Leadership
Michael Stolper
Chair & Treasurer
Michael Stolper, a New York litigation partner, focuses his practice on complex commercial litigation. Mr. Stolper represents large and small companies in a variety of industries as well as high-net worth individuals. He has litigated in federal and state courts involving a wide range of substantive matters, including:
Entertainment & E-commerce Industry Matters: Mr. Stolper has represented a number of entertainment and e-commerce clients in commercial disputes, including AOL Time Warner Inc., iVillage, JuniorNet, MP3.com, TBA Entertainment Corporation and Vivendi Universal. He served as trial counsel in the defense of MP3.com against music industry recording and publishing entities. Most recently, he successfully obtained on an emergency basis billing credit for a producer of a hit Broadway musical who was otherwise omitted from the show in breach of contract.
Licensing Disputes: Mr. Stolper has handled a number of licensing disputes, including one for Japanese fashion designer Sanei International in which he was able to bring about a favorable global settlement of several related matters, including an ongoing international arbitration. He also resolved a software licensing litigation for JuniorNet, a children's internet publishing company.
Labor & Employment Issues: Mr. Stolper serves as general counsel and a trustee of the Amber Charter School located in Harlem. Through his affiliation, he recently negotiated the first UFT contract for a New York Charter School which was profiled in The New York Times and the New York Daily News. He was actively involved with the efforts of the Office of the Election Officer for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in conducting and supervising the rerun of the Teamsters’ International Officer Election.
Products Liability Cases: Mr. Stolper has represented American Cyanamid Company, American Home Products Corporation and The Dow Chemical Company in a number of products liability and mass tort cases. He is a key member of the trial team currently defending Union Carbide in widely publicized litigation in which current and former IBM employees allege cancer and birth defects resulting from chemical exposures in IBM’s semiconductor manufacturing process.
Tobacco Litigation: Mr. Stolper was a member of the trial team that represented the Manville Personal Injury Trust in a multi-billion dollar RICO suit in New York Federal Court against major tobacco companies. Mr. Stolper serves as General Counsel to the Board of Directors of the Hispanic Federation, a non-profit social service organization active in the New York and New Jersey Hispanic communities. He also served as the Assistant to the Special Advisor of Hispanic Affairs for the Mayor of New York City.
Mr. Stolper is admitted to the New York State Bar and is also admitted to practice before the United States District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York and the District of Arizona. Concentration Complex commercial litigation and counseling.
Education: J.D., Columbia University School of Law, 1993; A.B., Princeton University, 1989.
Memberships include:
American Bar Association
The Association of the Bar of the City of New York
Puerto Rican Bar Association
Vasthi Acosta
Dr. Vasthi Reyes Acosta is the former Executive Director of Amber Charter Schools. Dr. Acosta is a graduate of Columbia University’s Teachers College where she was awarded both a Doctor of Education and Master of Arts degrees. She also holds a Master of Science degree from Bank Street College of Education and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Fordham University.
Dr. Acosta has worked in the NYC Department of Education as Assistant Principal, consultant and teacher. She was a college professor at Hostos Community College in the Early Childhood Education department, a curriculum developer and teacher trainer at Teachers College. While at Teachers College, she was responsible for training teachers throughout the North Eastern United States, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. She has been a national validator for early childhood programs seeking accreditation from the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC).
Dr. Acosta has presented scholarly work at national and statewide conferences. She has published several articles, the two most recent, a book review of the book, “Language, Space and Power: A Critical Look at Bilingual Education” and a commentary titled, “Stung by Buzz Words”, both in the Teachers College Record. As an author, her novella “Gifts from the Magi” is published in the anthology, A Big Apple Christmas. Dr. Acosta started publishing her weekly column titled, “La Maestra del Pueblo”, in the Education section of El Diario La Prensa, which addresses various aspects of parenting and education on November14, 2011. In addition, Dr. Acosta was recently honored as a Mama Latina, one of only 7 mothers chosen across the entire U.S. for her contributions to her community and dedication to her family.
Secretary
Michele Hirshman
A partner at Paul, Weiss in the Litigation Department, Michele Hirshman focuses her practice on white collar defense and regulatory enforcement matters and internal investigations.
Michele regularly advises financial institutions, educational institutions, media and advertising companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers, political organizations and public and private company executives and public officials in high-profile, high-stakes federal and state criminal, civil regulatory and internal investigations. She has represented public and privately held companies and individuals before the U.S. Department of Justice, United States Attorneys’ offices, the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission, the New York and Massachusetts Attorneys General, the New York State Department of Financial Services and other federal, state and local law enforcement and regulatory authorities and in connection with sensitive, significant employment matters.
Board Member
Michele’s significant representations include:
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21st Century Fox in investigations concerning Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly and other related matters;
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Bank of New York Mellon in regulatory matters and litigation and arising out of the bank’s foreign exchange standing instruction orders;
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Columbia University in a variety of Title IX matters, including a lawsuit brought by a student alleging violation of Title IX and other claims arising out of alleged defamation and harassment of plaintiff by another student;
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Major financial institutions and their executives and directors in global investigations relating to compliance with Bank Secrecy Act/anti-money laundering requirements and accounting issues; and Merck in litigation and regulatory investigations relating to Vioxx.
Michele is regularly consulted in matters involving high profile business and personal reputational concerns. She has significant jury trial and appellate court experience, and she regularly speaks at conferences and on panels advising other practitioners in the field. She also works on a broad range of criminal and civil pro bono cases with young lawyers at the firm, and previously was a member of the Boards of Directors of The Legal Aid Society and the City Bar Justice Center.
Prior to joining Paul, Weiss, Michele served for eight years as First Deputy Attorney General for the State of New York and for eleven years as a federal prosecutor in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, where she was the Deputy Chief Appellate Attorney and Chief of the General Crimes and Public Corruption Units.
Michele received the John Marshall Award for Outstanding Legal Achievement from the U.S. Department of Justice. She is recognized in Chambers USA as a leading lawyer for Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations; in Legal 500 for White-Collar Criminal Defense and General Commercial Disputes; in The Best Lawyers in America for Criminal Defense: White-Collar; and in Benchmark Litigation as a Local Litigation Star for New York. Benchmark has consistently named her to its Top 250 Women in Litigation guide. Michele was articles editor of the Yale Law Journal.
Soledad Hiciano
Ms. Soledad Hiciano is the chair of the Amber Charter Schools network. She has served on the Amber Charter Schools board in different capacities since the school’s founding in 2000. Ms. Hiciano is the Executive Director of La Asociación Comunal de Dominicanos Progresistas (ACDP) or Community Association of Progressive Dominicans since 2006, a highly respected community organization serving thousands of families in Northern Manhattan and the Bronx. ACDP is the first Dominican-led community-based organization in Washington Heights, and has been providing services to the families of Washington Heights for over 25 years.
Ms. Hiciano has been, and still is, a very active parent advocate in the field of education. She led the President’s Council of District Six in 1997, was a key member of the ACDP-sponsored team that founded PS 210/Twenty-first Century Academy for Community Leadership in 1997, and played a key role in the founding of Amber Charter School.
She holds a Bachelor of Science from Mercy College. She is the mother of three daughters and a resident of Washington Heights.
Board Member​
John Gutiérrez
John A. Gutiérrez is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Latin American and Latina/o Studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice/CUNY. He is a historian of the Spanish-speaking Caribbean islands, he specializes in the history of Cuba and specifically the history of health, medicine and disease during the early twentieth century. He earned his undergraduate degree at Vassar College and his doctorate at the Graduate Center/CUNY, where he was the recipient of a Ralph Bunche Dissertation Fellowship.
Before joining the faculty at John Jay, Dr. Gutiérrez was an Associate at the MirRam Group specializing in communications, policy analysis, and fundraising. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Friends of the New Jersey Hispanic Research and Information Center at the Newark Public Library. He joined the Board of Trustees of the Amber Charter School in 2015. He lives in Montclair, NJ with his wife and two sons.
Board Member
Joey Gustafson is the Managing Director of the Amber Education Fund. Ms. Gustafson has experience in fundraising, program development, research, evaluation, and public policy of schools and educational programs. Ms. Gustafson has been a long-term management consultant, educational operator, planner, evaluator, and has advised in educational public policy. Ms. Gustafson has worked for major funders, developers, and operators offering due diligence and developing dozens of business/strategic plans for growing educational organizations and networks of schools/districts.
Ms. Gustafson offers a wealth of policy and technical knowledge of the educational sector and the landscape of public school reform as well as management experience. She holds an MBA from Boston University and a B.A. from Georgetown University.
Joey Gustafson
Managing Director