ROCK THE VOTE! 2024 Board Nominees | Ballots Coming in November

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Josh Burgener co-chairs Dickinson Wright, PLLC’s litigation practice in the south, where he focuses on complex commercial and business litigation, employment disputes, class action litigation, and real estate litigation. Born and raised in New York City, he received his undergraduate and law degrees from Vanderbilt University. After law school, Burgener clerked for the Honorable Thomas W. Brothers in Davidson County Circuit Court.

Burgener’s involvement with the Nashville Bar Association started in 2014 as a member of the Nashville Bar Foundation Leadership Forum’s inaugural class in 2014, and he’s been active ever since. In the years that followed, Burgener has held numerous leadership positions for the NBA, including chairing the Circuit and Chancery Court Committee (2018-2020), serving as the organization’s Secretary (2021), and chairing the CLE Committee since 2021. He is a Fellow of the Nashville Bar Foundation (2020) and a member of the Marion Griffin Chapter of LAW. He was recently invited to participate in the ABA TIPS Leadership Academy and was selected to mentor the most recent NBF Leadership Forum class.

Burgener is focused on growing the NBA and ensuring the organization continues to provide outstanding social and CLE programming to its members. He is committed to the NBA’s leadership serving its members and the greater Nashville community with passion, integrity, and diligence.

Beau Creson is a commercial litigator at Sims|Funk. Creson attended Vanderbilt Law School, where he graduated Order of the Coif and served as the President of the Honor Council. He earned his undergraduate degree from Clemson University.

Creson has been involved with the NBA since he began his legal career in 2013. He currently serves as the President of the NBA Young Lawyers’ Division, and he has served on that Board since 2013. He also serves on the Steering Committee of the NBF’s Leadership Forum, and he became an NBF Fellow in 2023.

Creson believes membership and engagement are key issues for the NBA in the coming years. The NBA is a fantastic bar association, and its focus should be demonstrating the strengths we all love to the growing legal community so that they understand the fellowship and service opportunities offered by the NBA.

Flynne Dowdy is an employment attorney at Holland & Knight. As a trial lawyer, she represents employers against allegations of harassment, discrimination, retaliation, and wrongful discharge. Her practice also involves providing advice and counsel and wage and hour litigation, including collective and class actions. Dowdy graduated from Howard University with a degree in Journalism and received her law degree from the University of Miami.

Dowdy is a past Treasurer and Assistant Treasurer of the NBA Board of Directors and currently serves on the Steering Committee of the Nashville Bar Foundation Leadership Forum. She is a Fellow of the NBF Leadership Forum (Class of 2019) and has been a member of the NBA Diversity Committee. She is a member of the Napier Looby Bar Association and serves on the Nominating Committee. Dowdy also serves on the Board of Directors for PENCIL and other local organizations.

An advocate of bar service, Dowdy would like to continue her involvement with the NBA as a Board Member. She is passionate about mentorship and creating professional growth opportunities for minority attorneys and working parents. Outside of work, Dowdy enjoys reading suspenseful thrillers and spending time with her husband, Ronald, and their two young girls.

Shellie Handelsman, owner of Handelsman Law, practices estate planning, probate, conservatorship law, business law, entertainment, and IP law. She received her Bachelor of Music in Performance summa cum laude from Berklee College of Music and earned her law degree cum laude from Belmont University College of Law.

Handelsman is President of the Lawyers’ Association for Women (“LAW”) Marion Griffin Chapter Foundation, immediate past president of LAW, and co-chairs the NBA’s Estate Planning & Probate Committee. She previously co-chaired the NBA’s Entertainment, Sports & Media Law Committee.

Handelsman has received numerous awards, including Attorney for Justice in 2022, LAW’s Rising Star Award in 2020, the NBA’s CLE Excellence Award in 2019, and the NBA’s President’s Award in 2018. She graduated from the 2022 TBALL class and 2019 NBF Leadership Forum class. When she’s not working, Shellie runs Spartan races, plays lawyers’ league softball, and spends time with her golden retrievers.

Cherrelle Hooper is in-house counsel at the Tennessee Housing Development Agency where she represents Volunteer Mortgage Loan Servicing. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Vanderbilt University followed by Vanderbilt Law School where she served on the Moot Court Board. A servant at heart, she worked at the Legal Aid Society for the first five years of her career during which time she also graduated from the International Association of Defense Counsel Trial Academy at Stanford Law School.

Hooper is a Fellow of the Nashville Bar Foundation and a graduate of the NBF Leadership Forum. She served on the Executive Committee of the NBA YLD for several years and spearheaded the Mural Project. She is also an alum of the TBA’s Leadership Law program and a TBA Fellow. She has received the President’s Awards from both the TBA YLD and NBA YLD for her outstanding contributions. She serves as a dedicated mentor to law students. In her spare time, Hooper enjoys traveling, reading, and cooking.

Billy Leslie is an attorney with Farrar Bates Berexa. His principal areas of practice are government tort liability and workers’ compensation defense. A Nashville native, He received is BS from Tennessee Technological University (1993) and his JD from the Nashville School of Law (2017) and was inducted into the Cooper’s Inn Honor Society.

Prior to graduating law school, Leslie spent 25 years in the financial services industry. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable Timothy L. Easter on the Tennessee Court of Criminal appeals and worked for the Tennessee Departments of Commerce and Insurance and Human Services. He also serves as an adjunct professor of paralegal studies at Nashville State Community College. Leslie is committed to his community and gives back as opportunities present themselves.

Leslie currently serves as on the Tennessee Bar Association Board of Governors, after serving as the TBA YLD President from 2021-2022. He has served on the NBA’s Diversity Committee and was part of the NBF Leadership Forum Class of 2022-2023. He also serves on the Tennessee Stonewall Bar Association Board and is a member of the Harry Phillips Inn of Court.

John R. Manson serves as a Judicial Magistrate for Davidson County’s Night Court. He was previously Special Counsel at Lewis Thomason, P.C., in the firm’s Nashville Office. A Nashville native, Manson earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Music Performance from Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA, and his Juris Doctor degree from Howard University School of Law. He is an adjunct professor at Lincoln Memorial University’s Duncan School of Law in Knoxville.

Manson has served in judicial roles for much of his career, serving as Special Master for 8th Circuit Court and Special Probate Master for 7th Circuit Court. He is a Past President and current Board Member of the Napier-Looby Bar Association and a Nashville Bar Foundation Fellow. Outside of the law, he is an accomplished musician, a past president of the Nashville Symphony Chorus, and a member of the W. Crimm Singers. He is married to attorney Lora Manson, and they have two daughters.

Seth Ogden, a shareholder at Patterson Intellectual Property Law, focuses on intellectual property law issues including litigation, portfolio development, and client counseling. He earned his JD from American University, Ph.D. in Cancer Biology from Vanderbilt University, and a BA from University of Virginia.

Dr. Ogden is a member of the NBA veterans committee, which he formerly co-chaired. He currently serves as the Tennessee Intellectual Property Law Association treasurer and Board President at Operation Stand Down. He is also an active member of the TBA and was recently awarded the 2023 Larry Dean Wilks Leadership Award as part of the 2023 TBALL class.

Pro bon legal representation of veterans is of particular interest to Ogden. He has pursued veterans’ disability claims at the Veterans Administration and the Court of Veterans Claims. Dr. Ogden has been honored with an Attorney for Justice Award multiple years for this work.

Rob Peal is a partner at Sims | Funk, PLC. He enjoys a diverse practice focused on complex litigation, and he handles both criminal defense and civil trials. Peal graduated Order of the Coif from Vanderbilt Law School, where he was Associate Editor of the Vanderbilt Law Review and served on the Moot Court Board. He obtained his undergraduate degree from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, earning a Bachelor of Science (with Merit) in Mechanical Engineering. Before entering the civil practice of law, Peal served in the U.S. Marine Corps, first flying the F/A-18D as a flight officer, followed by service as a Judge Advocate senior prosecutor and law center director. While on duty, he deployed three times, serving in Operations Southern Watch, Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), and Iraqi Freedom. Peal is a graduate of the 2015 TBA Leadership Law Class, was inducted as a Nashville Bar Foundation Fellow in 2022 and chaired the Silent Auction Committee for the NBF Gala in 2023. For the past three years, he has co-chaired the Nashville Bar Association Chancery and Circuit Court Committee.

Bruce Shanks practices with Deloitte Tax LLP in the National Multistate Tax Services group focusing on state strategic tax review and restructuring. He is a graduate of the University of Memphis Law School, University of Alabama Law School (Tax LL.M), and Austin Peay State University. Shanks currently co-chairs the Nashville Bar Foundation Leadership Forum Steering Committee and Nashville Bar Association Tax Committee. He also serves on the Advisory Board for the Tennessee State University School of Business and Deloitte Tax’s Innovation Committee.

Shanks moved to the Nashville area after serving in the United States Army and is involved in several tax assistance programs aligned with the assistance of Veterans.

John Spragens represents individual and class action plaintiffs, recovering multi-million-dollar verdicts in federal jury trials against cigarette manufacturers and successfully representing the city of Nashville in class litigation over the nationwide opioid epidemic and pharmaceutical price inflation. An adjunct faculty member at Vanderbilt Law School, where he teaches “The Practice of Aggregate Litigation,” he was named a 2023 Super Lawyer and a Super Lawyers Rising Star (2016-2022), as well as an American Bar Association “Top 40 Young Lawyer.”

Spragens has represented the NBA on the Metropolitan Board of Ethical Conduct and Nashville Bar Foundation Leadership Forum board, serves on the boards of the Tennessee Trial Lawyers Association, the American Constitution Society, Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi, and the Tennessee Freedom Circle, and as campaign treasurer for Nashville Public Defender Martesha Johnson Moore. He will use his NBA board service to help fellow lawyers advocate for democracy and the rule of law; diversity, equity, and inclusion; and the disenfranchised.

A graduate of Kenyon College and Vanderbilt Law School, Spragens lives in Nashville with his wife Claire Meneely, owner of a great local bakery, and their two daughters.

Leigh Walton has spent her career at Bass, Berry & Sims PLLC, where she specializes in corporate, mergers and acquisitions and health law. She is an Order of the Coif graduate of Vanderbilt Law School. She attained her undergraduate degree from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College.

During her career, Walton has been actively involved with the American Bar Association, where she served a three-year term as chair of its Mergers & Acquisitions Committee, a group with over 5,000 members in 40 countries on five continents. She also served for 12 years on the ABA’s Corporate Laws Committee, a 36-member committee responsible for the development of the Model Business Corporation Act used as the governing corporate law in 35 states and other jurisdictions. She was elected in 2019 to the American College of Governance Counsel.

Walton is a member of Women Corporate Directors, comprised of women who serve as directors of public companies, as well as the International Women’s Forum. She serves on the board of the Belcourt Theatre and is a member of the YWCA’s Fulcrum Society. She is an adjunct professor at Vanderbilt Law School teaching Healthcare Mergers & Acquisitions. Among her passions, Walton has focused on access to justice, serving as the co-chair of the 2022 annual campaign for the Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee and the Cumberlands. Throughout her career she has worked to enhance diversity in the legal profession, with a particular focus on promoting and mentoring women. She is interested in developing programming that will attract more corporate lawyers to the NBA and our community’s pro bono efforts.