2026 Conversations with Bob Mundheim Welcomes National Leaders in Business and Law

The annual speaker series from professor of Corporate Law and Finance Robert Mundheim, Conversations with Bob Mundheim returns this semester and welcomes its first guest on Monday, January 26.  

Mundheim moderates informal conversations with national leaders in business and law, relating their experiences in and perspectives about corporate governance, markets, ethics and career development. The series is free and open to members of the U of A community and will be of particular interest to law and business students.   

All sessions take place noon–1:15 p.m. at University of Arizona Law, registration is required, please RSVP to Mary Steed at marywsteed@arizona.edu to reserve your spot.   

2026 Schedule   

January 26: Byron Boston 

Byron Boston is CEO and Co-Chief Investment Officer of Dynex Capital, a leading Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) with more than $5 billion in managed assets. Over the past 15 years, he has built Dynex Capital into a top-performing mortgage REIT that has outperformed the S&P 500 Financials, FTSE NAREIT, and Russell 2000 Indexes. Previously, he held several executive leadership positions in real estate finance, asset management, and investment banking, successfully building two public companies. Before becoming an entrepreneur, Boston served as vice president and co-manager of Freddie Mac and held positions dealing with mortgage-backed and pass-through securities at global financial institutions including Lehman Brothers and CS First Boston. 

February 9: Michele Coleman Mayes 

A member of the Board of Directors of Gogo, Inc., Michele Coleman Mayes is former vice president, general counsel, and secretary for the New York Public Library (2012–24). Previously, she served as executive vice president and general counsel for Allstate Insurance Company, as a senior vice president and general counsel of Pitney Bowes Inc. (2003–07), and in several legal capacities at Colgate-Palmolive (1992–2003). From 1976 through 1982, she served in the U.S. Department of Justice as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Detroit and Brooklyn, eventually assuming the role of Chief of the Civil Division in Detroit. She formerly chaired the American Bar Association’s Commission on Women in the Profession. She joined the Board of Brookfield Reinsurance Ltd. in 2023 and co-authored the book Courageous Counsel: Conversations with Women General Counsel in the Fortune 500. 

February 16: Eric F. Grossman 

Eric F. Grossman is Morgan Stanley’s Chief Legal Officer and Chief Administrative Officer and a member of the firm’s operating and management committees. Prior to joining Morgan Stanley in 2006 as global head of litigation, he was a partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell. He clerked for the Honorable Richard J. Cardamone, U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, from 1993 to 1994. He is the president of the board of directors of Advocates for Children of New York. He is Chair of the Dean’s Planning Council at Fordham Law School and a board member of the DREAM Charter Schools. 

February 23: Michael J. Sharp and Sarah Pfuhl 

Michael J. Sharp has been Executive Vice President and General Counsel of Jefferies Financial Group Inc., parent company of Jefferies Group LLC, since March 2013. He has been Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary at Jefferies since September 2010. Previously, he was a partner with the law firm of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr LLP, as well as General Counsel of Citigroup’s Global Wealth Management, Global Consumer Bank and Global Credit Card business units. Before his 12 years at Citigroup, Sharp was a litigation associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore. Sharp began his legal career as a judicial clerk on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Before embarking on a legal career, he traded U.S. Treasury Bonds from 1981 through 1988.  

Sarah Pfuhl is the Global General Counsel, Litigation, Regulatory Enforcement and Investigations at HSBC Holdings PLC, where she oversees the contentious disputes portfolio for HSBC globally, in addition to managing teams of specialist attorneys responsible for providing legal advice on employment law, financial crime compliance, and competition law. Prior to HSBC, she held Legal and People positions at ServiceNow, WPP, and WeWork. She was a partner at WilmerHale, with a practice focusing on governmental investigations, internal investigations, and crisis management. She has represented public companies, global financial institutions, and senior executives under investigation by the U.S. Congress, U.S. Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, U.S. Department of Treasury, and state attorneys general, as well as other non-U.S. regulators. 

March 2: Leo Strine 

Leo E. Strine, Jr., is Of Counsel in the Corporate Department at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and serves as the Michael L. Wachter Distinguished Fellow in Law and Policy at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and a Senior Fellow of the Harvard Program on Corporate Governance. Prior to joining the firm, he was the Chief Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court from early 2014 through late 2019. Before becoming the Chief Justice, he served on the Delaware Court of Chancery as Chancellor since June 22, 2011, and as a Vice Chancellor since November 9, 1998. 

March 4: Bob Hoyt (Note time: 3-4:50 p.m.) 

Bob Hoyt is Group Chief Legal Officer of HSBC Holdings PLC. From 2013 to 2020 he was at Barclays PLC, where he served as Group General Counsel, overseeing global engagement with regulators and policymakers, as well as all legal issues at the bank. Prior to that, he was General Counsel and Chief Regulatory Affairs Officer for Pittsburgh-based PNC Financial Services Group, leading its legal, government and regulatory matters. Between 2006 and 2009, he served as General Counsel and a Senior Policy Advisor to Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. He also served as Special Assistant and Associate Counsel to U.S. President George W. Bush. At the start of his career, Hoyt clerked at the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts.  

March 16: Edward Rock 

The Martin Lipton Professor of Law at NYU Law, Edward Rock’s main areas of teaching and research are corporate law and corporate governance. In his many articles, he has written about poison pills, politics and corporate law, hedge funds, corporate voting, proxy access, corporate federalism and mergers and acquisitions, among other things. In addition to teaching and research, he is the director of NYU’s Institute for Corporate Governance & Finance and the Reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement of the Law of Corporate Governance. Rock spent the first part of his career at the University of Pennsylvania where he served as Co-Director of the Institute for Law and Economics (1998–2010), as Associate Dean (2006–08), and as Senior Advisor to the President and Provost and Director of Open Course Initiatives (2012–15). 

March 30: John J. Cannon III 

John Cannon is the Global Co-Chair of A&O Shearman’s Compensation, Pensions, Employment & Governance group. In his practice, he focuses on all aspects of employment, compensation and benefits, including ERISA and corporate, securities, bankruptcy, employment, and tax laws. He has extensive experience in executive compensation and corporate governance matters, Dodd-Frank and Sarbanes-Oxley, and the compensation issues raised in the mergers and acquisitions context. Cannon joined Shearman & Sterling in 1985 and became a partner in 1994. He is Co-Chair of the Salzburg Global Corporate Governance Forum, a member of the American Law Institute and serves as an Adviser to the ALI’s Restatement of the Law of Corporate Governance project.