Dov Seidman | |
|---|---|
 Seidman at LRN Knowledge Forum 2014 | |
| Born | May 13, 1964 San Francisco, California, US |
| Alma mater | UCLA, Harvard Law School |
| Occupation(s) | Author Chairman of the board Former CEO of LRN |
| Website | www |
Dov Seidman (born May 13, 1964) is an American author, columnist and businessman. He is the founder, chairman and former CEO of LRN, [1] an ethics and compliance management firm. [2] [3] He is also the author of How , [4] and founded The HOW Institute for Society. [5] [6]
Seidman was born in San Francisco, California. His father, Alex, was a Polish-born physician who died in 1992. At the age of 3, Seidman moved to Israel with his mother and two siblings. [7] He returned to the United States in 1977, when he was 13. Seidman's first business was as a teenager detailing automobiles, including those of R&B singer Lionel Richie every Saturday. [8] [9] Seidman is dyslexic; [10] his dyslexia is the subject of a case study in the book The Dyslexic Advantage. [11]
Seidman attended UCLA for both bachelor's and master's degrees in philosophy, graduating summa cum laude in 1987. [12] He then received another bachelor's degree from Oxford University in philosophy, politics and economics, where he was a Newton-Tatum scholar and served as captain of the Balliol College crew team. [12] Following Oxford, he attended Harvard Law School, graduating in 1992. [13]
After law school, Seidman joined the law firm O'Melveny & Myers and left in December 1992. [14] Subsequently, borrowing money from friends and using credit cards, he launched the Legal Research Network (LRN) in 1994, to offer outsourced legal research and analysis to corporate law departments and law firms. He raised $2 million from 42 investors. [15] By the end of 1999, LRN became involved in compliance training by offering a software as a service-based ethics and compliance education platform. [16] Seidman also had LRN analyze corporate cultures and write codes of conduct. [17] In 2016, Seidman negotiated a partnership between LRN and professional services firm PwC, which allowed LRN to expand their business with PwC clients; this lasted two years and represented up to 8% of LRN's revenue at the time. [18] PwC reached a settlement with LRN; using this settlement money, LRN offered to purchase shares as an accommodation to some shareholders who had asked to liquidate their holdings. Ultimately approximately half of shareholders agreed and the company bought out a quarter of its shares, giving Seidman a larger share of ownership in the company. [18] In 2018, Seidman oversaw an investment of an undisclosed amount from New York-based private equity firm Leeds Equity Partners into LRN. [19] The following year, in 2019, Seidman, LRN, and two other board members were sued by a former shareholder for breach of their fiduciary duties alleging that shareholders were encouraged to sell their shares at an unfairly low price in 2017 and for not disclosing information regarding a potential transaction to them. [20] [18] Lawyers for Seidman called the lawsuit "seller's remorse," and as of October 2020, there has not been a court ruling regarding the allegations. [18]
Seidman founded The HOW Institute for Society, a non-profit focused on moral leadership, and was also its chairman. [5]
He has testified before the U.S. Sentencing Commission about the need for companies to develop ethical cultures instead of 'check-the-box', compliance-only approaches, and his testimony helped shape the amendments to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. [2] He was hired by the NFL commissioner in 2014 to advocate to its owners and head coaches the need for the NFL to create a culture where tolerance and respect were normal expectations. [21] He spoke about issues concerning global leadership at a Fortune Magazine conference for 100 CEOs held in Vatican City. [22]
In 2022, Seidman became a Hauser Leader at the Harvard Kennedy School's Center for Public Leadership. [23]
Seidman wrote a book, How: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything... in Business (and in Life) published in September 2007. In 2011, How: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything , an expanded edition, was published. [24] [25] [1] and became a New York Times Best Seller in the "Advice, How-to, and Miscellaneous" category. [26]
Seidman is a columnist for DealBook in The New York Times , The Wall Street Journal , [27] Forbes , [13] and The Huffington Post .
Seidman sued yogurt maker Chobani and its advertising agency Droga5 in 2014 claiming that an advertising campaign run that same year around the theme "How Matters" violated trademarks legally held by Seidman. [28] [29] [30] In 2017, Seidman settled the lawsuit out of court after Chobani withdrew its application for a trademark for "How Matters." [31]
In March 2016, Seidman and LRN filed a lawsuit for breach of fiduciary duty against William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, his agent for the book, How. [32] In 2017, Seidman and LRN settled all three lawsuits. [31] [33]
Seidman gave the commencement address at UCLA College of Letters and Science in 2002. [34] [35] He was given the Jurisprudence Award by the Anti-Defamation League in 2003. [36] Since 2008, Seidman and LRN have been the corporate partner of The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity's Prize in Ethics Essay Contest. [2] In 2009, Seidman was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Human Letters by the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion. [37] Seidman was a keynote address speaker at the United Nations Global Compact in 2015. [38]
State Street Corporation, is a global financial services and bank holding company headquartered at One Congress Street in Boston with operations worldwide. It is the second-oldest continually operating United States bank; its predecessor, Union Bank, was founded in 1792. State Street is ranked 14th on the list of largest banks in the United States by assets. It is one of the largest asset management companies in the world with US$3.7 trillion under management and US$40.0 trillion under custody and administration in 2023. It is the largest custodian bank in the world, providing securities services and it is considered a systemically important bank by the Financial Stability Board. Along with BlackRock and Vanguard, State Street is considered to be one of the Big Three index fund managers that dominate corporate America.
WPP plc is a British multinational communications, advertising, public relations, technology, and commerce holding company headquartered in London, England. It is the world's largest advertising company, as of 2023. WPP plc owns many companies, which include advertising, public relations, media, and market research networks such as AKQA, BCW, CMI Media Group, Essence Global, Finsbury, Grey, Hill & Knowlton, Mindshare, Ogilvy, Wavemaker, and VML. It is one of the "Big Four" agency companies, alongside Publicis, The Interpublic Group of Companies, and Omnicom Group. WPP has a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange, and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) watchdog organization devoted to U.S. government ethics and accountability. Founded in 2003 as a counterweight to conservative government watchdog groups such as Judicial Watch, CREW works to expose ethics violations and corruption by government officials and institutions and to reduce the role of money in politics.
Greenberg Traurig is a multinational law and lobbying firm founded in Miami in 1967 by Mel Greenberg, Larry J. Hoffman, and Robert H. Traurig.
American Apparel Inc. is a North American clothing retailer. The brand began with operating retail stores between the late 1980s and late 2010s. Its operations are based in Los Angeles, California. Founded by Canadian businessman Dov Charney in Spring of 1989, it was a vertically integrated company that ranked as one of the largest apparel manufacturers and marketers in North America.
Dov Charney is a Canadian entrepreneur and clothing manufacturer. He is the CEO of Yeezy and the founder of American Apparel, which was one of the largest garment manufacturers in the United States until its bankruptcy in 2015. Charney was fired from American Apparel due to numerous allegations including sexual harassment, racism, and sexual assault. Charney subsequently founded Los Angeles Apparel.
K&L Gates LLP is an American multinational corporation law firm based in the United States, with international offices in Asia, Australia, Europe, the Middle East, and South America. Its namesake firms are Kirkpatrick & Lockhart, a Pittsburgh-based firm founded as Kirkpatrick, Pomeroy, Lockhart & Johnson in 1946, and Preston Gates & Ellis, a Seattle firm founded in 1883 whose prominent partners included William H. Gates Sr., the attorney, philanthropist, and father of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. Kirkpatrick & Lockhart merged with Preston Gates in 2007 to form K&L Gates, LLP.
Neil Papiano was an American lawyer, and managing partner of Iverson, Yoakum, Papiano & Hatch. He received Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees from Stanford University, the latter in 1957, and an LL.B. from Vanderbilt University Law School in 1961. He was admitted to the State Bar of California in 1961.
Participants in the Madoff investment scandal included employees of Bernard Madoff's investment firm with specific knowledge of the Ponzi scheme, a three-person accounting firm that assembled his reports, and a network of feeder funds that invested their clients' money with Madoff while collecting significant fees. Madoff avoided most direct financial scrutiny by accepting investments only through these feeder funds, while obtaining false auditing statements for his firm. The liquidation trustee of Madoff's firm has implicated managers of the feeder funds for ignoring signs of Madoff's deception.
Chobani is an American food company specializing in strained yogurt. The company was founded in 2005 by Hamdi Ulukaya, a Turkish businessman. Chobani sells thick, Greek yogurt with a higher protein content than traditional yogurt and is one of the main companies to popularize this style of yogurt in the US. The company has also expanded to non-dairy, plant-based products such as dairy-free vegan yogurt and oat milk. Chobani produces a variety of Greek yogurt products, oat drinks, and snacks. Chobani's yogurt's market share in the U.S. rose from less than 1% in 2007 to more than 20% in 2021, and is the top-selling Greek yogurt brand in the United States and operates the largest yogurt facility in the world. In April 2016, Chobani announced it was giving 10 percent of its ownership stake to its employees.
Hamdi Ulukaya is a Turkish billionaire businessman, activist, philanthropist of Kurdish ethnicity and based in the United States. Ulukaya is the owner, founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Chobani, the #1-selling strained yogurt brand in the US. He established production facilities first in upstate New York, and since then has expanded. According to Forbes, his net worth as of October 2022 is US$2.1 billion. On 26 April 2016, Ulukaya announced to his employees that he would be giving them 10% of the shares in Chobani.
In business, and only in United States corporate law, a benefit corporation is a type of for-profit corporate entity whose goals include making a positive impact on society. Laws concerning conventional corporations typically do not define the "best interest of the corporation", which has led some to believe that increasing shareholder value is the only overarching or compelling interest of a corporation. Benefit corporations explicitly specify that profit is not their only goal. Their activities may or may not differ much from traditional corporations. An ordinary corporation may change to a benefit corporation merely by stating in its approved corporate bylaws that it is a benefit corporation.
LRN, founded in 1994, is an American company which provides advising and educating on ethics, regulatory compliance, and corporate culture to other organizations. When founded, the company focused on the legal industry and was named Legal Research Network, before expanding into other fields.
How is a 2007 book by Dov Seidman dealing with the topics of organizational behavior, leadership, and moral philosophy. Since 2011, Seidman has also written The How Column, which has appeared in several publications and previously appeared in Business Week. He has also given presentations about the topic.
From the 1970s until he was elected president in 2016, Donald Trump and his businesses were involved in over 4,000 legal cases in United States federal and state courts, including battles with casino patrons, million-dollar real estate lawsuits, personal defamation lawsuits, and over 100 business tax disputes. He has also been accused of sexual harassment and sexual assault, with one accusation resulting in him being held civilly liable.
Reid Collins & Tsai LLP is a national trial law firm with offices in New York, Austin, Dallas, Wilmington, and Washington, D.C. The firm represents plaintiffs in complex commercial litigation on a mixed-fee or contingency-fee basis.
Alden Global Capital is a hedge fund based in Manhattan, New York City. It was founded in 2007 by Randall D. Smith, and is a division of Smith Management LLC. Its managing director is Heath Freeman. By mid-2020, Alden had stakes in roughly two hundred American newspapers. The company added more newspapers to its portfolio in May 2021 when it purchased Tribune Publishing and became the second-largest newspaper publisher in the United States.
Lina M. Khan is a British-born American legal scholar serving as chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) since 2021. She is the youngest-ever FTC chair. She is also an associate professor of law at Columbia Law School.
David H. Webber is the author of The Rise of the Working Class Shareholder: Labor's Last Best Weapon and Associate Dean for Intellectual Life at Boston University School of Law, where he writes about shareholder activism and litigation.
California Department of Fair Employment and Housing v. Activision Blizzard is a current lawsuit filed by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH), now the Civil Rights Department (CRD) against video game developer Activision Blizzard in July 2021. The lawsuit asserts that management of Activision Blizzard allowed and at times encouraged sexual misconduct towards female employees, that the company maintained a "frat boy" culture, and that the company's hiring and employment practices were discriminatory against women.