Brooke Cucinella
Brooke E. Cucinella is the Global Head of Litigation & Regulatory Inquiries at Citadel and Citadel Securities. Before joining Citadel in 2022, Brooke was a Litigation Partner at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, where she represented companies, boards, and executives in government and internal investigations and high-profile disputes. From 2012 to 2018, Brooke served in the DOJ as an Assistant United States Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, where she was a senior member of the Securities and Commodities Fraud Task Force. She has been recognized as a National “Litigation Star” in White Collar Crime. Prior to attending law school, Brooke taught in underserved neighborhoods in New Orleans and Chicago with Teach for America.
Cheryl B. Wattley, Esq.
Professor Cheryl Brown Wattley joined the inaugural faculty of the UNT Dallas College of Law from the University of Oklahoma College of Law, where she was Professor of Law and Director of Clinical Education. She teaches Criminal Law and serves as Director of Experiential Education. Professor Wattley graduated from Smith College, cum laude, and received her Juris Doctorate from Boston University College of Law, where she was a Martin Luther King, Jr. fellow. She began her legal career as an Assistant United States Attorney and later focused on the prosecution of white-collar crime as Chief of the Economic Crime Unit in the Northern District of Texas. In 1995, she was nominated by President Bill Clinton for a federal judgeship. Professor Wattley continues to work with Centurion; she represented Richard Miles in his release and ultimate exoneration, and worked for over twenty-one years on the case of Benjamine Spencer, who was declared actually innocent after thirty-seven years.
Kathy Vik
Kathy’s bio is forthcoming.
John Grisham
Long before his name became synonymous with the modern legal thriller, John Grisham was working 60-70 hours a week at a small Southaven, Mississippi law practice, squeezing in time to work on his first novel. After graduating from law school at Ole Miss in 1981, he practiced law for nearly a decade, specializing in criminal defense and personal injury litigation, and served in the state House of Representatives from 1983 to 1990. His first novel, A Time to Kill, was published in 1988, and The Firm became the bestselling novel of 1991. Since then Grisham has written approximately one novel a year, with over 300 million books in print worldwide, translated into more than 40 languages. When he’s not writing, Grisham devotes time to charitable causes and to his greatest passion, baseball. He serves on Centurion’s Board of Directors.
Mary Catherine Cuff, P.J.A.D.
Mary Catherine Cuff is a retired Judge from the New Jersey Supreme Court Appellate Division. She received her J.D. from the Rutgers School of Law in Newark. Her full bio is forthcoming.
Charles Crow, Esq.
Charlie is a founding partner at Crow & Cushing, a law firm representing individuals and entities concerned with alternative investments. He specializes in regulatory, transactional and corporate matters involving the SEC, CFTC, FERC, and IRS. Initially Charlie was drawn to Centurion because of his sense that while we have the fairest legal system in the world, it is run by human beings, and as such it is less than perfect. Where our system has made mistakes, he believes it is incumbent on everyone connected with the judicial system to see that those mistakes are not allowed to go uncorrected. Charlie has a BA from Hartwick College and a JD from Seton Hall University. He and his wife Lynn live in Princeton, NJ.
Edwin Pisani, CPA
Edwin (Ed) is a retired partner of Ernst & Young with 40 years of experience serving top-tier financial services institutions in both the assurance and advisory areas. Ed currently serves on the boards of a publicly traded bank in New Jersey and two asset management companies located in the New York Metropolitan area. Ed holds a BS in electrical engineering from Clarkson University, an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University and an MS in accounting from Northwestern University. For the past 20 years Ed has led a mentoring program with Adlai Stevenson High School in the Bronx. Ed has served on the Board of Centurion for nearly 20 years and remains very enthusiastic about its strategic mission and contribution to society. Ed and his wife Margy have two daughters, Genny and Emilia.
Babatunde P. Odubekun, Esq.
Bio coming soon.
Richard Miles
Richard spent 15 years in Texas prisons as a result of being wrongfully convicted of murder and aggravated assault. While in prison he pursued his education, receiving his Associate Degree in Science. With the help of Centurion his innocence was recognized, and Richard was released from prison on October 10, 2009. On February 15, 2012 the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reversed his conviction and declared him to be “truly” innocent. His case is the first non-DNA, non-recantation exoneration, Miles vs. State of Texas. Shortly after his exoneration he founded Miles of Freedom, an organization providing re-entry and support services to recently released men and women in the Dallas area.
Nafiz Ahmed (Fizz)
Fizz Ahmed joins the Centurion Board of Directors as a marketing executive with over a decade of experience working in the technology industry. He is currently a Senior Account Executive at Google, and also the Founder and CEO of a corporate growth strategy consulting firm called Growth Theory. He is an alumnus of the NYU Stern School of Business where he specialized in Marketing, Leadership, and Change Management. Having migrated from Bangladesh at an early age, Fizz’s formative years were spent in the greater Boston area, where he pursued his higher education at Brandeis University. The vibrant culture of social justice prevalent at Brandeis instilled in him an unwavering commitment to philanthropic endeavors, particularly focused on promoting education equity among underprivileged children.
