Waller has chosen John Tishler as leader of the firm’s Healthcare Restructuring Team, which provides support to borrowers and lenders at a time when the health care industry is being tested by the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic downturn.
Tishler brings more than three decades of experience counseling national health care organizations. An insolvency and restructuring attorney by trade, Tishler’s experience handling high-profile, complex cases includes helping clients through their own workouts and bankruptcies (Church Street Health Management, Crittenden Hospital Association and a large senior living company); serving as lead debtor’s counsel and negotiating forbearance arrangements and the sale of multifacility health care providers (Promise Healthcare); and acting as an agent for secured and unsecured creditors in Chapter 11 cases throughout the country.
Between 2008 and 2014, Tishler served Waller as its chairman.
Markham elected secretary of Children’s Alliance
Butler Snow attorney Ashley J. Markham has been elected to the Nashville Children’s Alliance’s executive committee as board secretary. Markham previously served as president of the organization’s Young Professionals’ board before joining the board of directors.
The Nashville Children’s Alliance, formerly the Nashville Child Advocacy Center, was founded in 1992 by a community task force seeking coordinated services and better outcomes for children when there were allegations of sexual or severe physical abuse. The nonprofit agency provides services such as front-line forensic interviews to assist in determining if abuse has occurred, weekly therapy sessions, court support, crisis services to families and support groups for non-offending parents at no cost to children in Davidson County.
Markham focuses her practice on defending pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers in mass tort and individual cases pending in various state and federal venues throughout the country. She has experience in defending medical malpractice cases in the state of Tennessee, as well as reviewing and negotiating commercial agreements in the pharmaceutical and other health care industries, including clinical research and development agreements and commercial sourcing and procurement agreements with an emphasis on health care regulatory and compliance issues.
Markham is a member of the American Bar Association, the Tennessee Bar Association, The Mississippi Bar, the Nashville Bar Association and the Defense Research Institute. She received her bachelor’s degree, cum laude, from the University of Mississippi and her juris doctor from Mississippi College.
Galbreath, Fulcher win lifetime achievement awards
Dodd Galbreath, conservationist and founding director of Lipscomb University’s Institute for Sustainable Practice, and Bobby Fulcher, a park manager with over 40 years of service to Tennessee State Parks, have each been named winner of the 2020 Robert Sparks Walker Lifetime Achievement Award.
The award is part of the annual Governor’s Environmental Stewardship Awards.
Galbreath, now associate professor of sustainability, became founding director of the institute at Lipscomb in 2007. It was the Southeast’s first academic program offering a MBA, Master of Science, graduate certificate and undergraduate major and minor in sustainability. It fostered entrepreneurs, scientists, engineers, policymakers and other sustainability leaders. He also became active in community engagement, participating in several community programs and boards.
Galbreath studied agriculture at Tennessee Technological University and earned a master’s degree from the University of Tennessee. He worked with landowners as a federal employee with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, providing technical and planning assistance in preservation, restoration, conservation and use of natural resources.
He also worked for TDEC as a senior policy executive.
Fulcher has dedicated his professional life to Tennessee State Parks, spanning 40-plus years from his first job as a seasonal employee at Pickett State Park in 1976 to his current role as park manager at Justin P. Wilson Cumberland Trail State Scenic Trail State Park.
As leader of the park since 2000, he has guided the vision for the Cumberland Trail. Fulcher has received numerous accolades for his time, effort and dedication to the natural and cultural heritage of the Cumberland Plateau and Appalachian region.
Fulcher grew up in a military family before attending the University of Tennessee, where he received a degree in forestry in 1976.
As a regional naturalist, he applied for and received funds through the National Endowment for the Arts’ Folk Arts Program, and the funding was used to start the Tennessee State Parks Folklife Project, with three folklorists, one for each grand division in the state. He took up the challenge of preserving old songs by collecting and recording materials during visits in homes of Tennesseans. He began successful folk music programs and festivals in the parks. The Folklife Project has produced more than 500 hours of audiotapes, 9,600 slides and 2,200 black-and-white negatives that are stored in the vaults of the Tennessee State Library and Archives in Nashville.
In 1999, Fulcher joined the staff at Cumberland Trail State Park before becoming manager the next year. It is the state’s only linear park as a scenic hiking trail cutting through 11 Tennessee counties and follows a line of pristine high ridges and deep gorges along the Cumberland Plateau. The state continues to partner with the Cumberland Trails Conference and other volunteers to solicit public and private support for the acquisition of land along the trail. In 2002, the park was renamed for Justin P. Wilson in honor of Wilson’s work to help make the vision of the Cumberland Trail a reality.
Nashville’s Brakefield wins UT Boyd Venture Challenge
Mary Cayten Brakefield is a winner of this year’s Boyd Venture Challenge, an annual grant competition for businesses owned by students at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
Facilitated by the Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the Haslam College of Business, the spring 2020 competition awarded $30,000 in seed funds to four different student-owned businesses.
Brakefields LLC, a clothing brand offering adaptive garments for people with disabilities, was awarded $10,000. Brakefield, a Hillsboro High graduate, a member of the UT swim team and a senior majoring in retail and consumer sciences and minoring in business administration, owns the company.
“Our products give people with disabilities the chance to dress independently, go about their day comfortably and unencumbered by their clothing, and have the freedom to choose if and when they disclose their private medical conditions to the public – experiences taken for granted by able-bodied people every single day,” Brakefield says.
With the award money, Brakefield says the company will conduct further market research to learn what clothing features its customer base needs, take steps toward patenting features of its designs and present prototypes to a manufacturer.
Comfort Supply hires executive vice president
Tennessee HVAC wholesale distributor Comfort Supply has hired Steve Foutch as executive vice president. Foutch has more than 29 years of experience in the HVAC industry, both residential and commercial.
Foutch will oversee all seven Comfort Supply locations in Middle Tennessee as well as the company’s commercial department within the corporate office. His other responsibilities include developing plans and strategies for business development, managing customer and vendor relationships, coordinating sales training programs and overseeing branch managers.
Foutch previously worked at Lennox Industries, a HVAC manufacturer and distributor in Nashville. He joined Lennox in 2004 as a regional business manager and was promoted to district manager in 2006. He was named zone manager in 2009 and served in that position for 11 years, overseeing 12 of the company’s distribution locations. During his time at Lennox, he received several awards, including Zone Manager of the Year in 2010 and 2019 and the Lennox Top Gun Award in 2010 through 2014 and 2018.
Foutch earned a degree in business administration and marketing from Texas Tech University.
Southwestern adds vice president of human resources
Patty Hoppenstedt has joined Southwestern Family of Companies as vice president of human resources. Hoppenstedt is responsible for smooth operations of the human resources department providing consultation on strategic staffing plans, including compensation, benefits, training and development, budget and labor relations.
Before joining Southwestern, Hoppenstedt held HR leadership roles at a variety of companies and city governments including DentaQuest, Amedisys, Village of Schaumburg and Levy Security Corporation. She attended the University of Illinois at Chicago and holds an MBA specializing in Human Resources Management from the Keller Graduate School of Management of DeVry University.
Surface, Leet join MP&F
MP&F Strategic Communications has welcomed two new staff members to support the agency’s creative services department and account staff.
Jeff Leet joins MP&F’s creative services team as a senior designer. A Kentucky native, Leet has 15 years of experience in the creative industry.
For the last 10 years, he worked as a senior designer at CMT, where he performed an extensive range of duties including art-directing photo shoots as well as creating and designing key art for TV series. The graduate of Watkins College of Art & Design also has worked as a senior designer at Anode and as an in-house designer for Genesco and Hammock Publishing.
Jim Surface, a Nashville native, joins MP&F as a senior account executive with a background primarily in digital marketing with a focus on social media. Previously, he worked at Drive Social Media, where his clients included Fleet Feet Nashville, Mayday Brewery and the Music City Bowl.
He earned a master’s degree in strategic communications from the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University.