Damien Nyer is a senior associate in White & Case's international arbitration practice, based in New York. He has represented and advised sovereign and private clients in multiple foreign investment, infrastructure, construction, mining and insurance disputes. He also regularly advises on the drafting of dispute resolution clauses for complex international transactions and was the Secretary of the International Bar Association's taskforce that authored the IBA Guidelines for Drafting International Arbitration Clauses.
THOMAS J. STIPANOWICH
Contributor
Thomas Stipanowich holds the William H. Webster Chair in Dispute Resolution and is Professor of Law at Pepperdine University School of Law, as well as the Academic Director of the Straus Institute (ranked first by peers in the U.S. News ratings the last nine years in a row). He is the recipient of the D'Alemberte-Raven Award, the American Bar Association (ABA) Dispute Resolution Section's highest honor, for contributions to the field and other honors. He co-authored the much
cited five-volume FEDERAL ARBITRATION LAW (Best New Legal Book, Association of American Publishers), COMMERCIAL ARBITRATION AT ITS BEST (2001), and RESOLVING DISPUTES: THEORY, PRACTICE, AND LAW (2d ed. 2010). He served as Editor-in-Chief of the COLLEGE OF COMMERCIAL ARBITRATORS PROTOCOLS FOR EXPEDITIOUS, COSTEFFECTIVE COMMERCIAL ARBITRATION (2010), which received the 2010 Practical Achievement Award from the CPR Institute and the 2011 Lawyer as Problem Solver Award from the ABA Section on Dispute Resolution. He twice received the CPR Best Professional Article award,
most recently (2010) for "Arbitration: The 'New Litigation'" and "Arbitration and Choice."
He is currently an Advisor for the ALI's RESTATEMENT OF AMERICAN LAW OF INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION and is a member of the Academic Counsel of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration. He is an experienced commercial arbitrator and mediator with emphasis on large and complex cases in the U.S. and internationally. He has received appointments through the AAA, JAMS, the International Centre for Dispute Resolution (ICDR), the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and the CPR Institute. He has trained arbitrators or mediators for the AAA, CPR, the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and the Straus Institute; has facilitated internal and inter-organizational problem-solving and consensus-building efforts; and has helped develop corporate and institutional programs for avoiding or resolving disputes. In the fall of 2010, he was Scholar-in-Residence at the Park Lane (London) office of WilmerHale, which specializes in international commercial arbitration.
Mr. Stipanowich came to Pepperdine in 2006 after serving as the President and CEO of CPR, a New York-based nonprofit think tank, before which he enjoyed a long career as a chaired law professor and attorney. He may be the only individual who has been actively involved in the development of uniform laws as well as all of the leading providers' arbitration rules and ethical standards. He was academic advisor for revisions to the Uniform Arbitration Act and the Uniform
Mediation Act, and chief drafter of the Consumer Due Process Protocol (1997) governing consumer ADR programs, which became the basis of the AAA's consumer arbitration procedures. He served on the Board of Directors of the AAA, and was the first AAA International Visiting Scholar (2000). He also served as Public Member and, later, Chair of the Securities Industry Conference on Arbitration (SICA). He was actively involved in the revision of the Code of Ethics for Arbitrators in
Commercial Disputes. He holds an AV Rating from Martindale-Hubbell.
EDNA SUSSMAN
Contributor
Edna Sussman is a full time independent arbitrator and mediator and is the Distinguished ADR Practitioner in Residence at Fordham University School of Law.
Formerly a litigation partner at the law firm of White & Case LLP, Ms. Sussman serves on many institutional arbitration panels in jurisdictions around the world and has served as an arbitrator in over one hundred complex commercial disputes under various institutional rules.
Ms. Sussman is the founding Vice-Chair of the New York International Arbitration Center and serves on the Board and the Executive Committee of the AAA and the Board and Executive Committee of the College of Commercial Arbitrators. She is a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and certified by the International
Mediation Institute. Ms. Sussman is a former Chair of the Dispute Resolution Section of the New York State Bar Association and serves as co-editor-in-chief of the New York Dispute Resolution Lawyer. She was formerly co-Chair of the Arbitration Committees of the ABA's Section of International Law and Section of Dispute Resolution and served as the Chair of the Renewable Energy Committee and the Alternative Dispute Resolution Committee of the AAA's Section of Environment Energy and Resources. Ms. Sussman served as the Chair of the New York City Bar Association's Energy Committee and as the Chair of the Alternative
Dispute Resolution Committee of the Energy Bar Association. A graduate of Barnard College 1970, and Columbia Law School 1973, Ms. Sussman has lectured and published widely on arbitration, mediation, energy and environmental issues.