Our Team
Washington, D.C.
Michael L. Whitener
David Camhi
Keith U. Kuder
Veronica I. Pastor
John J. Smith
Paris
London
Madrid
Advisory Team and Alumni
VistaLaw International is a global network of law firms, individual attorneys and consultants. The people on our team are members of the bars indicated in the profiles below.
Michael Whitener
Principal and Co-Founder
Washington, D.C.
Michael’s legal career has focused primarily on international trade and corporate transactions, with a particular emphasis on assisting software and other high-technology clients develop their global businesses. He was Associate General Counsel – International at BearingPoint, supervising a team of in-house lawyers and outside counsel in the Asia-Pacific, Europe and the Middle East. His responsibilities included negotiating technology-related commercial agreements as well as heading BearingPoint's global IP protection/licensing program. Previously, Michael was based in Singapore as Managing Director and General Counsel of WorldSpace Asia, a subsidiary of a US-based global satellite communications company. Michael was in private practice at the law firms of
Sidley Austin (New York and Washington, D.C.) and Hogan & Hartson (Washington, D.C.). Michael also spent two years with the US Department of Commerce as a trade adviser, and was a Fulbright Fellow in Tokyo, Japan.
Michael is a graduate of the College of William and Mary and the University of Virginia School of Law. Michael is a member of the bars of New York, the District of Columbia, and Virginia.
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David Camhi
Principal
Washington, D.C.
David is qualified to practice law in New York, Colombia and Mexico. His legal career has focused primarily on U.S.–Latin America transactions, both representing Latin American clients doing business in the United States and U.S. clients doing business in Latin America. He serves as General Counsel of Phoenix Packaging Group, a conglomerate of companies with manufacturing facilities in the U.S., Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela. David has lived in Bogota, Mexico City, New York and Miami, and his law firm experience includes practicing with Thacher Proffitt & Wood in Mexico City, Sidley Austin in New York and Prieto & Carrizosa and Baker & McKenzie in Bogota. He has also practiced in-house as Associate Corporate Counsel with BearingPoint in Mexico City. He received an LL.B. from Universidad de los Andes, a Graduate Degree in Finance from CESA and an LL.M. from Cornell University.
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Keith Kuder
Principal
Washington, D.C.
Keith joined VistaLaw in January 2010 after three years as the General Counsel – North America of the North Carolina-based marketing and telecommunications company ACN, Inc. Keith has held senior legal positions at Cable & Wireless, MCI and BearingPoint. Through his various roles, Keith has developed specific expertise in the areas of telecommunications, purchase and sale of technology and telecommunications services, consumer protection, e-commerce, litigation and legal department management. In private practice, Keith first worked as a litigator with Seattle's Lane Powell Spears Lubersky and later worked at D.C.’s Wiley Rein & Fielding. A member of the D.C. bar, Keith received his bachelor's and law degrees from the University of Virginia.
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Veronica Pastor
Principal
Washington, D.C.
Veronica joined VistaLaw in January 2010 after six years as Assistant General Counsel and Director, Business Development at Intelsat. She has ten years' experience drafting and negotiating sales and marketing contracts and joint venture agreements. Before joining Intelsat, Veronica was the Washington liaison for Global Crossing, having previously worked in London as a senior lawyer for FLAG Telecom and Cable & Wireless. In private practice, she undertook a number of regulatory reform projects in Panama, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Chile and the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville) while an Associate at Wilkinson Barker Knauer & Quinn and Squire Sanders & Dempsey. Veronica has co-authored two books on international telecommunications regulation and written several articles on international topics. She is fluent in Spanish, French and Italian and able to conduct negotiations and draft documents in those languages. A graduate of Georgetown University Law Center, Veronica is a member of the bars of New York and England and Wales.
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John J. Smith
Principal
Washington, D.C.
John has extensive experience in telecommunications, e-commerce and information technology law, regulation and policy, as well as general business law, complex commercial transactions, and corporate governance. He has served in various senior management positions, including in-house counsel and strategic advisor to a major computer network company and as General Counsel and Secretary to subsidiaries of Oracle and General Electric. In these roles, he has dealt with a range of commercial, transactional and domestic and international regulatory compliance matters, including large-scale procurements, software development and licensing, network management and outsourcing arrangements, and intellectual property. John is a graduate of Columbia University and the George Washington University School of Law. He is a member of the Bars of Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, and the District of Columbia.
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Kristine Karsten
Principal
Paris
Kristine is qualified to practice both in New York and in France. After the Arthur Andersen group acquired the law firm of which she was a partner in 1991, she became the head, successively, of the intellectual and industrial property law group, the real estate group and the banking and finance group within the 600 + lawyer Andersen Legal. Kristine later headed the banking and finance department and also co-chaired the real estate department of the UK law firm Eversheds. In 2006, she moved to Affina Legal, where she advised a number of international corporate groups, often in the context of complex, cross-border transactions. Kristine teaches business law in the accredited English-language MBA program offered by the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (CNAM) and sits as a member of the Institute of World Business Law of the International Chamber of Commerce.
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Nicholas Bell
London
Nicholas has worked primarily in the telecommunications and technology sectors. He spent fifteen years with Cable & Wireless, where he handled a wide range of commercial transactions supporting the UK business. He gained international experience working on the wholesale side of the business and managed a number of complex disputes with customers. More recently he has worked as a commercial consultant at Misys plc, concluding major agreements for the licensing and support of software both in the UK and internationally. Having served in legal and commercial roles, Nicholas has considerable experience in managing business risks. He is a graduate of Oxford University.
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Marta Pérez Dorao
Madrid
Marta is business and IT lawyer with broad experience in M&A and intellectual property. She served for ten years as General Counsel and Secretary to the Board of Directors of Meta4 Group, which operates high growth businesses in the areas of social Internet services, permission email media, and electronic retailing. Marta was responsible for corporate and operational legal issues globally and managed the internal legal team, as well as external law firms in all of the countries in which the company operated. Recently she served as manager of corporate legal services of Grupo Softland, an ERP software company in Spain and Latin America. She graduated in the Granada University and has a postgraduate degree in computer law and legal information systems. She attended the General Management Program (PDG) at IESE Business School in 2005.
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Advisory Team and Alumni
Some of VistaLaw’s original co-founders have taken roles in the corporate and public policy sectors, but they continue to work with the firm in an informal advisory capacity.
Bertrand Alexis was a principal in our Paris office from 2007 until 2009, when he joined the Qatar Telecommunications Group. He is currently Senior Director, Mergers & Acquisitions at Qtel International in Doha, Qatar, where his responsibilities include M&A and corporate governance.
Amr El-Bayoumi was a principal in our London office from 2008 until 2010. He is currently Regional Counsel for Japan Tobacco, covering the Middle East and Africa, and is based in London.
Blake Redding was a principal in our Paris office from 2007 until 2009, when he joined Dolphin Energy Limited of Abu Dhabi as its General Counsel. He is responsible for all aspects of Dolphin’s legal support and compliance.
Robert Walton was a principal in our Washington, D.C. office from 2007 until 2010. He is currently Senior Policy Director at Transparency International-USA (TI-USA) in Washington, D.C., where he is responsible for TI-USA’s private sector integrity initiatives. A VistaLaw client, TI-USA is a non-profit, non-partisan organization focused on combating corruption in government and international business. We continue to work with Rob on issues relating to anti-corruption compliance and best practices in the private sector.
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