2019 Jazz for Justice Benefit

April 4, 2019

Thursday, April 4 | Cipriani 42nd Street
6:00pm Cocktail Reception
7:00pm Dinner, Presentations & Jazz Performance by Chris Washburne and the SYOTOS Band

To see photos from the evening, please click here.

Our HonoreeS

Peter Beshar
Peter J. Beshar serves as the Executive Vice President and General Counsel of the Marsh & McLennan Companies. Prior to joining Marsh & McLennan in 2004, Mr. Beshar was a litigation partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP where he served as Co-Chair of the firm’s Securities Litigation Group. Mr. Beshar joined Gibson Dunn in 1995 after serving as the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the New York State Attorney General’s Task Force on Illegal Firearms. In 1992 and 1993, Mr. Beshar served as the Special Assistant to the Honorable Cyrus Vance in connection with the United Nations’ peace negotiations in the former Yugoslavia.

Mr. Beshar is the recipient of the Business Leadership Award from the Citizens Union of New York, the Burton Award for Leadership in the Law, and the Law and Society Award from New York Lawyers for the Public Interest. In 2015, President Obama appointed Mr. Beshar as a trustee of the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington. Mr. Beshar serves as a Trustee and Chair of the Veterans’ Committee of John Jay College for Criminal Justice and as a member of the board of the Lincoln Center Corporate Fund and the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs at Yale University. Mr. Beshar was selected as a David Rockefeller Fellow by the Partnership for the City of New York. Mr. Beshar has testified numerous times before the U.S. Senate, the House of Representatives, and the Securities & Exchange Commission on topics ranging from cybersecurity to terrorism.

Mr. Beshar graduated from Yale University and Harvard Law School. Following law school, Mr. Beshar clerked for the Honorable Vincent Broderick of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Sheila Boston
Sheila S. Boston, Partner at Arnold & Porter, is a trial lawyer and litigation strategist who defends clients from initiation of the case through trial and/or settlement.

Ms. Boston is valued by her clients for her advocacy skills, dependability, and collaborative spirit. Ms. Boston has successfully litigated before both state and federal courts, with significant MDL experience in mass tort actions, providing litigation avoidance counseling, and conducting audits to evaluate the potential product-related liabilities in proposed corporate acquisitions and reorganizations. She helps her clients by assessing litigation risks and defending lucrative products by weeding out frivolous individual personal injury lawsuits, defending against class actions and mass torts, and devising creative settlement solutions.

Adept in “battle of the experts” litigation, Ms. Boston has served as national coordinating counsel of experts, involving the retention, development and preparation of experts for depositions, Daubert/Frye hearings and trials; she has worked with numerous experts in various fields of medicine and science including, but not limited to, toxicology, infectious diseases, epidemiology, oncology, urology, hepatology, endocrinology, cardiology, psychology, and psychiatry.

A passionate advocate of diversity and inclusion in the workplace, Ms. Boston has won several awards for her efforts including the prestigious Chambers Diversity Awards USA 2016 inaugural award for her “Outstanding Contribution to Furthering the Advancement of Diversity in the Legal Profession, Private Practice.” An active participant in bar associations and the legal community at large, Ms. Boston was appointed by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to serve a three-year term on New York’s First Department Judicial Screening Committee as well as appointed by Chief Judge Robert A. Katzmann of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to serve on the Circuit’s Attorney Grievance Committee.