Attorney Leigh Walton of Bass, Berry & Sims has been elected as a member of the 2019 class of fellows by the American College of Governance Counsel. Walton is one of 11 individuals from the United States and Canada elected this year.

ACGC is a professional, educational and honorary association of lawyers widely recognized for their achievements in the field of corporate governance.

Walton joins Bass, Berry & Sims attorney James H. Cheek, III, as a member of the association. Cheek and Walton are among only a half-dozen attorneys in the South to be recognized. Cheek was a founding fellow of ACGC, which has a stated mission of promoting a high level of professional standards among corporate governance lawyers and a better understanding and broader adoption of best practices within business organizations.

Walton has more than 40 years of experience advising public companies in the areas of corporate governance, mergers and acquisitions, private equity transactions and securities offerings. She is serving her second six-year term on the American Bar Association’s Corporate Laws Committee, where she co-chairs the Corporate Director’s Guidebook Task Force.

She is a past chair of the ABA’s Business Law Section Mergers & Acquisitions Committee, which has more than 5,000 members in 40 countries on five continents.

Bass, Berry & Sims name practice group co-chairs

Bass, Berry & Sims has announced new leadership of its Healthcare Private Equity and Private Equity Teams with Angela Humphreys and Ryan Thomas appointed as co-chairs.

Thomas also will serve as chair of the firm’s general industry Private Equity Team.

The teams provide counsel in hundreds of private equity transactions involving health care providers and businesses across a diverse array of industries.

Humphreys, co-chair of the Healthcare Private Equity Team and chair of the firm’s nationally ranked Healthcare Practice, brings over two decades of experience counseling national health care organizations through hundreds of transactions. During the last 23 years, she has led deals with a combined value exceeding $60 billion and has provided clients with creative solutions to the complex operational and regulatory issues in the health care industry.

Thomas serves as counsel to national companies and private equity firms on M&A, growth equity and securities matters. He focuses on middle market M&A transactions and in his 20 years of practice has closed more than $50 billion in M&A transactions, and more than $60 billion in overall transactions, including both the largest domestic leveraged buyout and the largest private equity-backed IPO at the time.

Stites & Harbison welcomes Noah

Mary Lu Noah is joining Stites & Harbison’s Nashville office in the Real Estate and Banking Service Group. Her practice focuses on real estate and environmental issues.

Previously, Noah was assistant district counsel for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Nashville District, serving as its primary real estate and natural resource attorney for three years.

She earned her J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School and her B.A. from Vanderbilt University.

During law school, she focused on environmental and international law completing internships with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Department of State and the United Nations. Noah also served as a student attorney for the University of Michigan Environmental Law Clinic and the University of Michigan Civil-Criminal Litigation Clinic.

Miller accepted to Baylor LLM program

Attorney Phillip Miller has been accepted into the Baylor University Executive LLM in Litigation Management program.

This program, taught by top litigation management experts, is designed for working professionals and is a blend of online and in-person learning. Miller will continue his personal injury law practice while earning his LLM.

In recognition of Miller’s academic and professional achievements, he has been awarded the Baylor Law Dean’s Scholarship.

Miller is an expert in the areas of depositions, moderating focus groups and developing effective trial strategies. He is certified as a civil trial specialist of the National Board of Trial Advocacy for his extensive background in representing injured persons in personal injury cases. He has served as a course adviser or faculty member for more than 50 national programs.

Miller earned an undergraduate and a master’s degrees in public administration degree from Pennsylvania State University. He holds his law degree from the Nashville School of Law.

Vanderbilt’s Diamond, Churchwell honored

Alex Diamond, DO, MPH, has been named Tennessee’s Pediatrician of the Year.

Also, at Vanderbilt, André Churchwell, M.D., chief diversity officer VU Medical Center and senior associate dean for Diversity Affairs for the school medicine, has been named to the Roundtable on Black Men and Black Women in Science, Engineering and Medicine.

Diamond is associate professor of Pediatrics and Orthopedic Surgery, director of the Program for Injury Prevention in Youth Sports and team physician for Vanderbilt University, the Nashville Predators and the Nashville Sounds.

It’s the second consecutive year a Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt physician has earned the award from the Tennessee Chapter of American Academy of Pediatrics (TNAAP).

Churchwell was nominated as one of 30 members of the initiative by the leadership of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. The roundtable was established to examine the range of barriers facing black men and black women in pursuit of careers in science, engineering and medicine, with the goal of proposing actionable solutions that remove those barriers and create the type of systemic change necessary for black men and black women to thrive in those fields.

Wealth Strategies selects relationship manager

Danielle Spence has joined Wealth Strategies Partners as a relationship manager.

She will focus on building the practice’s relationships and providing comprehensive, tailored wealth management solutions to its high-net-worth clients.

Spence brings nearly two decades of financial industry experience to the firm. Previously, she served as a vice president of private banking at ServisFirst Bank, where she provided comprehensive, personalized banking services to individuals with significant high-net-worth relationships. She has extensive trust and investment management expertise as well as commercial banking and lending experience.

She holds the Series 7 General Securities Representative license and certification by the American Bankers Association as a certified trust and financial adviser.

Wealth Strategies Partners, a member of the Raymond James Financial Services network, is a

Pinnacle adds 3 in IT management

John McCoy, Keith Thomas and Daryl Scherr have joined Pinnacle Financial Partners in IT systems management roles, all based at the firm’s Mt. Juliet Road office.

McCoy joins Pinnacle as director of vendor management. He has 20 years of experience and has served in several key positions within UBS Financial Services, Inc. Before joining Pinnacle, he was director and U.S. regional lead of UBS’ procurement services. McCoy also was director of the company’s transition management, banking operations and vendor management. He has also served as head of administration for Independence Trust Company in Franklin.

He earned his bachelor’s degree in marketing and business administration from Belmont University and his master’s degree with a concentration in leadership from Lipscomb University. He is an adjunct professor for Lipscomb University’s Graduate College of Business.

Thomas brings 21 years of information technology experience to his role of director of network operations. He comes to Pinnacle from 3-D Technology Group, LLC, where he was vice president of managed services.

He earned a degree in information technology and network design and management from Western Governor’s University in Salt Lake City, and a master’s degree in information security and assurance from Western Governor’s University.

Scherr, with 26 years of experience, is an enterprisewide project manager. Previously he was a vice president and enterprise tools manager and project manager/work plan manager for SunTrust Bank, Inc. in Atlanta, where he managed a comprehensive workload that drove SunTrust’s multibillion-dollar enterprisewide IT applications. Before that, he spent 17 years with The Home Depot in Atlanta, where he was senior project manager over IT and infrastructure development.

Scherr earned a degree in business administration and information systems from Strayer University and an associate degree in architectural engineering from Porter and Chester Institute.

MP&F adds 4 staffers

MP&F Strategic Communications has hired Amy Dalton, Andrea Lindsey, Celeste Malone and Shawna McIntosh as the firm’s newest staff associates.

Dalton, a Detroit native, graduated from Belmont University in 2019 with a degree in public relations with an emphasis in corporate communications and social entrepreneurship.

Lindsey earned a degree in public relations and a minor in design communications from Belmont University in May 2019. She interned at MP&F before joining the firm.

Malone is a two-time graduate of Austin Peay State University, earning her M.A. degree in marketing communication in 2019 and B.S. degree in communication arts in 2017.

She also completed internships with Twitter, The Congressional Award and 5 Star Media Group.

McIntosh is a recent graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she majored in public relations through the School of Media and Journalism and minored in public policy. She has experience in creative strategy, event planning, social media content creation and crisis communication.