert on smoking and health and is credited with ending the U.S. use of trade threats to compel foreign nations to import U.S. cigarettes. The author of over 100 scientific articles on tobacco product design, marketing, and tobacco control interventions, Connolly has testified before Congress on more than a dozen occasions and appears regularly on U.S. national news networks. Connolly is a graduate of Holy Cross College, Tufts Dental School, and Harvard School of Public Health. [videos…]

Gray Davis

Joseph Graham “Gray” Davis, Jr. is Of counsel in the Los Angeles office of Loeb & Loeb LLP, a Senior Fellow at the UCLA School of Public Affairs, and the former 37^th governor of the state of California. Mr. Davis has a long and distinguished career in public service, first as Chief of Staff to Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. from 1975 to 1981. From 1983-1987, Davis served in the State Assembly as the Representative for Los Angeles County. He then served as State Controller from 1987 to 1995 and Lieutenant Governor from 1995 to 1999. In 1998, Davis was overwhelmingly elected governor of California, becoming the Golden State’s first Democratic executive chief in 16 years. While presiding over California during an economic expansion, Davis made record investments in infrastructure, created four Centers of Science and Innovation on UC campuses, and expanded state health insurance for an additional one million children.  He also was the first Governor in the nation to authorize stem cell research. As Governor, Davis also made education a top priority, signing legislation to strengthen California’s K-12 system by establishing the Academic Performance Index to increase accountability in schools, and expanding access to higher education with a record number of scholarships and college loans. Despite a wave of Republican victories across the nation in 2002, Davis was re-elected to a second term. A recipient of the Bronze Star for his service during the Vietnam War, Davis graduated cum laude from Stanford University and received his J.D. degree from Columbia Law School. [videos…]

Camela A. DeNoble

Camela Ann DeNoble (nee Palermo) was born in New York City on November 28, 1920. While raising a family with her devoted husband Victor,  a plumber, Camela worked as a secretary for the Salvation Army’s Wayward Home for Girls. Upon their retirement in the early 1980s, Camela and Victor Sr. relocated to Virginia where they immediately joined at least eight different organizations dedicated to helping the sick, injured or poor. Even in her late eighties, Camela still visited a local hospital to minister to the sick and injured. A resident of Midlothian, Virginia, Camela died at age 90 on Wednesday, June 15, 2011. Survivors include her son Victor Jr., daughter Carol, and brothers Julian and Daniel. [videos…]

Carol DeNoble

Carol DeNoble was born in Queens, New York, and began her professional career as a secretary in the Medical Records Department of Mercy Medical Center. Today, Carol is still associated with Mercy where, as a Eucharistic Minister, she’s privileged to provide communion to patients. She’s also involved with Mercy’s Pet Therapy Program and finds it remarkable to watch people forget about their pain when they are with the animals. Ms. DeNoble lives in Lynbrook, New York, and serves as an Associate member of the Congregation of the Infant Jesus in nearby Rockville Center. [videos…]

Clifford E. Douglas

Clifford Douglas, J.D. is an Adjunct Lecturer for the University of Michigan School of Public Health and Director of U-M’s influential Tobacco Research Network. A tobacco control expert and public policy advocate since 1988, Douglas currently serves as an advisor on tobacco control policy for U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health Howard Koh, for whom he co-chaired the working group that developed a new national strategic action plan for tobacco control to be implemented by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He is also a consulting attorney for the Smoke-Free Environments Law Project. Previously, Douglas served as Special Counsel on Tobacco Issues for former Congressman Martin Meehan (D-MA) and as coordinator of the Congressional Task Force on Tobacco and Health in the U.S. House of Representatives. He also served as Manager of Government Relations for the Tobacco Tax Policy Project of the American Cancer Society, as Associate Director of Government Relations for the American Lung Association, as Tobacco Policy Director for the Advocacy Institute, and as Assistant Director of the national Coalition on Smoking or Health. He was a co-founder, with Dr. Ron Davis, of the Analysis of Tobacco Depositions and Trial Testimony Project, an undertaking supported by the National Cancer Institute and the American Legacy Foundation. Douglas became executive director of the U-M’s Tobacco Research Network (UMTRN) in August 2007 and director of UMTRN in April 2009, succeeding its founding director, Kenneth E. Warner. He has also taught the seminar “Tobacco: From Seedling to Social Policy” (HMP618) since 2005. [videos…]

Marc Z. Edell

One of the pioneering leaders in the field of tobacco litigation, Marc Edell is credited with obtaining the first successful civil verdict against the tobacco industry in the landmark case, Cipollone v. Liggett Group, Inc. The result achieved in the Cipollone action helped pave the way for the actions brought by various state Attorneys General which culminated in the landmark Master Settlement Agreement with the tobacco industry in 1998. During the past thirty-five years, Edell has tried cases in numerous Federal and State Courts and has argued cases in both the Federal and State Appellate Courts, including the United States Supreme Court. Edell has received nationwide recognition for excellence as a trial lawyer, having been elected as a Fellow to numerous select trial organizations such as Super Lawyers; International Academy of Trial Lawyers; American College of Trial Lawyers; International Society of Barristers; American Board of Trial Advocates; and Litigation Counsel of America. In 1988, in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the field of tobacco litigation, Edell was named Trial Lawyer of the Year by the Trial Lawyers for Public Service. Today, Edell focuses his practice in the fields of medical malpractice, product liability, commercial and business torts, and civil trial advocacy. In addition to his legal practice, Edell has served since 1983 as an adjunct professor of products liability law at New York Law School, and has taught courses in trial practice at Rutgers Law School. Edell received a B.S. from Boston University in 1972 and graduated cum laude from New York Law School in 1975. He’s a partner of Caruso Smith Edell Picini, P.C. and also serves as counsel for Baumeister & Samuels. [videos…]

William A. Farone

William Farone, Ph.D. joined Philip Morris, Inc. in 1976 and the following year became Director of Applied Research of Philip Morris USA, Inc., charged with helping the company diversify away from the cigarette business and developing technology for safer cigarettes. Following his termination in 1984, he started his own technology company to develop environmentally benign chemical and energy processes and products. He has served as President and CEO of Applied Power Concepts, Inc. since 1987. Prior to his employment with Philip Morris, Farone was Vice President of Research & Development for PVO International, Inc., Director of Scientific Research for Lever Brothers Company and Associate Professor of Chemistry at Virginia State University.  He has over 100 technical publications and patents in diverse areas such as bioremediation, wind energy, biomass hydrolysis, fermentation, electromagnetic phenomena, spectroscopy and chemistry. In 1994 he became a consultant to the FDA in their attempt to regulate the tobacco industry and has testified as an expert and fact witness against the tobacco industry since 1996. He has served and continues to serve on scientific advisory committees related to public issues of smoking and tobacco use. [videos…]

Jack E. Henningfield

Jack E. Henningfield, Ph.D., is a part-time professor of behavioral biology in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, in Baltimore, and Vice President, Research and Health Policy, at Pinney Associates, Bethesda, MD. Dr. Henningfield is a leading scientist in the field of drug addiction and has published more than 400 articles and several books, and contributed to numerous reports of the Surgeon General, World Health Organization, and National Cancer Institute. He has conducted pioneering studies on the addictive effects of nicotine, cocaine, marijuana, morphine and many other drugs. Henningfield has served as an expert to the World Health Organization, Food and Drug Administration, and White House, and has given invited testimony to both bodies of the U.S. Congress. Henningfield consults to GlaxoSmithKline on smoking cessation medicines and has a patent on a potentially more effective nicotine gum product. He also consults to pharmaceutical companies on how to design less addictive drugs for treating pain and other disorders, and how drugs can be more effectively marketed and regulated so as to reduce abuse, diversion, and addiction. [videos…]

Russ Herman

Russ Herman is a Senior Partner of Herman, Herman, Katz & Cotlar, L.L.P. Herman graduated from Tulane University with a B.A. Degree and L.L.B. in 1966. In 1977, he was chosen “Outstanding Trial Lawyer” by the Louisiana Trial Lawyers Association, and was LTLA President in 1980-81. Herman is listed in the prestigious peer-reviewed publication, “The Best Lawyers in America” in the Personal Injury, Maritime, Complex Litigation and Appellate Trial Practice areas. In 2004, a jury returned a $591,000,000 verdict in Scott v American Tobacco, et al., on which Herman served as lead trial counsel. In 2005, he was selected from over 15,000 nation-wide nominees as one of American’s 500 Leading Lawyers and Jurists by “Lawdragon” publications and in 2006, as one of America’s Top 500 Litigators. In 2007, Herman was selected by “The Legal 500” as one of the 500 top litigators in the country and named 2007 Lawyer of the Year by Lawyers USA, citing his role as the lead negotiator for Plaintiffs in reaching the $4.85 Billion Settlement with Merck in the Vioxx litigation. And again in 2008, he was named of the 500 Top Litigators in the U.S. Herman is a principal faculty member of The Professional Education Group and has served on the faculties of the Practicing Law Institute and The National College of Trial Advocacy. The author of over 200 articles, papers and books in various aspects of Civil Trial Practice, Herman has lectured at Tulane, L.S.U., Loyola, Georgetown, Hastings and other law schools.

Philip J. Hilts

The author of six books, and currently serving as Director of MIT’s Knight Science Journalism Fellowships, Phil Hilts is a prize-winning health and science reporter for both The New York Times and The Washington Post. Hilts began his journalism career in 1968, and during some 20 years at the Times and the Post and in more than 300 front page stories, Hilts has reported from such disparate locales as a mile deep in the Pacific Ocean while aboard the submersible Alvin, and a Zambian village where a traditional healer was “curing” AIDS. His articles on the inaccuracy of hypnosis-induced court testimony led to four men being freed from jail. Hilts was also the Times reporter who broke the story of the tobacco industry’s 40-year cover-up of its own research showing that tobacco was harmful and addictive. Hilts is the author of “Protecting America’s Health: The FDA, Business, and One Hundred Years of Regulation”. The only history of the Food and Drug Administration, this book tells the story of the fight over using science as the basis of public policy. It won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology and was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His most recent book, “Rx for Survival: Why We Must Rise to the Global Health Challenge”, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Hilts has been a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and twice a fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health. He is also a commentator on health and science issues for National Public Radio. [videos…]

David A. Kessler

David Kessler is an American pediatrician, lawyer, author, and administrator. In 1990, he was appointed as Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration by President George H. W. Bush, and served in this position from November 8, 1990 until February 28, 1997. Kessler left the FDA to join the Yale School of Medicine as Dean from 1997–2003. From 2003-2007, he served as Dean and Vice-Chancellor at the University of California, San Francisco Medical School. After graduating from Amherst College in 1973, Kessler studied medicine at Harvard University, graduating with a M.D. degree in 1979. While at Harvard Dr. Kessler obtained a law degree J.D. in 1977 from the University of Chicago. While serving his residency in pediatrics at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, he worked as a consultant to Republican Senator Orrin Hatch from Utah, particularly on issues relating to the safety of food additives, and on the regulation of cigarettes and tobacco. From 1984-1990, Kessler simultaneously ran a 431-bed teaching hospital in New York City and taught at the Columbia Law School and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Kessler is well known for his role in the FDA’s attempt to regulate cigarettes, which resulted in the FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. case. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled that the FDA did not have the power to enact and enforce the regulations in question. Kessler published a book entitled “A Question of Intent”, which gave his view of his time at the FDA, focusing on his attempts to change tobacco legislation and the interpretation of that legislation, and his battle with the then-illegal but still used Y1 strain of tobacco. Kessler’s 2009 book “The End of Overeating” highlights for the consumer the amount of fat, salt and sugar in their food intake. [videos…]

Myron Levin

A research consultant for ADDICTION INCORPORATED, Myron Levin is a veteran investigative journalist based in Los Angeles. He is founder and editor of FairWarning (www.fairwarning.org), a nonprofit, online investigative news organization focused on safety and health issues. Previously, Levin spent more than 20 years as a staff writer at the Los Angeles Times, and before that reported for The Kansas City Star, the Rocky Mountain News and newspapers in Maine. He has won a number of honors and awards, including an Alicia Patterson Foundation fellowship and the National Press Club’s 2008 Consumer Journalism Award. Levin began writing about the tobacco industry in 1987, when almost no one else was doing it. At the time, the prevailing view in newsrooms was that everyone knew smoking was dangerous, so what else was there to say? But beyond this obvious point was a rich, largely unexplored story — about how an industry whose products were the leading cause of disease and death had become all but immune to legal liability and regulation. The landscape has shifted since then, but as a journalist still drawn to the story, Levin was grateful for the chance to participate in this absorbing and worthwhile film. [videos…]

Michael C. Moore

Mike Moore was Attorney General of the State of Mississippi from 1988 – 2004 and now practices law in the areas of dispute resolution and governmental relations with his own firm, Mike Moore Law Firm, LLC, in Flowood, Mississippi. Prior to opening his own firm, Mr. Moore practiced with Phelps Dunbar in Jackson, Mississippi. Before his sixteen years as Mississippi’s Attorney General, Moore served as District Attorney on the Mississippi Gulf Coast for two terms. He received national attention in 1994, when he filed the first suit against thirteen tobacco companies making Mississippi the first state to insist that cigarette manufacturers reimburse the State for costs it incurred treating smoking-related illnesses. The suit resulted in a $4.1 billion settlement for the State of Mississippi. Mr. Moore also led the national tobacco litigation effort, which resulted in a $246 billion recovery for all of the states. Moore continues to stay very active in tobacco prevention work across America. He chairs The Partnership for a Healthy Mississippi, the State’s tobacco prevention program that he founded after the settlement in 1998, and serves as chairman of the State’s Tobacco Control Advisory Council. In 1994 his fellow Attorneys General bestowed upon him the prestigious Wyman Award, naming Moore the most outstanding Attorney General in the Nation. Moore also served as president of the National Association of Attorneys General. In 1998 the National Law Journal named him “Lawyer of the Year,” and Governing Magazine named him “Public Official of the Year.” [videos…]

Matthew L. Myers

Matt Myers is President of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a leader in the fight to reduce tobacco use and its devastating consequences in the United States and around the world. In 1973, Mr. Myers began his career as a law clerk to Raymond Pettine, the Chief U.S. District Court Judge in Rhode Island. From 1974 to1977, he was an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation National Prisoner Project, and from 1977 to 1980, he was their chief counsel. From 1981 to 1996, Mr. Myers was partner in the law firm of Asbill, Junkin & Myers in Washington, D.C. He specialized in complex commercial litigation and cases concerning employment law, the Privacy Act, health law, and First Amendment issues. In 1980, Mr. Myers joined the Federal Trade Commission in the Division of Advertising Practices and was responsible for the agency’s tobacco-related activity. Later he was named the acting Deputy Assistant Director of the FTC’s Division of Advertising Practices. From 1982 to 1996, Mr. Myers represented the Coalition on Smoking OR Health, first as its Staff Director and later as its General Counsel. During the 1980’s, Mr. Myers worked on successful legislative campaigns to raise the federal excise tax on tobacco products, eliminating smoking on domestic airplane flights, strengthening cigarette health warnings, banning ads for smokeless tobacco on TV and requiring health warnings on smokeless tobacco ads and packages. In 1996, Mr. Myers helped to found the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and has been with the Campaign since its inception. Over the last 25 years, Mr. Myers has participated in virtually every major national tobacco-related legislative effort and has worked with state tobacco prevention advocates and officials around the country. He holds a B.A. from Tufts University and a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School.

Bruce Reed

Bruce Reed currently serves as Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to the Vice President, having been appointed on January 14, 2011 to succeed Ron Klain. He most recently worked for the Administration as Executive Director of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, also known as the Bowles-Simpson Commission. Reed’s previous work in the White House came during the Clinton-Gore administration, where he spent four years as the Chief Domestic Policy Advisor to the President, after two years as Deputy Domestic Policy Advisor and two years as Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy Planning. Prior to the Clinton-Gore administration, Reed was deputy campaign manager for policy for the Clinton-Gore campaign and previously served on the staff of then-Senator Al Gore from 1985-1989. From 1990-1991, he served as policy director for the Democratic Leadership Council. Reed returned to the DLC in January 2001, where he served as Chief Executive Officer until his appointment as the Executive Director of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform in 2010. A native of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and the son of Idaho State Senator Mary Lou Reed, Reed is a 1982 graduate of Princeton University and earned a master’s degree in English Literature from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.

Joseph Rice

Motley Rice co-founder Joe Rice is recognized as a skillful and innovative negotiator of complex litigation settlements. As lead private counsel for twenty six State Attorneys General, he played a central role in crafting the landmark Master Settlement Agreement, the largest civil settlement in U.S. history, in which the tobacco industry agreed to reimburse states for smoking-related health costs. Over the past two decades, Joe has also been recognized for his role in structuring some of the most significant resolutions of asbestos liabilities on behalf of victims injured by asbestos-related products. Currently, Joe directs the Motley Rice securities litigation team in securities fraud litigation, shareholder derivative cases and actions against proposed merger and acquisition transactions. Described as one of the nation’s “five most feared and respected plaintiffs’ lawyers in corporate America” in a Corporate Legal Times poll, Joe also continues to negotiate on behalf of the firm’s clients in anti-terrorism and human rights, environmental, drugs, devices and catastrophic injury cases. He held a crucial role in executing the strategic mediations and/or resolutions in more than 50 aviation liability and damages cases against multiple defendants on behalf of families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks who opted out of the Victims Compensation Fund. Joe has also been an integral part of several recent environmental contamination case negotiations and is currently involved in the firm’s efforts on behalf of individuals and businesses suffering as a result of the BP Gulf oil spill.  In 1998, Joe received the President’s Award of the National Association of Attorneys General. In 2011, the University of South Carolina School of Law Alumni Association named Joe a recipient of its platinum Compleat Lawyer Award, and he was highlighted in the 2011 Litigation edition of The Legal 500. A graduate of the University of South Carolina and the University of South Carolina School of Law, Joe is a member of the American Association for Justice, American Bar Association, American Inns of Court and the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy. [videos…]

H. Lee Sarokin

From 1979 until his retirement in 1996, the Honorable H. Lee Sarokin served with distinction as a federal judge for the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey and the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. After earning degrees from Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, Sarokin became a partner of Lasser Lasser Sarokin & Hochman, litigating complex cases representing both plaintiffs and defendants from 1954-1979. From 1959 until 1965, he also served as assistant counsel for Union County, New Jersey, representing the county in all of its litigation and contract negotiations. Sarokin was nominated to the District Court by President Carter on September 28, 1979, and was confirmed by the Senate on October 31, 1979, serving the District of New Jersey. On May 5, 1994, Judge Sarokin was nominated to the Court of Appeals by President Clinton and was confirmed by the Senate on October 4, 1994. Overall, Judge Sarokin authored over 2,000 written opinions, settled approximately 3,000 cases, and presided over more than 1,000 cases involving all types of federal and diversity jurisdiction issues including numerous class action suits, every conceivable federal claim coming before the federal courts and panoply of state issues arising under diversity jurisdiction. In recent years, Judge Sarokin has remained active in mediation, arbitration, neutral evaluation, private judge and jury trials, expert witness, and special and discovery master. A frequent guest on the PBS tv series “The Open Mind”, Judge Sarokin is listed in Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in the Law, and writes a popular blog for Huffington Post. [videos…]

William Schultz

Bill Schultz is the Acting General Counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services. Before joining HHS, he was a Partner at Zuckerman Spaeder LLP. Schultz has also served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he was responsible for overseeing all Civil Division appellate litigation and the Department’s Tobacco Litigation Team. Prior to the Department of Justice, Schultz was the Deputy Commissioner for Policy for the Food and Drug Administration, where he was the principal advisor to the Commissioner on all significant policy issues and responsible for development and management of all regulations. Before joining the FDA, Schultz was the Counsel to the Committee on Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Health and the Environment, where he worked on health care, FDA, tobacco and trade legislation. [videos…]

Keith Summa

Keith Summa is a senior producer at CBS News and has run the CBS News Investigative Unit since 2007. During that time his team has won two Emmy Awards for reports on the epidemic of veteran suicides and the mishandling of rape kits. Before that, Summa was a producer for ABC News and Peter Jennings Productions (1992 -2007), including producing the Bob Woodruff primetime special TO IRAQ AND BACK. Summa’s documentaries for “Peter Jennings Reporting” include FROM THE TOBACCO FILES, exposing failures of the public health community, and NEVER SAY DIE: HOW THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY KEEPS ON WINNING, an investigation of the tobacco industry’s political tactics. His exploits in the tobacco wars were chronicled in the book “Civil Warriors” by Dan Zegart. His extensive investigative reporting on tobacco, health care and firearms also appeared on World News Tonight, Good Morning America, and Nightline. Prior to his career in journalism, Summa was the Advocacy Director for the Coalition for the Homeless. [videos…]

Henry A. Waxman

Henry Waxman is the U.S. Representative for California’s 30th congressional district, serving in Congress since 1975. Before his election to Congress, he served six years in the California State Assembly. With the Democrats’ victory in the 2006 midterm elections, Waxman became Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. He was the committee’s ranking Democrat from 1997 to 2007. From 2009-2010, he served as the Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee after defeating Chairman John Dingell in a secret vote of House Democrats. In January 2011, Republicans became the majority party in the House, ending Democratic chairmanships, but Waxman remains the committee’s ranking member. A leader on health and environmental issues, Rep. Waxman has fought for universal health insurance, comprehensive Medicare and Medicaid coverage, tobacco regulation, air and water quality standards, pesticide regulations, and community rights to know about pollution levels. From 1979 to 1994, he chaired the Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Health and the Environment. Rep. Waxman has sponsored a long list of health bills that have been enacted into law. These measures include the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, and the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act. Born in Los Angeles, CA, Waxman attended local public schools before receiving a B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles, and his J.D. from the same institution.

Ronald Wyden

Ronald Lee “Ron” Wyden is the senior U.S. Senator for Oregon, serving since 1996, and a member of the Democratic Party. He previously served in the United States House of Representatives from 1981 to 1996. Born in Wichita, Kansas, Wyden grew up in Palo Alto, CA, where he was a basketball star for Palo Alto High School. He attended UC Santa Barbara on a basketball scholarship. He later earned a B.A. degree with distinction from Stanford University and received a J.D. degree from the University of Oregon School of Law in 1974. Following law school, Wyden taught gerontology at several Oregon universities and co-founded the Oregon chapter of the Gray Panthers, an advocacy group for the elderly. He led that organization from 1974 to 1980, and also served as the director of the Oregon Legal Services for the Elderly, a nonprofit law service, from 1977 to 1979. Wyden was first elected to Congress in 1980 to represent Oregon’s 3rd District. In 1996, he was elected to the U.S. Senate in a special election. He was sworn in on February 5, 1996, to the seat once held by his mentor, U.S. Senator Wayne Morse.

Sharon Y. Eubanks

A graduate of Georgetown University Law Center, Sharon Eubanks spent the first three years of her legal career litigating antitrust cases at the Federal Trade Commission, and the following twenty-two years at the U.S. Department of Justice. From 2000 to 2005, Eubanks served as lead counsel for the United States in the largest civil Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) enforcement action ever filed, United States v. Philip Morris USA, et al. Following a nine-month trial, the federal district court found that defendants, the major U.S. cigarette companies, violated the civil provisions of RICO and committed fraud on a massive scale. That decision was sustained on appeal, and the case continues before the federal district court on remedies issues. Her book about the federal tobacco litigation, “Continuing Bad Acts”, will be published in 2012. Eubanks is currently Senior Litigation Counsel in the Washington D.C. office of Sanford Wittels & Heisler, LLP. She lives with her family in McLean, Virginia.

Steven C. Parrish

In 2008, Steve Parrish retired as Senior Vice President, Corporate Affairs, of Altria Group, Inc., a position he held since 1995. At Altria, Steve was responsible for the Altria family of companies’ government relations, communications and corporate philanthropy. His previously served as Senior Vice President, Worldwide Regulatory Affairs, Philip Morris Companies Inc.; General Counsel and Senior Vice President, External Affairs, Philip Morris USA; and numerous other positions covering a range of legal, regulatory and public affairs issues. Before joining Philip Morris, Steve was a partner in the Kansas City, Missouri, law firm of Shook, Hardy & Bacon. Steve was the subject of a cover story in The New York Times Magazine (June 2006) and he has appeared on numerous national news programs such as Face the Nation, Meet the Press, and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. He is Chairman of the Board of Directors of Safe Horizon, an internationally recognized leader in the field of victim assistance, domestic violence, child abuse, sexual assault and human trafficking. Steve is also a member of the Board of Governors of Milano School of International Affairs, Management, and Urban Policy in New York City. A native of Moberly, Missouri, Steve received a B.A. degree in 1972 and a J.D. degree in 1975, both from the University of Missouri. He lives in Westport, Connecticut. [videos…]

Dan Zegart

Dan Zegart is a veteran writer with more than twenty years’ experience as an investigative reporter for newspapers, television and national magazines. His vivid journalism has been featured in The New York Times, Ms., Playboy and The Nation, for which he frequently covers legal and political issues. He has also written, reported, produced or consulted for PBS’s “Frontline” and “Nova”, ABC News “20/20”, and the ABC documentary series “Directions”. Of Zegart’s first book, CIVIL WARRIORS: THE LEGAL SIEGE OF THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY (Delacorte Press), published in 2000, The New York Times Book Review wrote, “Zegart succeeds in his ambitious goal of condensing the details of seven litigations, including three trials, into a single strong narrative populated by vivid characters. Along the way, he provides numerous surprising portraits.” His second book, YOUR FATHER’S VOICE: LETTERS FOR EMMY ABOUT LIFE WITH JEREMY – AND WITHOUT HIM AFTER 9/11 (St. Martin’s Press), published in 2004, is the story of Lyz Glick, widow of Jeremy Glick, who died during a failed attempt to drive terrorists from the cockpit of Flight 93 on September 11th. Zegart has spoken or lectured at the University of Virginia School of Law, Wesleyan University, Princeton University, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, the World Conference on Tobacco OR Health and elsewhere. [videos…]

Mitchell Zeller

Mitchell Zeller has almost three decades of regulatory, legislative, and communications experience, working with federal health agencies on public health policy issues including the treatment of tobacco dependence, and the regulation of tobacco products and pharmaceuticals. From 1982 to 1988, he served as assistant director for Legal Affairs with the Center for Science in the Public Interest. From 1988 to 1993, Zeller was counsel to the Human Resources and Intergovernmental Relations Subcommittee of the House Government Operations Committee where he conducted oversight of federal health and safety agencies. From 1993 until June 2000, Zeller served as Associate Commissioner and director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Tobacco Programs and served as the FDA’s representative on tobacco issues in all dealings with the Congress, federal and state agencies, public health groups and foreign governments. From June 2000 until August 2002, Zeller was executive vice president of the American Legacy Foundation, a public health foundation created by the November 1998 Master Settlement Agreement. Zeller has published papers in several leading medical and public health journals and is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Secretary’s Award for Distinguished Service and the National Public Affairs Special Recognition Award from the American Heart Association. Zeller joined Pinney Associates in 2002, and currently serves as Vice President for Policy and Strategic Communications. He attended Dartmouth College and is a graduate of the American University Washington College of Law in Washington, D.C.