Appointments: April 2016

Thomas Sabatino

1) Thomas Sabatino, Jr has been appointed as Aetna’s new general counsel, effective April 25. He will succeed William Casazza, who will continue to serve as a strategic adviser for Aetna’s pending acquisition of Humana. Casazza is scheduled to retire once the merger has been completed.

Sabatino is moving from Hertz Global Holdings, where he served as senior executive vice president, chief administrative officer and general counsel since February 2015. He previously was as executive vice president and global legal and chief administrative officer at Walgreens Boots Alliance. Before that he served as general counsel at United Airlines, Schering-Plough Corp and Baxter International.

Sabatino earned degrees from Wesleyan University and the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Robert Chesnut

2) Airbnb has appointed Robert Chesnut as general counsel, reporting to chief business and legal affairs officer Belinda Johnson. Chesnut will be responsible for driving the legal strategy of the company and managing Airbnb's growing legal and compliance teams around the world.

Before joining Airbnb, Chesnut served as senior vice president and general counsel at Chegg, where he oversaw corporate and legal affairs as the company sought to make higher education more affordable and accessible for students. Prior to Chegg, he was senior vice president and general counsel at LiveOps, a provider of call center outsourcing services.  

Chesnut spent nearly 10 years at eBay, first as deputy general counsel in charge of US legal affairs, and later as founder of eBay's trust and safety department, leading the development of the company’s global fraud detection and regulatory infrastructure. He is a recipient of the US Justice Department’s John Marshall award for litigation and of the CIA’s outstanding service medallion.

Chesnut earned his BA from the University of Virginia and is a graduate of Harvard Law School.

Sara Yang Bosco

3) Sara Yang Bosco has been appointed senior vice president, secretary and general counsel at Emerson, effective May 15. Timothy Westman, who has temporarily filled the role since August 2015, will retire at the end of the year after 30 years with Emerson.

As president of Emerson Asia-Pacific, Bosco has led Emerson's corporate operations and strategic development in the Asia-Pacific region since 2008. She joined Emerson in 2005 as general counsel for Asia-Pacific. She is also an Emerson representative of the US-China Business Council.  

Prior to joining Emerson, Bosco had a long history of supporting Emerson as external legal counsel in her capacity as a partner at the law firms Baker & McKenzie and Perkins Coie in the Hong Kong. Admitted to practice law in New York, Bosco has practiced law in New York, Taipei and Hong Kong. 

Bosco was named as one of Asia's leading business lawyers practicing in China and was recognized in AsiaLaw's leading lawyers surveys. She holds a BA in American Studies from the University of Notre Dame and JD from Indiana University, Bloomington, In 2014 she was named to the Academy of Law Alumni Fellows, the highest honor bestowed by the university's Maurer School of Law.

Sue Lee

4) Entegris, a provider of yield-enhancing materials and solutions for advanced manufacturing processes, has named Sue Lee as senior vice president, general counsel and secretary. She succeeds Peter Walcott, who is retiring after 35 years with Entegris and its predecessor companies.

Most recently, Lee was general counsel and corporate secretary at network security firm CYREN. Prior to CYREN, she served as general counsel at Harmonix Music Systems, vice president of business & legal affairs at MTV Networks, and counsel at Genzyme Corp. Before joining Genzyme, she worked at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton in New York.

Born in Taiwan, Lee received her bachelor's degree magna cum laude from Harvard University and her JD from Harvard Law School.

Rick Hansen

5) Rick Hansen has been named assistant corporate secretary and lead securities counsel at General Motors.

Hansen previously spent nearly nine years at Chevron Corp, starting as counsel and in 2012 being appointed as assistant corporate secretary and supervising counsel for corporate governance. In 2014, he was promoted to managing counsel for corporate governance. Prior to his move to Chevron, Hansen served as senior corporate counsel at Amazon, and before that was corporate counsel at Coinstar. He began his legal career as an associate at Perkins Coie from 2000 to 2004.

He has also served as chair of the Society for Corporate Secretaries and Governance Professionals’ national securities law committee and of the American Petroleum Institute’s shareholder proposals task force.

He earned a BA from Brigham Young University, a JD from Seattle University School of Law, and a Master of Laws from Georgetown University Law Center.

Michael Shaw

6) Royal Bank of Scotland has appointed Michael Shaw as general counsel. He succeeds John Collins, who left RBS to join Santander in December after less than a year in his position.

Shaw was most recently a deputy group general counsel at Barclays between 2009 and 2015. Prior to Barclays, he spent 17 years at the law firm Herbert Smith Freehills, joining as an associate solicitor in 1992 and becoming a partner in 1997. As head of a corporate group, he specialized in domestic and cross-border M&A and equity capital markets. While at Herbert Smith Freehills, he also served as secretary to the UK Takeover Panel, which oversees mergers and takeover bids.

He earned degrees at the University of Cambridge and the College of Law, London.