Board of Directors

Partner,
Carroll, Burdick & McDonough LLP,
San Francisco, CA

Dana Beldiman is a partner of the law firm Carroll, Burdick & McDonough LLP, in San Francisco and specializes in international intellectual property law and international transactions. She has taught at the Santa Clara University School of Law and is currently adjunct professor at U.C. Hastings, San Francisco, as well as visiting professor at Bucerius Law School, Hamburg, Germany and the Riga Graduate School of Law, Riga, Latvia. Dana also serves as Honorary Consul General of Romania in San Francisco.

She holds a M.A. degree from the University of Bucharest, Romania, a J.D. from U.C. Hastings in San Francisco, a L.L.M. in Intellectual Property from Santa Clara University School of Law and a doctorate in law from the University of Bremen, Germany.

Partner,
Alston + Bird LLP,
New York, NY 

David Detjen is a partner in the firm's New York office and the leader of the firm’s German Practice Team. His practice is concentrated on the representation of European clients regarding U.S. legal matters, including mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, licensing of intellectual property and general corporate and commercial issues.

David is the editor-in-chief of the International Law Practicum, a publication of the New York State Bar Association, and he is the author of The Germans in Missouri, 1900 - 1918, University of Missouri Press, 1985; Establishing a United States Joint Venture with a Foreign Partner, Matthew Bender & Co.: 1988, 1990, and 1993; United States Joint Ventures with International Partners, Juris Publishing, 2000; and two German-English bilingual handbooks for the German American Chamber of Commerce: Das Handelsvertreter – und Eigenhaendlerrecht in den USA/Distributorship Agreements in the United States, 1983 and 1989; and Lizenzierung von Technologie und Warenzeichen in den USA/Licensing Technology and Trademarks in the United States, 1988 and 1997.

He is a member of the American Bar Association and its Section on Business Law and its Section on International Law and Practice; The New York State Bar Association and its International Section (and vice-chairman and a member of the executive committee of that section); The Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis; The Association of the Bar of the City of New York (and a member of the Council on International Affairs of that association); and The German American Law Association.

He received his J.D. from Washington University School of Law in St. Louis and his A.B., magna cum laude, from the College of Arts and Sciences of Washington University, and in 2010 was honored as a distinguished alumnus of the College. He also studied law and history at the Eberhard-Karls-Universität in Tübingen, Germany.

President,
ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius,
Hamburg

Since 1997, Prof. Dr. phil. Michael Göring has been a member of the board of Bucerius Law School. Since 2005, he has also served as CEO and president of the Hamburg-based foundation ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius, one of the largest foundations in Germany, which established Bucerius Law School in 2000. From 1993 until 1997, Göring was Program Director at the Essen-based Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach-Stiftung. From 1988 until 1993, worked at the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes (German National Merit Foundation), Bad Godesberg, in charge of international programs particularly with regards to the United States, Japan and China. He started his career teaching English Literature at the University of Munich, and since 2000 has been an honorary professor at the Cultural and Media Management Institute at the Hamburg School of Music and Theatre.

Göring serves as a board member for the German Association of Foundations, the German National Merit Foundation, the Stiftung zur Förderung der Hamburgischen Kunstsammlungen (foundation supporting the purchase of fine art for museums in Hamburg), the Hamburg Regional Advisory Council of Deutsche Bank, and the advisory board of Hamburger Sparkasse (Hamburg City Bank). He has studied at the Universities of Cologne, Swansea (UK), Munich and Wayne State, Detroit and holds his Ph.D. in English Literature.

Partner,
Venable LLP,
Baltimore, MD
Board Chair

Jim Hanks focuses his practice on general corporation and securities law, mergers and acquisitions and corporate governance. He is an Adjunct Professor of Law at Northwestern Law School and a Visiting Senior Lecturer at Cornell Business School. Since 1996, Hanks has taught Comparative Corporate Law and Governance at the Cornell Law School-Université de Paris I Summer Institute and since 2003 he has taught International Mergers and Acquisitions at Bucerius Law School. From 1997 until 2003, Hanks was a member of the ABA law school accreditation committee and has also served as a member of the Board of Regents of Morgan State University. He received his LL.M. from Harvard Law School, his LL.B. from the University of Maryland School of Law and his A.B. from Princeton University. Hanks also advises governments on revision of their company and securities laws. For several years, he has been named one of The Best Lawyers in America.

Partner,
Wuersch & Gering LLP,
New York, NY
Board Treasurer

Gregory Hauser is a partner with Wuersch & Gering LLP, admitted to the bar in New York and before more than a dozen federal courts. He received his J.D. degree from New York University, cum laude, where he also served on the Law Review. Hauser holds B.S. and M.S. degrees from Michigan State University. Prior to joining the firm, he was a litigation partner at Walter, Conston, Alexander & Green, P.C., and the New York office of Alston & Bird LLP. Previously he was a litigation associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. Hauser’s litigation practice includes domestic and international commercial litigation and arbitration, including product liability defense, intellectual property, insurance coverage, and employment, contracts and business tort matters. He has written a number of law review articles on various topics and has lectured on product liability law and the differences between the civil law and common law legal systems. He is fluent in German.

Associate Professor,
Seton Hall University School of Law,
Newark, NJ

Maggie K. Lewis is an Associate Professor at Seton Hall University’s School of Law where she focuses on criminal justice issues in China. Prior to joining the faculty at Seton Hall, she worked as a research fellow at the New York University School of Law U.S.-Asia Law Institute. Lewis received her J.D. from NYU School of Law in 2003. While at NYU, she spent a semester at Bucerius Law School in Hamburg, Germany. Following graduation, she worked at the law firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton in New York City and served as a law clerk for Judge M. Margaret McKeown on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Lewis received her B.A. from Columbia University and also studied at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center for Chinese and American Studies in Nanjing, China.

General Counsel,
Deutsche Telekom, Inc.,
Washington, DC 

Bradley Shingleton is General Counsel for Deutsche Telekom, Inc., a U.S. subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom AG. Previously, he practiced with law firms in Washington D.C., New York and Raleigh, North Carolina, specializing in corporate and international business transactions. In 1986-1987, Shingleton was a Fellow of the Robert Bosch Foundation in Stuttgart, Germany where he worked as a visiting attorney in the Federal Ministry of Justice in Bonn and in the Legal Department of Robert Bosch GmbH in Stuttgart. He is also the recipient of a Fulbright-DAAD scholarship, which enabled him to spend an academic year during his law school studies at Philipps-Universität in Marburg, Germany. Shingleton graduated from Duke University School of Law in 1982, and from Dickinson College, cum laude, in 1975.  He is admitted to practice in New York, North Carolina and the District of Columbia.

CEO,
Bucerius Education GmbH,
Hamburg;
President,
American Friends of Bucerius,
New York, NY
Executive Committee Member

In 2006, Dr. Nina Smidt became CEO of Bucerius Education GmbH, a for-profit subsidiary of Bucerius Law School, bringing innovative executive education, event management and complex consulting services to the European marketplace. Nina was elected to the board of American Friends of Bucerius in 2009. She has overseen the steady growth of the Bucerius network and business cooperation in the United States and has established an office for American Friends of Bucerius in Manhattan.

Prior to joining Bucerius, Nina worked for Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany and the International Center for Graduate Studies in Hamburg. She received her doctoral degree in Critical Theory at Hamburg University and studied literature, linguistics and critical theory in Hamburg, at the University of Technology, Sydney, and at Cornell University.

Partner,
Linklaters LLP,
Düsseldorf

Wolfgang Sturm is a Partner at Linklaters, focusing on public and private M&A transactions and pre- and post-closing restructurings. He has long-standing experience in the area of foreign direct investments in Germany and across Europe and is a regular advisor to European and Anglo-American corporations in their acquisitions of German targets with multinational structures. Until 2006, Wolfgang chaired the M&A corporate department in Germany. He began his career at Oppenhoff & Rädler, becoming Partner in 1997. In 2001, the firm merged with Linklaters, where he took the lead in initiating the China Desk in Germany to coordinate German-Chinese transactions.. Wolfgang studied law at the University of Cologne.

General Counsel,
Deutsche Bank AG,
New York, NY

Between 1998 and 2001, Richard Walker served as Director of the Division of Enforcement of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Prior to his appointment, Walker served as the Commission’s General Counsel. From 1991 through 1995 he was the Regional Director of the Commission’s Northeast Regional Office. Walker spent the preceding fifteen years in the New York office of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, where he was a litigation partner specializing in corporate, securities, and commercial litigation. From 1975 to 1976, Walker served as law clerk to the Hon. Collins J. Seitz, former Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Walker is a 1972 graduate of Trinity College and received his JD degree from Temple Law School in 1975.

CEO and Provost,
Bucerius Law School,
Hamburg

Dr. Hariolf Wenzler studied Economics and Political Science at the Universities of Hohenheim and Freiburg. After a post-graduate internship with Roland Berger and Partner in Munich, he finished his doctoral studies in 1996 in Finance and Monetary Economics. During this time, he completed a phase of his research at the EU Commission in Brussels, in the General Direction XX, Financial Control. Before joining Bucerius Law School as CEO in 2006, he worked for the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce and Hamburg Marketing GmbH.

Senior Fellow,
Center for American Progress,
Washington, DC
Executive Committee Member

Michael Werz works at American Progress as a member of the National Security Team focusing on climate migration and security as well as transatlantic foreign policy including Turkey. Previously, he was a senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund and served as executive director of the New York office of the Hessen Universities Consortium. Werz is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University's BMW Center for German and European Studies. Until 2003, Werz taught sociology at Hannover University in Germany, and has held appointments as a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., and as a John F. Kennedy Memorial Fellow at Harvard's Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies. Werz has published numerous articles and books dealing with a wide range of issues including race and ethnicity in the 20th century, and he is a frequent policy commentator for international media. His expertise includes U.S. and European foreign policy, migration policy, climate-migration, and the European Union. A German native, he is a graduate of Frankfurt University's Institute for Philosophy.