The second installment of the DPELC-MSL Speakers Series featured Northwestern Law alum Tiffany Shepard. Tiffany discussed some of the interesting twists and turns of her career. Please read on:
Early years and law school: Tiffany attended Hampton University, an HBCU, in Virginia, before enrolling in the JD program at Northwestern. She knew she didn’t want to go to a law firm after law school, and she pursued a job at IBM. She noted that it wasn’t extremely common for young graduates to work for a corporation like IBM straight out of a JD program, and she also noted that she didn’t start with a law firm salary. But she knew that there were particular skills she wanted to develop, and she was thinking about developing her talent set and positioning herself for other jobs she might be interested in in the future.
While at IBM, she worked with the trademark team. She took a lot of initiative to get herself exposed to cases and issues that interested her. She said that people would joke that she was building her own book of business within IBM. She often found a reason to be in New York, which was where many of the IBM team were located – she knew that exposure to them would enhance her learning and her network. While at IBM, Tiffany worked on issues involving the use of Watson – she was there when questions about how to use Watson were first being considered.
Second job out of law school: After a year at IBM, Tiffany moved to Procter & Gamble, where she was the advertising and trademark counsel for family products (like Charmin!). In working with the content of advertising – some of which was quite cheeky – she would often have to assess the risk of certain campaigns and consider the likelihood and costs of being sued.
As an advertising attorney at P & G, Tiffany interacted with the IP team to understand what innovations were coming down the line. She also worked with engineers and R & D to figure out how to substantiate competitive claims made in P & G’s advertising (for example, saying that a product was twice as absorbent – it actually has to be twice as absorbent!). One goal was to avoid court proceedings; a lot of the disputes were arbitrated by the National Advertising Division (NAD), which is part of the Better Business Bureau.
Eventually, Tiffany became P & G’s North American Brand Protection Leader, and her focus was on dealing with counterfeit products. In this position, she travelled a lot, trained Customs & Border Control to recognize fakes, met with the FBI, and worked with forensics labs to identify counterfeit products. One goal was to force e-commerce sites to do more behind-the-scenes tracking and tracing and using blockchain to aid in this. Her work was multi-faceted; it involved privacy issues, intellectual property, and criminal law; it also had an important relational aspect to it.
Moving on to current position: Tiffany became Associate General Counsel for the US Zone at Heinz Kraft. In this role, she headed up legal for kids’ snacks, beverages, meal foundations, and cheeses. Heinz Kraft is a much smaller operation than P & G and that required Tiffany to take on a wider range of issues beyond advertising and trademarks – she had to become a jack-of-all-trades. She was involved in litigation, antitrust, deals, mergers & acquisitions, product safety, and insurance matters – essentially, she was a one-stop shop for legal matters involved in her product portfolio. Food is so heavily regulated, and that required her to stay abreast of a variety of regulations and learn a lot about Food Law.
Beyond the office: Tiffany enjoys learning new things and gets herself involved in all kinds of things outside of work. She has served as a mentor to many. Her current outside-of-work project is a startup, called GEST, a Cincinnati-based company that provides Green, Easy, Safe Transport within major metropolitan areas, including in Chicago. The idea is to have a fleet of green vehicles that can transport people within a neighborhood area, such as the West Loop of Chicago. The rides are free; the vehicles are “wrapped” with advertising paid for by local businesses. Tiffany shared the company’s 6-month growth plan and conveyed great enthusiasm about where the company is going.
Takeaways: Tiffany brought great energy to this talk, and reminded us all that it is important to be excited about what we do. She noted that she has always been interested in the combination of law and business, and she has been glad to build her career at this intersection. She especially enjoys being the “translator” between R & D and legal. It was great to hear from somebody who has charted her own path and managed to find fulfillment both in work and in outside-of-work activities.
