2022 NDA 8th Annual Conference

Speakers

Mary J. Beaudrow
Mary J. Beaudrow is a Senior Docket Coordinator at Morrison & Foerster LLP. Ms. Beaudrow has been employed in the legal field for over forty years, spending much of that time working in the attorney service business. Mary served as the Treasurer of the National Docketing Association from 2016 - 2021. Mary is a Past President of Legal Professionals, Incorporated (LPI) (formerly known as Legal Secretaries, Incorporated). Mary is also a Past President of California Association of Legal Support Professionals. She is a member of the National Docketing Association (and its SF Bay Area Chapter) and of Mt. Diablo Legal Professionals Association. She has lectured at a number of forums including San Francisco Legal Professionals Association, (former) San Francisco Docket Association, and the Bay Area Legal Forum.

Bradley Small
Bradley Small is the Managing Attorney for Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP where he sets the strategic direction for the Managing Attorney’s Office. Bradley and his team provide docketing, calendaring and filing services, research and analysis to the firm’s litigators on procedural issues to assist with compliance with court rules. Cadwalader’s centralized docketing team, which Bradley oversees, serves as the primary point of contact between the firm and the courts. He also provides strategic advice to the firm’s attorneys and management on a broad range of risk management issues to assist with compliance of ethical and legal obligations. Bradley joined Cadwalader in 2019 after a career with extensive litigation experience. Prior to joining Cadwalader, he worked as an associate at two mid-size firms, Bradley was the primary handling attorney of cases and his responsibilities included everything from responding to or filing complaints through trial.

Igor Olenich
Igor Olenich is the Firm Wide Patent Docket Manager at Morrison & Foerster LLP with over 20 years of experience supporting attorneys with all aspects of IP docketing. He has worked in Litigation Docketing although, his expertise is in IP. His career, as well as his life, is diverse with a background in human resources, records management, and law enforcement. He has traveled and lived in a dozen countries. Igor is the immediate past Secretary for the NDA.

Leslie White
Leslie White is a Certified Paralegal at Cirrus Logic, Inc. in Austin, Texas. She has been involved in the docketing, IP and litigation profession for over 30 years, working at such multi-national firms as Vinson & Elkins, Morrison & Foerster and Arnold, White & Durkee. She now serves on the Education Committee and assists as an IP track organizer for the NDA annual conference. She was also a recipient of the 2016 NDA Annual Achievement Award.

Beth Hella
Beth Hella is the Senior Trademark Administration Manager at Foley Hoag LLP. Born and raised in the Boston area, Beth has been in the trademark docketing field for nearly 20 years. Her current role as co-chair of the Resource Library and former role as Treasurer of the NDA has allowed Beth the privilege of working with countless talented docketing professionals across the country. The enthusiasm of the NDA members inspires Beth to continue to work within the association to ensure it meets and exceeds the expectations of its members. It is with great pleasure that Beth serves as an Executive Board Member of the NDA.

Joy Baldridge

Joy Baldridge's first speaking engagement was at the White House at the age of 19. She got there by cold calling the president.

Joy is a Certified Speaking Professional, Certified Virtual Presenter, Certified Personnel Consultant, TEDx and globally renowned, virtual, and onsite event keynote speaker and facilitator, who has spoken from Boston to Bangkok, Denver to Dubai, Seattle to Singapore and Grand Rapids to Grand Cayman.

Joy is the author of 3 business books, most recently, The Joy in Business – Innovative Ideas to Find Positivity and Profit in Your Daily Work Life. In 2019 she made the 41 Top Motivational Speakers list along with Daymond John of Shark Tank and Author Simon Sinek. Her message is fresh and new,
her energy captivating, insights inspiring and motivating.
Her expertise is sales, leadership, team building and communication/relationship building.

Joy has delivered over 2,500 virtual and in-person presentations for organizations and corporations including Crossville Tile, NKBA, ASID, DEDON luxury furniture design, Google, KPMG, The US Bar Association, Skadden, IBM, NBC, Rolling Stone, Citi, Skadden, Dentons, Architectural Digest, and Oprah Magazines, International Spa Association, Healthcare Facilities Symposium, Ritz Carlton, Marriott, Alexander Graham Bell Association, Yale University, The Jack Welch College of Business and Technology, SHRM, ANNA, ABA, and AMA. She is a dynamic and engaging speaker who delivers presentations that are meaningful and memorable.

Joy shares innovative, actionable, invaluable tools and proven fresh ideas that all can quickly benefit from by applying to everyday challenges at work and in life.

Karin M. Reed

Karin M. Reed is an Emmy award-winning journalist and CEO of Speaker Dynamics, a corporate communications training firm, featured in Forbes. While speaking through a webcam might be relatively new to much of the world, Karin has been teaching business professionals how to be effective on-camera communicators for nearly a decade. A three-time author, she has been quoted as a thought leader by various prestigious publications, including Inc. Magazine, Fast Company and Business Insider and was named an "Author Who Inspires Us" by McKinsey and Company.

Karin and her team have been the chosen training partner for some of the world's most recognized companies – from Nike to Lenovo – and most respected academic institutions in the world –from Duke University to the Graduate School of Business at Stanford.

Her first book, On-Camera Coach: Tools and Techniques for Business Professionals in a Video-Driven World, (WILEY 2017) was a #1 Hot New Release in Business Communications on Amazon. Her award-winning second book, Suddenly Virtual: Making Remote Meetings Work, written with meeting scientist, Dr. Joseph Allen, was adopted into the curriculum of the Graduate School of Business at Stanford. She and Dr. Allen collaborated again for her third book, Suddenly Hybrid: Managing the Modern Meeting, which hit #1 in Business Communications upon its release in February 2022.

Susan Gelmis
Susan Gelmis is the Chief Deputy Clerk for Operations at the Ninth Circuit. She has been with the court for over 30 years, previously serving as supervisor of the Motions and Pro Se Units in the Staff Attorneys’ Office and as director of the Circuit’s Pro Bono Program for 22 years. Susan has served on numerous Circuit wide committees and task forces relating to prisoner and pro se litigation, and as liaison to the pro se law clerks in the district courts, organizing and speaking at Circuit wide and national conferences. In December 2015, Susan moved to the Clerk’s Office to assume her current position as Chief Deputy Clerk, where she oversees all docketing and filing and calendaring systems and procedures, staffs the Circuit Rules Committee, and organizes and speaks at CLE programs around the Circuit. Susan is a 1987 graduate of NYU Law School and originally a native of New York.

Alan O’Hair
Alan O’Hair is the Litigation Docket Services Manager for Mayer Brown LLP’s Chicago Office. He has an extensive background in overseeing rule-based litigation calendaring systems at large law firms, with an emphasis on training and empowering docket professionals to excel at understanding the nuances of court rules, procedures, and litigation in relation to centralized calendaring. Before relocating to Chicago in 2019, Alan was the Docket Services Manager in Mayer Brown’s Washington, D.C. Office, where he oversaw a docket department specializing in appellate court docketing. Prior to joining Mayer Brown in 2011, he oversaw the litigation calendaring system at Latham & Watkins, LLP in Washington, D.C.

Mollybeth Kocialski
As the Director of the Rocky Mountain Regional United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), since January 2016, Mollybeth (Molly) Kocialski carries out the strategic direction of the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO, and is responsible for leading the Rocky Mountain regional office. Focusing on the nine states within this region and actively engaging with the community, Ms. Kocialski ensures the USPTO’s initiatives and programs are tailored to the region’s unique ecosystem of industries and stakeholders.

Ms. Kocialski brings more than 20 years of intellectual property experience to the USPTO. Most recently, Ms. Kocialski was the Senior Patent Counsel for Oracle America, Inc, where she was responsible for managing an active patent prosecution docket and was also responsible for all of the post-grant procedures and patent investigations for Oracle and its subsidiaries. Prior to Oracle, she worked at Qwest Corporation and was also in private practice in both New York and Colorado focusing on intellectual property litigation for multiple high-tech companies while maintaining an active prosecution docket.

Ms. Kocialski is a recognized IP leader in the Rocky Mountain region. Ms. Kocialski currently serves on the Colorado Federal Executive Board’s Executive Committee. Ms. Kocialski is the Vice President of the Colorado IP Inn of Court and was previously the Chair of the Planning Committee and a member of the Board of Directors of the Colorado IP Inn of Court. Further, Ms. Kocialski is a member of the Planning Committee for the Rocky Mountain Intellectual Property Institute, an annual two-day conference on intellectual property that attracts over 500 attendees. She was the Chair of the Intellectual Property Section of the Colorado Bar Association and served on the Colorado Bar Association’s Board of Governors. Ms. Kocialski served as the head of the IP Committee and was a member of the Board of Directors for the Colorado Chapter of the Association of Corporate Counsel and served on the National IP Committee of the Association of the Corporate Counsel. In 2015, Ms. Kocialski was recognized by ManagingIP magazine as one of its North America Corporate IP Stars.

Ms. Kocialski is a graduate of the State University of New York at Buffalo School of Law and received a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from the University of New Mexico. Ms. Kocialski is a registered patent attorney and is admitted to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the New York and Colorado state bars as well as to the United States Courts in those jurisdictions.

Jason Blair
Jason Paul Blair is Counsel at Smith, Gambrell and Russell in Austin, Texas. Jason handles a wide variety of intellectual property matters, with an emphasis on trademark, trade dress, and copyright issues. Prior to private practice, Jason was an examining attorney for the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) for over a dozen years. His direct involvement in the prosecution and examination of over 15,000 trademark applications in the USPTO affords him an extraordinary depth of experience in the trademark registration process.

In 2008, Jason was named the USPTO’s Special Marks Examiner for Sound and Motion Marks, and was instrumental in implementing agency policy standards and procedures for trademarks incorporating sound or motion. In addition to examining all of the sound and motion mark applications, Jason drafted several provisions of the Trademark Manual of Examining Procedure (TMEP) dealing with those marks, was directly involved in the formulation of sound and motion mark policies, and worked with foreign government officials in efforts to harmonize sound and motion mark practices globally.

Mr. Blair received his B.A. in Political Science, cum laude, from the University of California, Los Angeles. He received his J.D., cum laude, from the University of Miami School of Law, where he was a Dean’s Merit Scholar and received a Dean’s Certificate of Achievement in Administrative and Trademark Law.

In addition to music, Jason loves spending time with his wife and young triplets, and also enjoys restoring classic cars.

Panelists

David Le
David joined the USPTO in January 2009, and examined patents relating to information security and cryptography. He joined the outreach team in various roles at the Rocky Mountain Regional Office in 2016 and 2018, and transitioned to the Assistant Regional Director in February 2020. The Rocky Mountain USPTO services Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming. He has B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Oklahoma and a Juris Doctor from Oklahoma City University School of Law. He is also a member of the Oklahoma State Bar. He enjoys all sports and outdoor activities including snowboarding, camping, and all sorts of fishing.

Sarah Al-Awadi
Primary Examiner & Outreach Advisor for the Rocky Mountain Regional Office
Sarah joined the USPTO in 2008. She graduated with a B.A. in Molecular Cellular Developmental Biology (MCDB) from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and with a M.S. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Georgetown University. Sarah is in TC 1600 (AU 1619) and examines cases directed to pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, implants, and antimicrobials.

Julie Brocketti
Quality Assurance Specialist, Outreach Advisor for the Rocky Mountain Regional Office
Julie Brocketti is a Quality Assurance Specialist in Technology Center 3700 at the United States Patent and Trademark Office. She started work at the USPTO in 1999 as a Patent Examiner in the electronic gaming and educational device art. She also served as in-house counsel for International Game Technology from 2006-2011. She has a Bachelor of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering from The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio and a Juris Doctorate from The American University, Washington College of Law.