In this Office Hours episode, Deborah Solmor, founder of GC development program “Ready Set GC” is in The Legal Department to answer questions from aspiring general counsel.

Tough questions include:

• How to show that you’re a “strategic advisor”
• How your organizational skills change when you become general counsel
• How to keep your confidence up when you don’t get a job you really want
• How and why you need to dedicate time to “extracurriculars”

Stacy and Deborah also chat about the Ready Set GC Ascend program, which helps deputy GCs and other aspiring legal leaders get ready for their next big role.

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Listen to the podcast here

 

Office Hours: Questions From Aspiring GCs With Deborah Solmor, Founder, Ready Set GC

Ready, Set, GC And Ascend!

On this episode of the show, I’m excited to welcome back for the 3rd or 4th time Deborah Salmore, who is the General Counsel of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and Founder of Ready Set GC. She and I were together at a Ready Set GC event called Ascend in Chicago. We sought some questions from that group, and Deborah and I are going to bat those around for office hours.

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Deborah, it is great to have you back.

Thanks for having me here. I think I do have to go on record and say it’s four. I’m very excited about that. Maybe after this one, people will start getting sick of me. I hope not.

It’s a four-peat. Before we dive into the questions, let’s take a couple of minutes. There are readers who are familiar with Ready Set GC and Ascend, but for those of them who are not, can you give us a couple of minutes about what it is?

Sure. The Ready Set GC Ascend program is the second program that we started offering in February of 2025. What it is is that it’s designed to help those women who are aspiring to their first GCC. It’s a companion program to our original program, which is to help women who are in their first few years, what we call the foundational years of their first GC role.

It was fun. It was in Chicago, your hometown. It was great to meet all of the different women from all over the country. It was excellent. I appreciated you doing the call-out to the audience to get some questions for our conversation. Without further ado, number one is a topic that I feel is a phrase that comes up time and time again for general counsels. It’s very mushy. People don’t know what it means. Here we go. How do you demonstrate that you are a “strategic advisor?”

How To Demonstrate You’re A Strategic Advisor

It’s one of the first things you see in the job description for a general counsel. You see terms like revenue defender, growth enabler, and drive the business forward. You’re right. I look at it in two buckets. One bucket is what does it mean? The second bucket, which I think is even more important, is how do you do it? How do you know that you’re doing it?

What does it mean? In your GC role, it means that you are thinking less like a lawyer or not a lawyer all the time and thinking more like a business person. People say, “What does that mean?” To me, that means how are you helping drive outcomes? How are you helping your business meet its strategic initiatives and priorities, which is different from identifying risk and providing legal guidance? That’s the mindset shift that you need.

One of the ways you get there, so the how, is you get there by, first and foremost, understanding your business. Understand how your business makes money. Understand what its pain points are. If you’re publicly traded, read your SEC filings and listen to your investor calls. I’ve spent my GC career in nonprofits. Understand your 990s. Understand your audit statements. That is so critical because you can’t deliver the type of strategic guidance that your leadership team is looking for if you don’t understand how your business does what they do. That would be step one. Understand your business.

You can't deliver the type of strategic guidance that your leadership team is looking for if you don't understand how your business does what it does. Share on X

I would say the same thing. Much of the GC role is about communication and how you frame the advice you’re giving or the conversations you’re having. I try not to lead with a legal issue or a legal response to somebody’s question. I try to think about, “Where are they in there? Who am I talking to? Am I talking with the chief marketing officer? Am I talking to the CEO? What does that person most care about?” I try to put myself in their shoes and then weave in how the legal issue might impact them and the way they’re approaching the business.

I would agree with that. One of the mantras I try to keep is that I’m trying to help solve problems, not create them. Oftentimes, in our role, when we think we’re identifying risk, the business thinks we’re creating or identifying problems. To your point about communication, if you bring problems, or as you might look at them, risk issues, to a meeting, your business partner may not be able to solve them. Instead, you’re saying, “There’s this risk, or there might be this problem.” The person is likely thinking, “I brought you to solve those problems. Now, you’re giving me more problems. I’m not a lawyer, and I don’t know how to solve them.”

Messaging is critical in building your relationships to get to the point where you have to message. You need to take a step back and think, “What am I bringing to this conversation? If I am bringing risks that somebody may not have thought about or may not have identified. How do I communicate them in a way that says, ‘We’ve got this or I have some options for you.?’ I’m not going to send you back to your office with your head swirling about risks you didn’t even know existed.”

That is so true. You got points in law school and maybe at the firm for issue spotting. On the other side of issue spotting, for people who aren’t trained and don’t know what to do with those issues, it creates anxiety. It’s like, “I had this whole plan. I was going to roll out this new marketing program. Now, you’re telling me we can’t do it because we’re misrepresenting something and we’re going to have an FTC investigation.”

One thing that occurred to me as you were talking is that lawyers have an ethical duty to communicate with clients about issues. We shoulder that duty. We’re like dogs bringing the stick back, like, “Look what I found. I’m communicating with you.” As you were saying, communicating without a plan is torturing the other person.

I’m going to build on that and say we’re trained to think that’s our value add, which it is. I’m not taking away from it. Identifying risks and keeping a strategic initiative on track within the bounds of risk management is our job, but it is putting yourself in the place of the person that you’re talking to. You’ve got this great new marketing campaign. You’ve probably talked to other people in the organization about it multiple times, and someone is saying to you, “Have you thought of this?”

Your job is to say, “How do I tell them that in a way that doesn’t make them say, ‘No, I didn’t think of that.’” It’s how you communicate that. To your point, junior in-house lawyers aren’t always great at that, by no fault of their own. It’s not the skillset that they were using in an outside counsel role. That’s a good way to look at it.

I want to underline that a big part of the GC role is communicating and doing that as an executive. Number two, how did your organizational skills have to change when you became a GC?

Evolving Organizational Skills For General Counsel

Technically, my organizational skills changed in that I didn’t think of myself as much as an individual contributor. In my role before being a GC, I was deputy GC. I had a team. Some of those things were the same. I was managing people. As the GC, my organization thinks more about the strategic priorities of the organization. There are lots of moving pieces all over my company, as opposed to maybe the central lens I had as the head of litigation. That’s it.

My task list isn’t about the ten things I personally have to get done that day. It’s about the ten things that are going on in the organization that need my or my team’s attention. You look at your day very intentionally in a different way. I noticed that I do that. Some of my organizational skills are the same. I try to think about my day in the morning. I’m not very good at it, but I love the Pomodoro timer. I like 25-minute blocks and give myself a five-minute break. I turn off my Outlook notifications while I’m doing that block of work so that I’m not distracted.

The research on how long it takes you to lose focus and then get back to what you were doing before is crazy. We think we’re good multitaskers. I don’t know that many of us are. The shift in thinking about how I think about my executive team, my board, my own legal team, and all the issues they’re dealing with is very different from how I used to think about the ten pieces of litigation on my desk and the two investigations I was working on. That’s probably the biggest shift.

I delegate a lot more. That becomes critical. I’m one of those people, whom I’m going to guess you have a little bit of this in you, too. I either want to do it all, or I think I can do it all, or the time it takes to delegate. I probably could finish it. Understanding that I’m not supposed to be doing everything. Another one of those buzz phrases is high-value use of your time. What is the highest value use of my time? It’s probably not a high-value use of my time to do certain things that other people can do. Delegation is much stronger in the GC role.

You are not supposed to be doing everything. Find a high-value use of your time. Share on X

I want to underline that. For all of us in all areas of our lives, and I would say even at home, delegating. You cannot do it all. We all have these big dreams and big ideas of what we think we can do. I have this conversation with my team all the time. “If you did it, it would be perfect. It would be the way you wanted, but sometimes, perfect is the enemy of the good. It’s got to be just good enough sometimes. Trust the people you delegate to.”

Strategic thinking time is so important. It’s so hard to get. You put it on your calendar. I book it out probably 1 block a month or 2 blocks a month.

You do? Tell me more. What do you do with this time?

I block out 2 to 3 hours for what I put in my calendar as strategic thinking. What I plan to do with them is about a week before, I think, “I have this time coming up. What do I need to sit and think about? What do I need to work on that’s not getting this board resolution done?” It is something very intentional, but I find that it’s always the first to go.

That said, if you don’t block that time and you don’t spend that time thinking, you’re just reacting. You’re doing a lot of reacting. Where I am in Madison, my office is literally right on Lake Mendota. For me, I like to go outside and take a walk. If I’m taking a walk, then arguably, I’m not thinking of something specific. During that time, sometimes, ideas come to me.

When I was in big law, there used to be this story about the thinking time in the shower. I feel like the walk is my equivalent of thinking time. I’m very good at putting it on my calendar. I’m not as good as I would like to be at doing it, but it reminds me, “You do need this time.” I feel like in my role, a lot of what I do is helping think about big-picture things. In my organization, that is valued, so I try to protect that time to help contribute to that.

It goes back to the first question. How can you be a strategic advisor if you’re not thinking about the company’s strategies and priorities?

Having conversations to that point with the people on your leadership team to understand what their strategy is. When I was a GC in higher ed, within the first month or two of every fiscal year, I would have each of the college presidents that we supported come to my legal team meeting and give us an overview of what their goals were for the coming year.

That’s brilliant.

It was different. I would say, “This is your time to put the message on our team’s radar about the things you want to accomplish and how we can help you get there.” I thought it was important. I heard about it in board meetings and leadership team meetings, but my team didn’t, so I thought it was important to set the team’s perspective on what people were trying to accomplish in the coming year.

I took a note on that one. That’s a great suggestion. One other thing that I’ve done organizationally, and I’m sure this rings true for you, too. When you’re in the top job, you have to know what else is going on outside of your vertical. One thing I do is I’m very cognizant of the board calendar and the committee calendar, and backing up. If we know we’re going to present X, Y, and Z priority to the board in July, what is the work that needs to get done up until that point? Being cognizant that my work isn’t just what’s happening on my desk, but it contributes to the larger efforts of the organization.

I agree. That was one time management skill. In my first GC role, the executive coach that I worked with pushed me to calendar backwards. I had a big piece of litigation I was managing. If we had a brief due, she would have me put the brief date on there and then think about, “When do I want my outside counsel to get me the brief? Do I think I’m going to have much input on it?” I’m thinking about that with board meetings and other things I was working on.

That was hard to get me to slow down to do that, but I would laugh when something came up on my calendar that said, “Prepare for X meeting.” I would think, “I’m glad I did that,” because otherwise, I would have been saying the day before, “Oh.” It’s a great calendaring tool. You have to slow yourself down long enough to calendar backwards.

Back to the point on communication. Sometimes, what I’ll do is when we have those larger things that may be legal as driving. I build in time for meetings with the key executives or a subgroup to bring them along. I get people oriented to what I’m presenting. I’ll never present something to the board that I haven’t shared with my peers in the executive suite.

Let’s go on to some more of what I’m going to call personal questions about your own career progression. There are a lot of folks there who are actively looking for their first GC role or their first leadership role. You don’t always stick the landing. A question about how you keep your confidence up when you are the runner-up in a search.

Navigating Executive Search Rejection And CEO Alignment

That’s a tough one because you’ll find all kinds of reasons to think of why you didn’t get the role. The short answer is that in most job searches, people who don’t get the roles or why the finalist doesn’t get the role are likely not due to them. It is due to factors that are outside of their control, particularly in a GC role. In a GC role, you are one of the closest advisors to the CEO. That relationship has to click. That’s first and foremost. As you click with other people, and I click with certain people, your CEO has to click.

In most job searches, not getting the role isn't a reflection of you; it’s usually due to factors outside of your control. Share on X

It is looking at being disappointed, being upset, getting through that emotion very quickly, looking at the reality, and then asking, “Was there something about the role that it wasn’t the right role for me?” When we talked about this concept of being the silver medalist at the Ascend program, it was in the context of an executive search and how they sometimes like the silver medalist because they know they got so close to the job that they’re likely to be a good fit for the next role.

I was a silver medalist at the executive search firm that placed me here at WARF. When I look back on that, that was the right outcome. It wasn’t the right role for me for several reasons, and I’m sure it wasn’t the right role for several reasons for the CEO there. It’s recognizing that you are waiting for the right fit, and it will come. One of our colleagues on our Ascend planning committee with you always says, “Your CEO is out there. You need to find your CEO.” I think that’s true.

It’s hard, but you’re going to do lots of hard things in your job. You’re going to have lots of things where they don’t go exactly the way you want. You’re going to have those moments of doubt and moments of feeling a lack of self-confidence, but you have to do your download and then keep moving forward. Every time you get that far, it’s a great opportunity to interview.

People should step back for a moment and recognize that the job process or job search is a two-way street. Not only are they looking for you, but you’re also looking for them. You should be taking things away from what worked well in your interview process and what didn’t work well. Things you might have seen that you say, “I don’t want that for me or I like that. In my next interview, I’m going to look for a company that does or doesn’t do something.”

People should step back for a moment and recognize that the job process or job search is a two-way street. Not only are they looking for you, but you're also looking for them. Share on X

The point about the CEO fit is that if you’re not in the GC role, you don’t see how much that relationship is core if you don’t have alignment with the CEO on values. That’s what I would say. I always say my job is a hard job, but it’s much easier because I align with the corporate values and the values of the leadership. I was in a silver medalist moment. I’ll share.

I was in a GC search several years ago. I had a friend who was at the company. I had interviewed with them as well. They told me, “I think you have it by a mile.” When I didn’t get it, I was extra disappointed because I thought, “This person had the inside track.” The CEO called me to tell me, “This isn’t about you. This other person was a better fit. You’re going to land this one day. Thanks for being part of it.”

If you haven’t been in the GC role, one thing I think you don’t understand, and this goes back to your first question about being a strategic advisor, is that the true practice of law is a tiny proportion of what you do. People say, “What do you do?” I always say I have a pie, and the sizes of the slices change. In that pie, I am a lawyer, a finance person, a diplomat, a politician, and a psychotherapist.

All of those different hats have to fit with whoever your CEO is going to be. They have to think, “I can get legal advice from her. She can support my board. She can be a politician and be diplomatic. She can be the therapist I need to talk to when I need to vent about things.” It’s more than, “I’m a great lawyer. Why is it that you didn’t want to hire me?”

That’s important. As you were saying that, I was thinking about how you show up in that interview to demonstrate some of those skills. If you haven’t been in the GCC, you don’t realize how much time you spend talking with the CEO. I can’t even count the hours that I would spend in their office listening, a lot of times, to things that had happened in their careers or things that were important to them. They’re not necessarily bringing you in there to have you solve their legal problems. They want to know that you’re a trusted person who can be that ear.

When it works, and it’s the right fit, it’s a fulfilling, great feeling. If you don’t have it or you can’t find it, you should keep looking for it because when you do get it, it is extraordinarily rewarding. The other thing I would say about the search and the silver medalist is that you also have to think about the other people on the leadership team. Those are the people that you will be guiding about risk management and about legal.

When they meet you, they are going to be thinking about, “Is this the person I want to work with? Does this person look like a team player, or do they look like they know everything about the law, and I’m not going to be able to work with them?” It’s stressful to think you only get the first time to make a good impression, but that’s what you’re doing. That’s what people on your leadership team, in addition to your CEO, are thinking about.

One last layer is if you have to interview with the board. For my WARF role, I interviewed with the chair of our board, the chair of our governance committee, and another one of our board members. You’ve got a whole other constituency that’s already met you. You need the CEO, the board, and the other C-Suite executives to all be aligned on the same person. When you put it that way, it’s hard to think that everyone will align with the same person.

Leveraging Extracurriculars And Professional Networking

Another question that came up, and I get this a lot, is a time management question, but it’s also about how you carve out time for extracurriculars and why you should. You and I both do a lot in the extracurricular space. This conversation with you and our relationship have come out of extracurriculars. I want to give you a big shout-out and appreciation. You hosted my leadership team at WARF and helped us shape our innovation agenda. That would not have happened but for our extracurricular activities and our connection.

That is so true. It was so wonderful to be able to bring you and your team in and to say, “My friend is going to be here. She’s doing this great thing with her organization. How could we help?” One of the things I thought was so great about that conversation is that you and I are the lawyers who brought everyone together. We didn’t have a whole lot to say in the conversation. We just watched our respective business partners get so interested and involved in what you’re trying to do at Cottage. That is a good point.

I go back to thinking about raising my kids, my daughters, and thinking I am not one to give parenting advice. One thing I did learn with my children is that when it comes to their extracurricular activities, they have to want to do it. No amount of pushing them is going to change the fact that if it’s not in their heart and their soul, they’re not going to do it. I carry that into my own personal extracurricular activities.

The things that I do are things I’m passionate about. I carve out time for them because I love doing them. I’m at a point in my life where my kids are in their twenties, so I have extra time, but there is pressure to get lots of things done. I don’t want to put more pressure on people who already feel that pressure. I do think if you want to have an impact in a GC role, part of what you bring to the table is what you do outside of being a lawyer. It gives you different ways to think. It gives you different relationships. It gives you different skillsets.

When people ask about board service, “Should I be on a board?” I always say, “I don’t know if you should be on a board or not. What I do know is that if you want to be on a board, you should pick a board that you’re passionate about, whatever the board is doing. Otherwise, it’s going to become a chore.” I laugh because I don’t know if you and I are the ones to take advice from about what to do in the world of curricular activities, since we seem to do a lot of those.

If you want to be on a board, you should pick a board that you're passionate about. Otherwise, it is going to become a chore. Share on X

I echo that. You should do something that you like. I look at the extracurriculars through the lens of connection. A lot of the things that I do are because I am hungry to connect with people. Those connections are helpful to me personally and professionally. It’s an opportunity for me to make a contribution. That’s the lens through which I come to it.

I cringe about this, but there is this perception, and I think it’s right. It’s, unfortunately, true. In a GC role, people are expecting you to have a presence, a brand, and be known. I was talking to somebody at the Ascend program about when I worked with a lawyer who had been a state bar leader. Among the lawyers, you think, “What a thankless volunteer opportunity,” but the business people thought that this lawyer was the bee’s knees because they had served as a state bar president. Having a presence and being known is something that people are looking for in a general counsel.

That advice goes to most C-Suite positions. Being active and involved in some sort of association or group in whatever your industry is also very helpful. One of the things I think is that we all love our outside counsel, and we all love to be able to leverage them if the budget allows and when the issue requires. I have found that I have learned so much about issues that are germane to me from the relationships I’ve made with trade associations. In higher ed, it’s been NACUA. Here at Tech Transfer, it’s AUTM.

That makes me a better GC because I have found colleagues that I can talk to about various issues, so the answer isn’t always, “I need to retain somebody externally. I can solve things from the networks that I have.” It does feel good when you get to say to somebody, “I know somebody who’s at X place. Let me call them and see.” You’re right. There is this pressure of, “I need a brand for my next job,” but it’s also good for you. You get so many things out of it that are so rewarding.

No question. Last question, and it’s a sensitive one. After our program, one of the attendees reached out to me and asked about how to negotiate comp in a GC role. I did an episode on comp with John Gilmore, who’s one of the principals of Barker Gilmore. I had some great tips, but what do you say?

Best Practices For Negotiating GC Compensation

First and foremost, know your value and know your worth. That drives your ability to advocate for yourself. A lot of us come up through big law. In my days in big law, it was lockstep. I didn’t have to learn how to negotiate my comp until I was very senior in my career. It’s a little scary even knowing what you’re worth and being able to go in.

Know your value and know your worth. That drives your ability to advocate for yourself. Share on X

Data points, having a point of reference so that you can talk about whatever it is that you’re asking for, and being able to say why you’re entitled to it. We hear CFOs in our Ready Set GC program talk about this. When legal comes with an ask, like, “I need another lawyer,” you say, “Why? What is the lawyer going to do? Is the lawyer going to save money?” That applies here as well, which is having your justification. Understand to the extent possible what other people in your organization are getting paid.

Also, think about the reasons why what you want may not be what you are entitled to or what is right and fair. People I’ve talked about this concept with are about fairness and equity, like, “I want to be paid fairly and equitably for the job I am doing.” Then, the question becomes, is your number fair and equitable versus what you’re making or what somebody is responding to you within your ask? I would say it is a sensitive question. Not everyone is good at it. You would think we’re supposed to be good at it. I’m a litigator by training. I litigated for a living. Once you start, it becomes about you. It’s personal. It’s much harder and much different.

Having benchmarks is right on. John Gilmore talked about knowing what the other peers in the C-Suite are making. The CEO wants to have some sort of equity across the band. For nonprofits, and people may or may not know this, the tax returns or the 990s that are publicly available will show the comp for the highly paid executives. If the GC is not on there, to me, that’s a red flag.

In that vein, it’s also thinking that sometimes, there are roles in the C-suite that do make more money. One common is revenue generator versus non-revenue generator. Also, preserving the company’s risk and supporting the governance are important roles. A GC should probably be in that higher range of the C-suite executives, but you’re right. A good organization will have a place where the CEO has equity and fairness across the C-suite. If you’re working with your peers and you feel significantly undercompensated, or they think you’re significantly overcompensated, that doesn’t necessarily breed a great team.

I had an experience in my career. I was the GC, so I wasn’t negotiating for myself. I had a potential team member. They made the negotiation so painful that it made me question whether I wanted to hire them. The numbers were being crunched, and every little dollar was scrutinized. It was not fun. That’s a sensitive conversation. You are showing who you are to the company. For some more tactical feedback, this is an early episode, episode eleven, with Edina Beasley and Heather Fine of Major Lindsey & Africa. Towards the end of the episode, we talk about negotiating comp. There are some good tips there.

I thought of the question more for negotiating in your role when I was answering, but you make a great point about when you’re negotiating to join an organization. It’s that penny-wise and pound-foolish. You need to be thinking about what it says about you. One piece of advice I would give, because I thought a lot about this. There shouldn’t be a stereotype that because you’re a lawyer, whatever they offer you, you have to ask for more so that you can demonstrate that you know how to negotiate.

Knowing how to negotiate also entails knowing when not to. We, as lawyers, sometimes think, “If I don’t ask for more and I don’t negotiate. They’re going to think that I’m not going to negotiate well for the organization.” You’re right. Sometimes, people leave a bad taste in the mouth of the team that they’re joining because they made it so much about the benefits and the compensation.

Knowing how to negotiate also entails knowing when not to. Share on X

Those are our questions. As we’re wrapping up here, do you want to talk a little bit about the next Ascend or what you’ve got going on with Ready Set GC in 2026?

Wrap Up: Future Programs And Closing Remarks

Thank you. That would be great. We wrapped up a very long set of programs. We did a GC program in Seattle for the first time. We also did a GC program and the Ascend program in Chicago. We’re going to take a short break to reset. In the last week of September 2026, we’re going to come to New York, and we’re going to host the GC program for women in the first few years, 1 to 4 years, of their first GC role and the Ascend program for aspiring GC women.

That will happen all in the same week with a very generous and gracious sponsorship of Cooley. They hosted our New York program in 2025, so we’re super excited to partner with them again. We’ve got a couple of webinars coming up in the next couple of months. You can find those on ReadySetGC.com. I’m looking forward to seeing you again in New York.

I want to give a plug. You mentioned that you were there, but I want people to understand that you weren’t just there. When we decided to launch this program, we put together this planning committee of people around the legal community that we thought would help Ready Set GC develop good content that would help people in their search and not just spend the day with us and tell you, “Someday, you’ll be a GC.” You graciously agree to join that planning committee. I want to give you a shout-out for that. It’s been a fun ride. This program has blossomed. I’m very excited to see where it goes next.

It’s fun. It’s very rewarding. I encourage everybody to go to ReadySetGC.com and check out all the programming and materials. Thanks for being here in Office Hours with me, times four. I appreciate that.

You’re very welcome. I appreciate that I keep getting asked back. I’ll cross my fingers and hope there is a five-peat.

As we wrap up, I also want to thank Filejet for sponsoring the Office Hours series. If you haven’t checked out Filejet, I encourage you to do it. It’s not fancy, sexy software, but if you’re an organization that has a lot of entities, this is a great tool to help you manage them. You don’t have to worry about all those filings. The tech does it for you. Thank you to the Filejet team. Deborah, I’ll see you again soon.

That sounds great. It was great spending the hour with you. Take care.

 

Important Links

• Deborah Solmor on LinkedIn
• Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation
• Ready Set GC
• Ready Set GC | Ascend Program
• Legal Department Compensation Revealed – John Gilmore, CEO Barker Gilmore (E69)
• What Recruiters Are Looking For In The Legal Department: Edina Beasley And Heather Fine Of Major Lindsey & Africa
• Filejet

 

About Deborah Solmor

Deborah Solmor, the visionary founder of Ready Set GC, has redefined the narrative of empowering women in the foundational years of their General Counsel role. Motivated by her firsthand experiences navigating challenges and identifying gaps in support, Deborah stands as a trailblazer dedicated to reshaping opportunities for women in pivotal positions. Currently serving as the General Counsel for WARF, the independent nonprofit technology transfer organization serving the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Deborah continues to demonstrate unparalleled legal and leadership skills.