Six named to Board of Trustees

• Link to: Northwestern Now Story

Six new members have been elected to the Northwestern University Board of Trustees.

The new trustees include:

Courtney D. Armstrong

Armstrong is executive vice president of worldwide business affairs for Warner Bros. Pictures. In this role, he oversees all day-to-day business and legal aspects of worldwide film acquisition, production and distribution for the studio, including supervising the negotiations of key deals with filmmakers and talent. 

During his career at Warner Bros., Armstrong has been involved with several key film projects, including “Dunkirk,” “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald,” “Justice League,” “Lego Batman,” “Ocean’s 8,” “Ready Player One,” “The Dark Knight Trilogy” and “Wonder Woman.” 

Before joining the studio in 2003, Armstrong spent three years at Walt Disney Pictures as an attorney in the business and legal affairs department of the Motion Picture Group. He began his career as a litigation associate on the entertainment litigation teams at the Los Angeles-based law firm Paul Hastings LLP. 

In addition to his professional responsibilities, Armstrong is an executive committee member of the Law Board at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law and co-chair of his 25th reunion committee for his undergraduate class. He is a member of the Executive Leadership Council, an organization for the development of global black leaders, as well as a member of the executive branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Armstrong received a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering, a juris doctor from Pritzker, and a master’s degree in business administration from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. In 2018, he received the Northwestern Alumni Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the Northwestern Alumni Association.

Armstrong is married to Lori Armstrong. They have two children, Miles and Ellis.

Valerie J. Friedman

Friedman is a principal at Bracebridge Capital, LLC, a Boston-based hedge fund with more than $12 billion of assets under management. Friedman joined Bracebridge in 2006 and is the head of business development for the firm, in which capacity she is responsible for investor relations and marketing as well as recruiting. In addition, she manages the external alternative investments of the firm’s partners, which include venture capital and private equity.

Between 1986 and 2005, Friedman worked at Salomon Brothers Inc. and Citigroup Global Markets Inc. where she was a managing director and senior salesperson in the global fixed income department, specializing in emerging markets. Friedman was responsible for opening and managing Salomon Brothers’ emerging markets trading desk in London in 1992 as well as initiating the firm’s emerging markets business in Japan in the late 1980s.

Friedman has served as an independent board director for numerous private biotech and medical device companies including KEW, Novalere, VisionScope and ImmuneXcite. She also sits on the investor advisory board of several venture funds as well as the Innovation and New Ventures Office (INVO) at Northwestern. Friedman currently serves on the Committee on Development and the Campaign Cabinet of Combined Jewish Philanthropies and has served on numerous philanthropic boards in the past including SheGives, UJA Federation of Greenwich, Whitby School and Combined Jewish Philanthropy’s Women’s Division. 

Friedman received her master’s degree in finance from Columbia Business School and a bachelor’s degree in political science from Northwestern. Friedman is the mother of two Northwestern graduates, Maxwell (Weinberg ’16) and Alexander (McCormick ’18).

Adam L. Hoeflich

Hoeflich is a partner at Bartlit Beck LLP and a professor of practice at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. He is a courtroom lawyer and strategic advisor to organizations and wealthy individuals facing high-stakes challenges within and outside of the litigation process. His academic focus is on complex litigation, class actions and legal ethics. Prior to joining Northwestern, Hoeflich was on the faculty at the University of Chicago Law School.

Hoeflich is chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Civic Federation and a member of the Northwestern Memorial Hospital Quality Committee. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute.

Before practicing, Hoeflich clerked for Honorable Thomas J. Meskill of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Honorable Milton I. Shadur of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Hoeflich graduated first in his class from the University of Illinois College of Law and from Colgate University. 

Hoeflich is the father of two Northwestern graduates, Jacob (Weinberg ’18) and Joshua (SESP ’19).

April McClain-Delaney

McClain-Delaney is a communications lawyer and an entrepreneur, whose interests and skills range from the regulation of communications satellites to safeguarding the digital privacy of children. She is passionate about expanding opportunities for young girls and protecting them from online and in-person predatory behavior. She is a bridge-builder who always seeks to strengthen communities through the realization of what we believe and hold in common. McClain-Delaney is guided by her faith and her belief that collectively we can achieve change that benefits us all.

McClain-Delaney is the Washington director and board member of Common Sense Media. In addition, she has been actively involved with several organizations focused on girls and women, most notably the International Center for Research on Women, Innocents at Risk, Meridian Center Women’s Leadership Council and Georgetown University’s Women, Peace, and Security Institute. She has received numerous awards and recognitions for her charity and advocacy work. 

Previously, McClain-Delaney spent 15 years as an FCC attorney with Cohn & Marks, vice president of international regulatory affairs with Orion Network Systems and founder of USAT, an international satellite-based internet services company. 

She is the past chair of the Board of Visitors of Georgetown Law Center, on the National Advisory Council for Northwestern’s School of Communication, board member and nominating chair of the International Center for Research on Women, a past vice-president of the Congressional (Families) Club and a board member of the Sun Valley Community School. Her policy work centers on digital citizenship issues and how media messages to and empowers women.

McClain-Delaney was born and raised in Buhl, Idaho, where her father was a russet potato farmer. She earned a bachelor’s degree in communications from Northwestern and a juris doctor degree from Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C., where she met her husband, John.

Thomas K. Montag

Montag is chief operating officer of Bank of America and is a member of the company’s executive management team. In this role, he is responsible for all of the businesses that serve companies and institutional investors, including middle-market commercial and large corporate clients, and institutional investor clients, including Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Research and the global markets sales and trading businesses.

Previously, he was president of global banking and markets at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. The global banking and global markets businesses focus on corporations, institutional investors, financial institutions and government entities. The businesses provide innovative services in mergers and acquisitions, equity and debt capital raising, lending, trading, risk management, research, and liquidity and payments management. Bank of America Merrill Lynch serves clients in more than 100 countries and has relationships with 94% of the U.S. Fortune 1,000 companies and 79% of the Global Fortune 500. Montag has extensive industry knowledge, with more than two decades of experience in financial markets throughout the world. He joined Merrill Lynch as executive vice president and head of global sales and trading in 2008, prior to the company’s merger with Bank of America.

Before that, Montag was with Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., where he was co-head of the global securities business and a member of the company’s Management Committee and Equities/FICC Executive Committee. During his 22 years with Goldman Sachs, Montag held a number of key executive roles. He was co-president of the firm’s Japanese operations and co-head of Asian FICC and Equities before becoming co-head of the global securities business. Earlier in his career, Montag ran the firm’s global derivatives business. He was named a partner at Goldman Sachs in 1994 and managing director in 1996. He began his career with management positions at the First National Bank of Chicago.

Montag is on the board of directors of Dakine and Mervin Manufacturing and is a member of the board of the Partnership for New York City and the NYU Langone Medical Center Board of Trustees. He also serves as an advisory board member for the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, on the board of the Japan Society and as a trustee of the Riverdale Country School. He is a former BlackRock board member, Asia Society trustee and Stanford University Athletic Board member.

Milton “Chip” Morris  

Morris joined Neuspera Medical as its president and CEO in July 2015. Since then, Neuspera has experienced steady growth and progress towards the development of its ultraminiaturized neurostimulators. Prior to joining Neuspera, Morris was the senior vice president of research and development and emerging therapies at Cyberonics (now LivaNova) where he assembled and led an R&D team that pioneered the first closed-loop vagus nerve stimulation device for epilepsy. Morris previously worked at Guidant Corporation and its successor, Boston Scientific Corporation. During his tenure, he held several positions, including principal research scientist; director, research and development; and director, marketing where he served as the Arrhythmia Franchise leader with responsibilities for both the implantable pacemaker and defibrillator businesses for the cardiac rhythm management division of Boston Scientific.

Prior to joining Guidant, Morris spent five years working as a research assistant in the Medical Computing Laboratory at the University of Michigan in collaboration with the electrophysiology group at the University of Michigan Hospital and the Michigan Heart and Vascular Institute. During this period, Morris was awarded fellowships from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health in support of his research on the development of novel approaches to low-power arrhythmia classification algorithms designed for implantable defibrillators. Morris is named as an inventor on 30 patents and an author on 20 peer-reviewed publications, book chapters, abstracts and scientific presentations.

Morris serves on the Dean’s Advisory Board for McCormick and for the biomedical engineering department. Additionally, Milton serves as a fellow in the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering where he was recently inducted for contributions to developing and commercializing innovations in bioelectronic medicine. 

Morris holds a master’s degree in business administration from Kellogg, a master’s degree and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Northwestern.

Morris and his wife, Renee, have four kids.