Anusha Kakani is a corporate and social impact attorney and founder of First Light Legal P.C. She represents change makers including entrepreneurs, companies, investors, and nonprofits in the impact and sustainability space. Her passion is to bring their vision to reality. Her experience covers emerging and diverse industries, including AI and deep tech, and she has advised on transactions valued at over $50 billion in the aggregate. Anusha’s practice focuses on social entrepreneurship and covers a broad range of general corporate and transactional matters, including venture capital financing, strategic transactions, public offerings, corporate governance matters, and regulatory compliance. She has particular expertise advising public benefit corporations, as well as counseling around B Corp certification and environmental, social and governance (ESG) and impact reporting. She also has extensive experience assisting organizations with registering as non-profit corporations and obtaining federal 501(c)(3) tax-exemption. 

Anusha is also a Member of the Board of Trustees, for Support Organization for Kids in Need (SOFKIN), a nonprofit in New Jersey and Hyderabad, India that cares for destitute children and women, and has assisted in operations and fundraising for over a decade. She also serves on the Advisory Board for SheTek, Inc., a nonprofit that provides mentoring and assistance with career placement and retention for young girls and women in the technology industry. Prior to founding First Light Legal, Anusha was a corporate associate at Cooley LLP and Shearman & Sterling LLP and co-founded a boutique corporate law firm. She is a Harvard Law School graduate and a magna cum laude undergraduate honoree from the Elliot School of International Affairs of the George Washington University. 

Sepideh Rowland is a Partner at Klaros Group. She is a senior compliance executive with deep regulatory and operational knowledge having held leadership positions as chief compliance or BSA/AML and sanctions officer, at several of the financial community’s most respected institutions, community banks, and money services businesses. She also played an active role in lobbying and advocating for financial institutions as senior counsel with the American Bankers Association. Sepideh was the recipient of the 2023 American Bankers Association’s Distinguished Service Award for Financial Crimes in recognition of her career and contributions to the banking industry. 

Tom Pardini is a partner at Gish PLLC, an intellectual property litigation boutique with offices in New York and San Francisco.  He represents clients in IP litigation and other commercial disputes, with a focus on trade secret and patent infringement matters.  Tom’s clients range from global technology companies in high-profile intellectual property disputes to executives navigating employee mobility conflicts.  Tom has litigated both trials and arbitrations to successful verdicts and has played a central role on numerous trial teams.  Tom has successfully defended AI companies in patent infringement suits and other IP matters, and has written pieces for legal publications like Law.com and the Daily Journal regarding analyzing the fair use defense and trade secret law in the context of AI. 

He has also been recognized in Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch® in America for Patent Litigation and Intellectual Property Litigation.