Announcement: Heidi Silton presented with 2021 COSAL President’s Award
Last December, when Heidi took over from Rob Kitchenoff as President, was a very difficult and uncertain time. COVID had lasted longer than most of us had predicted, and nobody knew what was around the corner. Even though Joe Biden had won election, Donald Trump was refusing to concede and it felt like our democracy was at risk. And more immediate for COSAL and the antitrust bar, we had recently lost, suddenly and tragically, past COSAL President Hollis Saltzman, and Chris Chimicles, Founder of Angeion and son of long-time COSAL member Nick Chimicles.
Although outgoing President Rob Kitchenoff had brilliantly led COSAL through the first pandemic year, it was a challenging time.
But Heidi rose to the occasion.
Here are just some of COSAL’s accomplishments while Heidi was President:
Under Heidi’s leadership, and with the help of COSAL membership chair Greg Asciolla, four law firms joined COSAL, bringing us to 47 law firm members and 54 members overall [Boni Zack & Snyder; Zimmerman Reed, Sperling & Slater; Keller Lenkner];
COSAL held 5 virtual events, one virtual fundraiser, and three in-person events. Specifically:
Virtual Cheese Plate with Marissa Mullen (Sponsored by Epiq)
Virtual Tribute to Hollis Salzman, put together by Rob Kitchenoff and Kellie Lerner
The newly-created Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee, led by Lin Chan, sponsored a virtual event highlighting opportunities for COSAL members with diverse backgrounds to become more involved with the organization (Cocktails by Angeion)
Online Q&A with FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, led by Heidi, with assists from Rob, Nigar Sheikh and Lin (Wine-tasting by Kroll)
Virtual fundraiser for Congresswoman Katie Porter
Virtual event with Colorado AG Phil Weiser, with assistance from Josh Davis, Dan Drachler and Paul Novak (Sponsored by Rust/Kinsella)
First in-person event since the pandemic in Philadelphia (Sponsored by RG/2 Claims)
First DC in-person dinner (Sponsored by AB Data)
COSAL cocktail party after AAI Awards Dinner (Sponsored by Angeion)
Established the AAI/COSAL Hollis Salzman Memorial Leadership Award, which was awarded to COSAL’s Vice President Lin Chan. This leadership award is important not only to pay tribute to Hollis’ incredible leadership, but to honor the ongoing contributions of people like Lin, who carry on Hollis’ legacy by working hard to ensure that women and people of diverse backgrounds succeed and flourish in the antitrust bar.
Filed 5 Amicus Briefs: 2 in the U.S. Supreme Court on the same day! (Transunion and Alston), 2 in Olean v. Bumblebee, and 1 in In re Epipen. This extraordinary work was accomplished under the leadership of Gary Smith and Chad Holtzman, the chair and vice chair of the amicus committee. Drafters include Deborah Elman, Joe Goldberg, Rob Kitchenoff, Josh Davis, Kyle Oxford, Archana Tamashunas, and Swathi Bojedla.
Authored an article in Competition entitled “Forced Arbitration and Big Tech,” by Heidi, Rob, Nigar, and Geoff Kozen.
We created a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee, led by Lin Chan, to focus on improving DEI within COSAL and the broader antitrust community. The DEI Committee wrote a mission statement for COSAL that is on our website, and organized a virtual event designed to open up opportunities within COSAL to people from historically underrepresented groups. The committee is currently planning a Diversity Leadership Summit for next year to further our mission of outreach and inclusion.
Mission statement: At COSAL, we believe that diversity of voices strengthens antitrust enforcement and will allow us to better represent the antitrust plaintiff’s bar. We are committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and specifically seek to increase engagement in COSAL at all levels by antitrust practitioners from historically underrepresented groups.
The Public Relations Committee, headed by Alex Barnett and Rose Clark, vastly improved the COSAL website and established a monthly newsletter that provides our members opportunities to write about COSAL’s work as well as their own scholarship. We are grateful to Kroll for their pro bono assistance setting up the website. We also started a Twitter account, thanks to COSAL’s official tweeter Geoff Kozen.
Alex Barnett started a new committee, Climate and Antitrust, that had a great turnout at its first Zoom meeting. The committee is currently collecting articles and information about this topic to educate ourselves and plan the next steps.
The Policy Committee under Josh Davis’ leadership has also been very active:
COSAL recommended one of three Democratic witnesses who testified at the House Judiciary Committee hearing on the Forced Arbitration Injustice Repeal Act. We were introduced to Jacob Weiss by Eric Cramer and Ken Zystra. Jacob is a third-party seller on Amazon’s marketplace and he testified about how he was forced to bring his disputes with Amazon in arbitration, which was more expensive, more difficult and less fair than bringing a class action in court.
We submitted a set of policy proposals to Congress that would improve private antitrust enforcement.
Our advocacy was instrumental in getting a private right of action inserted into five bipartisan antitrust bills, two of which have already passed the House Judiciary Committee.
COSAL is actively supporting a grassroots communication and organizing effort to help get antitrust reform passed in Congress.
Wow. That is a lot to accomplish in just one year. But I get the feeling, this is par for the course with Heidi.
Heidi is inexhaustible, energetic and enthusiastic about COSAL’s work and its people. She is up for every challenge and never says no because it is too much to do. But that doesn’t mean she always says yes to every idea. Heidi was great to work with because she is discerning and asks the right questions before making decisions. She considers the big picture and pays attention to small details at the same time.
Heidi was great about volunteering for all sorts of tasks, big and small, but she was always focused on including others. Many of my questions were answered with, “I’m happy to do it, but maybe we should offer it to someone else.” Heidi is particularly focused on diversity, equity and inclusion and she made sure we kept those goals in mind for everything COSAL did under her watch. And I think, thanks to her leadership, we have made a lot of progress. Of course, there remains a lot to do.
Finally, I can’t talk about Heidi without mentioning Minnesota nice. Jon Cuneo and I have often remarked about how very decent and nice the people from Minnesota seem to be. Exhibit number 1 has to be Heidi Silton, with her great smile and warm and considerate nature.
It has been a great pleasure working with you, Heidi. It’s my honor to present you with the 2021 COSAL President’s Award.
