Faculty - Risk Management Bootcamp
Heidi S. Alexander, Esq. is a Law Practice Management Advisor at the Massachusetts Law Office Management Assistance Program (MassLOMAP), where she advises lawyers on practice management matters and provides guidance in implementing new law office technologies. She frequently makes presentations to the legal community and contributes to publications on law practice management and technology, including ABA Law Technology Today, Attorney at Work, and Technolawyer. Heidi previously practiced at a small firm and owned a technology consulting business. She also clerked for a justice on the highest court of New Jersey and served as the editor-in-chief of the Rutgers Law Review.
Chiara LaPlume is an attorney in Lexington practicing in the areas of business law and real estate law. She counsels businesses in various stages of their life cycle, including attorneys and law firms. She is a graduate of University College London and Boston University School of Law. She has assisted attorneys thinking about hanging their shingle for the last 9 or so years in her capacity as a co-chair of the Women’s Bar Association’s Solo and Small Firm Committee, and she has herself left a law firm to found her own firm, LaPlume Law, LLC.
Jennifer L. Markowski is a litigation partner at the law firm of Peabody & Arnold LLP. Ms. Markowski is admitted to practice in Massachusetts and Rhode Island and is experienced in all facets of the litigation process. Ms. Markowski’s practice focuses in the areas of professional liability, employment law, and general litigation. Her professional liability practice includes representation of lawyers, accountants, design professionals, insurance professionals, appraisers, home inspectors and brokers.
Rebecca G. Pontikes, the founder of Pontikes Law, LLC, represents employees in all areas of employment law, particularly gender and family responsibility (caregiver) discrimination, sexual harassment, negotiation of employment contracts and separation agreements, noncompetition agreements, retaliation and whistleblower claims (in all sectors, including the government and financial sectors), violations of the Family and Medical Leave Act, and violations of the wage statutes.
Ms. Pontikes regularly speaks on employment law topics for Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education, bar associations, groups representing employees, and organizations that promote women’s rights in the workplace.
She has co-written amicus briefs in support of the employee in Trustees of Health and Hospitals of the City of Boston v. Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, 449 Mass. 675, (2007) and Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority v. Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, 450 Mass. 327 (2008), Dahms v. Cognex Corp., 455 Mass. 190 (2009), and Flagg v. Ali-Med, Inc. 466 Mass. 23 (2013).
Ms. Pontikes is an active member of the Massachusetts Women’s Bar Association, where she currently sits on the board of directors and chaired the solo and small firm committee for ten years. She is an active member of the Massachusetts Employment Lawyer’s Association, an association of attorneys who focus on representing employees. In the past, she has served on the Boards of Directors of Deana's Fund, an organization devoted to educating against dating violence through educational theater, and the Greater Boston Chapter of the National Organization for Women.
She was selected by her peers as a "SuperLawyer" Rising Star in 2004, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011 and as a “SuperLawyer” in 2013 and 2014. Massachusetts Lawyer’s Weekly named her a Top Woman of Law in 2012. SuperLawyers named her one of the Top 50 Women SuperLawyers in Massachusetts in 2014.
She graduated from Tufts University, magna cum laude in 1994, and from the University of Michigan Law School in 1997.
In her free time, she is a political activist, particularly the underprivileged, reads, watches movies, and writes letters to the editor.
John Torvi is the Vice President of Marketing & Sales at the Herbert H. Landy Insurance Agency of Needham, MA. John has been in the insurance industry, focusing on the needs of business owners, for almost 25 years. He holds a Bachelors Degree from Providence College and a Masters Degree from Springfield College and is a frequent speaker and contributor to professional journals and conferences for the legal, accounting, real estate and insurance industries.
The Landy Agency is a national leader in providing professional insurance services for attorneys, real estate professionals and accountants. John can be reached at 781-292-5417 or johnt@landy.com.
Or visit www.landy.com for more information.