Appointments: October 2015

1) Diana Toman has joined Compass Minerals as senior vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary, effective November 3, 2015.

Toman comes to Compass from General Cable Corp, a global wire and cable manufacturing company, where she served as vice president, strategy and general counsel for Asia Pacific and Africa. Her experience includes multiple roles in senior management, including corporate counsel and corporate secretary positions at Gardner Denver and Waddell & Reed Financial. Toman began her career as an attorney with the law firm of Levy & Craig.

She earned her doctorate in law from the University of Kansas School of Law and both her MBA and BA in political science and English from the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Matt Broad

2) Darden Restaurants has named Matt Broad as senior vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary. Reporting to Darden CEO Gene Lee, Broad fills the position that has been open since the company's previous general counsel departed earlier this year.

Most recently, Broad served as a consultant with Axiom, a provider of tech-enabled legal services, where he provided legal counsel to companies in various industries, including food & beverage, manufacturing, and healthcare.  Prior to that, he served as executive vice president, general counsel and chief compliance officer for OfficeMax. Before joining OfficeMax in 2004, Broad was associate GC with Boise Cascade.

He holds a undergraduate from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law.

Bradley Gayton

3) Bradley Gayton has been named general counsel and vice president at Ford Motor Company, effective January 1, 2016. He will succeed David Leitch, who will retire after more than 10 years at the company.

Gayton has served as Ford’s corporate secretary and assistant general counsel since April 2012. Part of his responsibility in this role has been to lead a team dedicated to providing legal counsel on privacy and data protection matters, including cross-border data transfers and data usage, as well as administrative oversight of Ford’s global compliance function.

He joined Ford’s office of general counsel in 1991, holding positions of increasing responsibility, including as director of legal affairs for Canada, Mexico and South America. He also served as assistant tax officer. In January 2011, he was named assistant general counsel and assistant corporate secretary.

Gayton holds a BA in business and a law degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Alex Dimitrief

4) Alex Dimitrief has been appointed as senior vice president and general counsel at General Electric, effective November 1. He is succeeding Brackett Denniston III, who will retire at the end of 2015 after 19 years of service at GE, the last 11 as general counsel. Brackett will focus on the Alstom transition and appliances transaction through the end of the year.

Since late 2012, Dimitrief has served as senior vice president and general counsel for GE Capital, where he has been key in GE Capital’s reorganization and agreements to sell over $120 billion in assets since April 2015.

Dimitrief joined GE in February 2007 as vice president for litigation & legal policy, overseeing the company’s worldwide compliance programs and serving on its Corporate Executive Council and Policy Compliance Review Board. He has also served as vice president and general counsel of GE Energy and began his career as a trial lawyer at  Kirkland & Ellis in 1986. He was a White House Fellow in the Reagan Administration's Office of Political and Intergovernmental Affairs and an Honors Intern at the Department of Justice. He graduated from Yale College in 1981 with a degree in economics & political science and earned his JD in 1985 at Harvard Law School, where he was managing editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Ann Cathcart Chaplin

Jeffrey Taylor

5 & 6) General Motors has appointed Ann Cathcart Chaplin as deputy general counsel for litigation, effective December 14, 2015. In addition, Jeffrey Taylor is joining the automaker on November 1 as deputy general counsel for federal oversight. Both Cathcart Chaplin and Taylor will report to Craig Glidden, executive vice president and general counsel. 

Cathcart Chaplin currently leads the litigation practice group at Fish & Richardson, a global patent, intellectual property litigation and commercial litigation law firm, where she oversees 245 lawyers in 12 offices worldwide. She is a member of the firm’s management committee and previously served as managing principal of the firm’s Minneapolis office for more than five years.

She earned her JD, cum laude, from Harvard Law School in 1998 and holds a BA from the University of Minnesota.

Taylor is currently vice president and general counsel at Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems. Before that, he led a team of more than 300 professionals as CEO of Ernst & Young’s fraud investigation and dispute services practice in the Americas. He served in the US Department of Justice for 15 years as an assistant US attorney, senior advisor to Attorneys General John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales, and as the US attorney for Washington, DC from 2006 to 2009.

He has a JD from Harvard Law School and a BA in history from Stanford University.

Alfredo Gomez

7) Alfredo Gomez has been named as senior vice president, general counsel, and corporate secretary at Guidance Software.  

Previously, Gomez served as deputy general counsel at Hanmi Bank and general counsel at EMCORE Corp. In these positions, he directed and executed on legal strategies in the areas of contracts, litigation, employment, compliance, governance, and securities. He has also held legal positions at j2 Global Communications, Western Digital Corp, and Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth

Gomez earned a JD from the Georgetown University Law Center and a BA in economics from Stanford University.