Board Member
Anastasia D. Kelly (Stasia) is a partner in DLA Piper’s Corporate and Finance and Public Company and Corporate Governance practice as well as the firm’s White Collar Corporate Crime and Investigations group. Ms. Kelly joined DLA Piper in 2010 after a 15-year career as General Counsel in four leading public companies.
Ms. Kelly was an associate and then a partner with Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering in Washington, DC, between 1985 and 1995, where her practice spanned several areas of the law, including the regulation of financial institutions and securities firms, corporate and securities and intellectual property. Earlier in her career, Ms. Kelly was associated with Carrington, Coleman, Sloman & Blumenthal in Dallas, Texas, where she practiced in the litigation group.
Ms. Kelly has extensive experience as both outside counsel and as a General Counsel and brings these different perspectives to bear in her current practice, working closely with boards of directors on corporate governance issues, helping clients build effective compliance and regulatory programs, and advising boards and management on crisis management.
Ms. Kelly also sits on two public company boards, Owens-Illinois, the world’s largest manufacturer of glass packaging, and Huntington-Ingalls Industries, which designs, builds and maintains nuclear and non-nuclear ships for the US Navy and the Coast Guard. At Owens-Illinois, Ms. Kelly chairs the Risk Committee and is a member of the Compensation Committee. She chairs the Governance and Policy Committee at Huntington-Ingalls Industries.
In her four General Counsel roles, Ms. Kelly focused on helping companies through crises and building effective legal and compliance frameworks. At American International Group (AIG), Ms. Kelly was Executive Vice President, General Counsel, Chief Compliance and Regulatory Officer from 2006 to 2008 and Vice Chairman in 2009. Ms. Kelly was brought to AIG in the capacity of General Counsel to build a worldwide legal, regulatory and compliance team across the AIG enterprise in the aftermath of government investigations related to the company. In her role as Vice Chairman, she was given additional responsibility by the board for government relations, external communications, corporate affairs and human resources across AIG during the financial crisis.
In 2003, Ms. Kelly was asked to join the restructuring team at MCI/WorldCom during its bankruptcy and restructuring. Ms. Kelly served as Executive Vice President and General Counsel and helped lead the team that brought MCI out of bankruptcy and restructured the business in the wake of major regulatory changes, culminating in the acquisition of MCI by Verizon in 2006.
In 1999, Ms. Kelly was recruited as Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Sears, Roebuck and Co. in the aftermath of the company’s serious compliance issues in its credit business. While at Sears, Ms. Kelly restructured the legal teams and developed and strengthened the company’s compliance and regulatory functions. Before her tenure at Sears, Ms. Kelly served as the Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary at Fannie Mae. There, she centralized the company’s legal and compliance function and upgraded the talent across Fannie Mae’s five offices nationwide.
Ms. Kelly is an active leader at DLA Piper and is a member of the firm’s Executive Committee. She is a mentor to a number of the firm’s women lawyers and is on the leadership committee of the firm’s Law Alliance for Women (LAW), which, among other goals, is committed to the hiring, development and advancement of women lawyers at DLA Piper.
Ms. Kelly co-teaches a course at Stanford Law School on the role of the modern general counsel. She is a frequent lecturer on the role of directors in public companies and on crisis management for a number of organizations, including Practising Law Institute, Corporate Board Member and Georgetown Law School’s Corporate Counsel Institute. She is a frequent contributor to Corporate Counsel magazine as well as other publications. She is the editor of Corporate Counsel’s Project 5/165, which is committed to increasing the number of women General Counsel in Fortune 500 companies. Ms. Kelly is also on the advisory board of the Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford Law School.
Ms. Kelly received her law degree magna cum laude from George Washington University, where she was a member of the Order of the Coif and the Law Review. She received her undergraduate degree from Trinity University in Washington, DC.