ACEBC® - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Founder of Holifield Janich Rachal & Associates
Mr. Holifield, the founder of Holifield Janich Rachal & Associates, PLLC, focuses his practice areas in employee benefits law, employee benefits litigation, employment law, employment litigation and other related corporate matters. He earned his law degree and M.B.A. degree from the University of Tennessee in 1992, and his B.S. degree from the University of Southern Mississippi in 1988. He has his Certified Employee Benefit Specialist designation through the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Holifield is a member of the American Bar Association's Labor and Employment Law Section, is a co-chair of the Employee Benefits Subcommittee on Fiduciary Responsibility and a member of the Knoxville Bar Association.
Andrew Irving has more than 40 years experience as an attorney and independent fiduciary serving single employer, multiemployer and public sector benefit plans.
From 2003-2018, Mr. Irving led the independent fiduciary decision-making practice at Gallagher Fiduciary Advisors, LLC and one of its predecessor firms Independent Fiduciary Services, Inc.
That practice focused on providing independent, conflict-free, discretionary decisions regarding particular transactions or plan assets. He also provided guidance on ERISA issues that arose in the course of client engagements and managed the services of outside legal counsel when particular assignments required their assistance. He also served as a member of the firm's leadership team.
Since retiring from his full-time employment with Gallagher, Mr. Irving continues to work on select assignments through Blakeman Crest Advisors, LLC as well as serving as a Senior Independent Fiduciary Consultant with Gallagher.
Before working as an independent fiduciary, Mr. Irving spent 25 years (including 18 as a partner) with Bryan Cave, LLP and its predecessor firm in New York, Robinson Silverman Pearce Aronsohn & Berman LLP. Mr. Irving worked with plan fiduciaries and the investment community designing sophisticated investment products and strategies to comply with statutory requirements and improve plan funding. Mr. Irving also litigated challenging issues of fiduciary responsibility and plan administration related to single employer, multiemployer and governmental benefit plans.
Appointed by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, with the advice and consent of the New York City Council, Mr. Irving served from 2005 to 2017 as a member of the New York City Conflicts of Interest Board, which administers the New York City Charter's Code of Ethics for the City's elected officials and public employees. Upon the expiration of his second term in 2017, the Board awarded Mr. Irving its Powell Pierpoint Award for outstanding service to the Board.
Mr. Irving is a cum laude graduate of Yale University and received his J.D. from Columbia Law School, where he was a member of the Law Review.
Andrew L. Oringer is a partner and the co-chair of the Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation Group at Dechert LLP, and leads the firm's national fiduciary practice in New York. He is the Emerging Issues Coordinator of the Employee Benefits Committee of the American Bar Association's Section of Taxation, and former co-chair of the Employee Benefits Committee of the Tax Section of the New York State Bar Association. He also is a member of the New York State Bar Association's Committee on Attorney Professionalism. Mr. Oringer is on the Bloomberg BNA Benefits Practice Resource Advisory Board and the Advisory Board of the Bloomberg BNA Tax Management Compensation Planning Journal, and is a charter member of the Practical Law Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation Advisory Board. He is an adjunct professor at the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University, a Fellow of the American College of Employee Benefits Counsel and a Senior Fellow from Practice for the Regulatory Compliance Association. He is a frequent speaker and writer, having been named co-editor of a leading treatise on ERISA fiduciary law and having written a chapter for a leading treatise on the taxation of nonqualified deferred compensation. He is highly rated by a number of key ranking organizations, and is included in a widely disseminated list of the Top 100 lawyers in New York City across all practice areas.
Job Titles:
- Employee Benefits and Executive
Andrew Stumpff practices employee benefits and executive compensation law with the Ann Arbor, Michigan office of Butzel Long. He was previously a partner of the New York firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell, and earlier in his career served as an Assistant Branch Chief in the IRS Office of Chief Counsel's Employee Benefits and Exempt Organizations Division, where he helped oversee national employee benefits litigation and was a colleague of Martha Hutzelman, among other luminaries. He also spent time as an associate with the firm of Spencer Fane Britt & Browne in Kansas City, where he got to work with and learn from what was, in retrospect, an unbelievable group of nascent benefits law superstars like John Utz, Martin Moderson, and Ken Mason. Andrew is a former co-chair of the Employee Benefits Committee of the New York State Bar Association Tax Section. Currently he also teaches Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation at the University of Michigan Law School and in the University of Alabama Law School LL.M. in Taxation program. In addition to many legal articles, he is the author of a law school casebook, "Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation," and co-author (with John Langbein, David Pratt and Susan Stabile) of another, "Pension and Employee Benefit Law" (6th ed.), both published by Foundation Press.
Benjamin Eisner is currently Of Counsel at Cohen, Weiss and Simon LLP in New York, NY, where he represents benefit plans, fiduciaries, plan sponsors, unions, labor management committees and individuals in matters arising under ERISA, the Internal Revenue Code and the Labor Management Relations Act, including pension plan withdrawal liability matters. He also regularly advises experienced practitioners on ethical issues that arise in the multiemployer and benefits practice.
Job Titles:
- Editor - in - Chief of the Annual Supplements to Employee Benefits Law
- Member of the Board of the Ann Arbor Summer Festival
- Member of the World Economic Forum 's Global Agenda Council
- Professor
Professor Muir is a nationally recognized expert on fiduciary and remedial issues especially in the fields of investments, pension plan funding, plan investment selection and investment policies, and investment advice. She is a passionate supporter of Ross School research showing that business can play a positive role in society and the way law supports business in playing that role. Her research reaches extensively into her peer academic community (both domestically and internationally), the legal community at-large, as well as the legislative, judicial and executive branches of the U.S. government. Her work has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court and other federal courts. Professor Muir was the Editor-in-Chief of the annual supplements to Employee Benefits Law, the treatise for the employee benefits field and is a Fellow of the American College of Employee Benefits Counsel as well as a member of the College's Board of Governors.
Professor Muir holds an Arthur F. Thurnau Professorship at the University of Michigan in recognition of undergraduate teaching excellence. She was a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching.
Professor Muir is a member of the board of the Ann Arbor Summer Festival and served as a board member and chaired the compensation committee at Aerospace Corporation. She has acted as an expert witness on fiduciary issues. Prior to joining the Ross School, Professor Muir practiced law at national law firms based in Chicago and Detroit and held a number of human resources positions at Chrysler Corporation.
Professor Muir is the Editor-in-Chief of the annual supplements to Employee Benefits Law. She also is a Fellow of the American College of Employee Benefits Counsel. In addition to many law review publications, she has co-edited a book on international pension systems, authored a book on employment law, and contributed chapters to a number of books. Her work has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court and other federal courts.
Dinah S. Leventhal is a partner at O'Donoghue & O'Donoghue LLP. Her practice focuses on employee benefits, advising the firm's trust fund clients - both pension and welfare - on a wide range of compliance issues under ERISA, the Internal Revenue Code, and other laws. She has particular familiarity with the legal and administrative issues that arise in the process of assessing and collecting withdrawal liability for her multiemployer defined benefit pension plan clients. Her work includes representing fund clients in arbitration and litigation.
Dinah is a frequent presenter on employee benefits topics. She serves as Co-Chair of the Withdrawal Liability Subcommittee of the ABA's Section of Labor and Employment Law Employee Benefits Committee and is a Senior Editor of the Employee Benefits Law treatise.
Dinah earned an A.B. cum laude at Harvard University and a J.D. with honors from the University of Maryland School of Law. After law school, Dinah served as a judicial clerk to the Hon. William M. Nickerson of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland before joining O'Donoghue & O'Donoghue LLP.