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Stephen A. Sheller is the founding partner of Sheller, P.C., one of the leading plaintiff’s law firms in the United States since 1977.  Mr. Sheller and his firm represent clients across the country in matters including pharmaceutical and medical device products injury, whistleblower/qui tam litigation, consumer protection, class actions, complex catastrophic personal injury, consumer products liability, and mass tort litigation.

Mr. Sheller has been at the forefront of celebrated national lawsuits, representing pharmaceutical whistleblowers and recovering over $6.4 billion for the U.S. government, most recently in September 2014 with a $58.9 million settlement with Shire Pharmaceuticals and this past April, $7.3 million with Astellas Pharma. Other historic whistleblower settlements include $2.2 billion against Johnson & Johnson in 2013, $520 million against AstraZeneca in April 2010, $2.3 billion against Pfizer Inc. in September 2009 and $1.4 billion against Eli Lilly & Company in January 2009. Serving as the lead attorney in these landmark pharmaceutical whistleblower cases, Mr. Sheller has achieved four of the top eight civil and criminal whistleblower settlements in U.S. History.   Mr. Sheller continues to work with whistleblowers and is recognized as one the country’s premier experts on qui tam whistleblower and False Claims Act cases.

Mr. Sheller also has an ongoing dedication to representing clients injured by defective drugs. His representation of children injured by antipsychotic drugs was profiled on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric. He has filed cases in Pennsylvania and New Jersey on behalf of hundreds of clients nationwide harmed by the antipsychotic drugs Risperdal®  and Invega®.

In 2003 Mr. Sheller was named a finalist for the Trial Lawyer of the Year Award given by Trial Lawyers for Public Justice for initiating the light cigarette fraud and litigation strategy to remedy the deception. This innovative legal strategy resulted in a $10.1 billion verdict against Phillip Morris.  As a result of Mr. Sheller’s unique approach, his strategies have been adopted as a model in states across the U.S. and his work in this area earned him the first annual “Pioneer Award” by the Tobacco Control Resource Center at the winter 2011 American Association for Justice conference.

In November 2000, Mr. Sheller instituted litigation in Palm Beach County, Florida involving butterfly ballots and the 2000 U.S. Presidential election. As a result, he was featured in national, regional and local media for his role as a lead attorney challenging the poll results in Bush v. Gore. Mr. Sheller argued that the Broward and Palm Beach County ballots were unconstitutional, denying citizens their rights to vote.

Attorney Sheller was the invited presenter for the Edward J. Ross Memorial Annual Lecture in Litigation at the Temple University Beasley School of Law. His address, “Lawyering in Times of Saints and Evil-Doers,” reminded future lawyers to always lead with their conscience and to seek fairness and justice over personal gain. His talk, highlighted by newsreels and video, illustrated significant mileposts in his career: Representing the housekeeping and maintenance labor unions at Temple University, the SEIU and United Electrical Workers unions, the Black Panthers in the 1967-71 time period during the “Rizzo” era, families of the disabled in the Pennhurst case, the Consumers Education and Protection Association, and the ACLU. For the first time in history as a result of Mr. Sheller’s investigation and legal actions, the Ford Automobile Company “Superfund” contaminated site, which had been claimed to be cleaned up, was put back on the National Priorities List of the Superfund cleanup sites in Northern New Jersey.

Selected as a Pennsylvania “Super Lawyer,” Mr. Sheller has been honored each year since the award’s inception in 2003, and in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 garnered recognition as both a Top 100 Philadelphia and Top 100 Pennsylvania SuperLawyer.

Mr. Sheller is in his third term appointed as a member of the Drexel University Board of Trustees, past member of the Board of Trustees of Pennsylvania State University and past and present member of the boards of several other organizations and entities, including the Salvation Army of Greater Philadelphia, Eastern Pennsylvania and Delaware where he and his wife Sandra received the “Others” award for their dedication to service.

Stephen Sheller and his wife Sandra are active philanthropically in Philadelphia and beyond. Their most recent endeavors through the Sheller Foundation include the new Stephen and Sandra Sheller Center for Social Justice at Temple University and the Stephen and Sandra Sheller 11th Street Family Health Services Center at Drexel University. Mr. Sheller and his wife Sandy also sponsor a permanent exhibit honoring the Pennsylvania National Guard at the National Liberty Museum in Philadelphia. Entitled “Civilian in Peace/Soldier in War” the exhibit is in the museum’s “Awards of Valor” gallery.

Sandy Sheller is president and director of the Sheller Family Foundation, working towards advancing arts, preservation, and education; exposing corruption and unethical practices; and working towards the betterment of traumatized and marginalized individuals and families. Recent projects include establishing the Stephen and Sandra Sheller Center for Social Justice at Temple University Law School and endowing a major building expansion of the Stephen and Sandra Sheller 11th Street Family Health Services Center of Drexel University.

As a therapist, she has substantial experience working with low income and families experiencing homelessness; minorities; adult perpetrators; abused children and adults; and chronically mentally-ill populations.  Work settings have included: inpatient facilities; children’s partial hospital programs; adolescent residential settings; private counseling facilities serving foster care and adopted children; and family homeless shelters.

As a past Assistant Clinical Professor at Drexel University, Sandy Sheller has taught Family Therapy and trauma courses, supervised and served as a thesis advisor for graduate students in the Creative Arts in Therapy Program. She serves on Drexel College of Nursing and Health Professions Advisory Board.  Sandy Sheller has also published in a peer-reviewed mental health trade journal and is a co-author of a book chapter on parenting in the context of homelessness.

Sandy Sheller co-founded and developed The Trauma-Informed Shelter Providers Network Group of Philadelphia where an average of 60 directors, clinicians, and providers of homeless services meet together bi-monthly to support and enhance the work they do.  She founded an innovative forum for women called Breaking Down the Walls.  Quarterly, women from disparate racial, political, religious, economic, and social backgrounds are brought together to find their common humanity and break down the walls and barriers that divide them.  This group has significantly empowered a number of marginalized women living in the inner city of Philadelphia.

Through endorsement and funding from the Deputy Commissioner for Children Health and The City of Philadelphia Office of Supportive Housing, Sandy Sheller trained over 130 homeless and transitional housing providers in over 25 agencies in Family Care, a train-the-trainer parenting model she developed with a colleague based on attachment theory and Effective Black Parenting.  Preliminary data from participants from seven agencies using this model has shown some statistical significance for moving parents away from high levels of risk for abuse and neglect. Presently ten agencies are using this model and she is engaged in a three year research project to move it towards an evidence-based model.

Joseph E. O’Neil is a shareholder in the Litigation Practice Group in the Philadelphia office of Lavin, O’Neil, Cedrone & DiSipio. He has more than 30 years of courtroom experience as a trial lawyer defending major corporations in complex litigation. He concentrates his practice on product liability, mass tort, medical device and commercial litigation matters. Mr. O’Neil has served on the firm’s Board of Directors for more than 20 years.

Mr. O’Neil has served as national counsel for a number of the world’s largest pharmaceutical, automotive and clinical laboratory companies and as lead trial counsel before juries in state and federal courts throughout the United States. He has extensive experience as liaison counsel in the Mass Tort Program in Philadelphia.

He is admitted to practice law in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Rhode Island, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and the District of New Jersey, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and the District of Columbia Circuit.

Mr. O’Neil is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, a member of the American Bar Association, the Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Philadelphia Bar Associations; the International Association of Defense Counsel; the Defense Research Institute; and the Product Liability Advisory Council. He is a frequent speaker at continuing legal education and other programs for lawyers and corporations locally and nationally and has served on the faculty of the IADC Trial Academy. In 2011, Mr. O’Neil was elected to a three-year term as Secretary-Treasurer of the Board of the International Association of Defense Counsel. He served as Secretary-Treasurer-Elect in 2010-2011 and previously served as a member of the Board of The Foundation of the IADC.

Since 2005, Mr. O’Neil has been named a Pennsylvania Super Lawyer having been selected by his peers as one of the top five percent of practicing attorneys in Pennsylvania.

Mr. O’Neil graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Rhode Island and earned his Juris Doctor from the Temple University School of Law where he was a member of the Temple Law Review. Mr. O’Neil is married and the father of four children.

In May 2012, President Barack Obama appointed Sara Manzano-Diaz to serve as Regional Administrator for the U.S. General Services Administration’s (GSA) Mid-Atlantic Region. As Regional Administrator, she serves as the executive for the region and leads 1,000 employees. She oversees the government’s real estate portfolio (nearly 800 owned and leased commercial buildings representing 35 million square feet) and the procurement of goods, services, and information technology (over $4.3 Billion annually) for six Mid-Atlantic states, as well as, Africa, Europe and the Middle East.  During 2013, she assumed the added responsibility of serving as Acting Regional Administrator for GSA’s Southeast Sunbelt Region which includes eight states.

Ms. Manzano-Díaz has spent her career in public service advocating on behalf of working class families, women, and girls. In 2010, she was nominated by President Obama and was unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate as the 16th Director of the Women’s Bureau at the United States Department of Labor. The Women’s Bureau was created by Congress in 1920, the same year women were granted the right to vote. It is the only federal agency exclusively mandated to serve and promote the interests of working women. Working with the White House, Congress, federal agencies and stakeholders, she focused on domestic and international policies affecting women in the workforce.

Ms. Manzano-Diaz managed 10 regional offices nation-wide and advanced the economic security interest of 72 million working women representing nearly half of the U.S. workforce. She focused on equal pay, work-life balance, higher paying jobs for women (STEM, green, clean energy jobs and businesses), corporate board inclusion, family leave, maternity discrimination, access to capital and markets, homeless women veterans, vulnerable workers, entrepreneurship, and domestic violence.  Ms. Manzano-Diaz advocated equality, gender mainstreaming and financial security of women in the Western Hemisphere, Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East through their Ministers of Women and/or Labor.

In 2007, Ms. Manzano-Díaz was appointed by Governor Edward G. Rendell as Deputy Secretary of State for Regulatory Programs at the Pennsylvania Department of State. As the highest-ranking Latina in Pennsylvania state government, Ms. Manzano-Díaz managed over 500 employees and was responsible for protecting the health, safety, and welfare of the public by overseeing the licensure of approximately 1 million professionals. She was also a member of Governor Rendell’s STEM Initiative Team that supported the development of STEM education, and workforce development programs.

From 1995 to 2002, Ms. Manzano-Díaz worked in various capacities at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development including as Deputy General Counsel for Civil Rights and Litigation, where she managed over 500 attorneys nationwide and enforced fair housing, civil rights, and anti-discrimination laws. While at HUD, she implemented a Compliance Agreement against the largest public housing authority in the country that resulted in the creation of 9,000 disabled housing units in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Ms. Manzano-Díaz also previously served as an Assistant Attorney General in New York where she conducted investigations and prosecuted allegations of consumer fraud. She also served as a Judicial Assistant and Pro Se Attorney in the New York State Judiciary.

She served as co-chair of The Forum of Executive Women’s Mentoring Committee, which mentors young professional women as they begin their careers, and also participated in Madrinas, a program that provides mentors for at-risk Latina girls to encourage them to finish high school and attend college.  Ms. Manzano-Díaz holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Public Relations and Communications from Boston University and a Juris Doctor degree from Rutgers University School of Law.

Sheona Mackenzie currently co-teaches a freshman seminar in Organizational Change with her husband, Neil Theobald, President of Temple University.  She started her career in the criminal justice system working as both a police officer and probation officer.  She also conducted research into juvenile prostitution as a research analyst at the University of Washington.  She has served on numerous boards, most notably as President of a Battered Women’s Shelter in Seattle.  She recently took early retirement as a school psychologist in order to make the move to Temple University.

Eve Biskind Klothen is currently an adjunct professor of law at Rutgers Law School at Camden, does private consulting work, and sits on numerous boards and advisory committees.  She was Assistant Dean for Pro Bono and Public Interest Programs at Rutgers Law School in Camden from 2000 to July 2013. While serving in this capacity, Dean Klothen increased pro bono program and public interest activities substantially.   A consultant for the American Bar Association and private law firms, Dean Klothen has been recognized for her work with the Father Robert Drinan Award for Outstanding Public Service from the AALS in 2009; the Pro Bono Coordinator of the Year Award from the National Association of Pro Bono Coordinators; the Equal Justice Award from Community Legal Services in Philadelphia; the Outstanding Service Award from the Pennsylvania Bar Association; and the Excellence Award from Pennsylvania Legal Services.  After receiving her undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan in 1972 and graduating from Vanderbilt University School of Law in 1975, Klothen worked as a staff attorney and subsequently managing attorney for legal services in Georgia and as a federal agency fraud litigator in Washington, D.C.  Later, she served as the founding director of Philadelphia Volunteers for the Indigent Program and as director of the Philadelphia Bar Foundation, both of which have been honored with national and state awards.

C. Darnell Jones, II was sworn in as a judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania after nomination by President George W. Bush in 2008. He previously served as President Judge of the Court of Common Pleas for the First Judicial District of Pennsylvania from December 2005 until his appointment in October, 2008. During his tenure as President Judge of Pennsylvania’s largest judicial district, he was appointed Chair of the Administrative Governing Board (AGB) of the First Judicial District by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. The AGB is the coordinating body for all of the courts of the First Judicial District.  Judge Jones began serving as a judge in the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1987. He held various positions on the Court of Common Pleas, including: managing judge of the Adult Probation and Parole Department, member of the Judicial Education Committee, presiding judge and Co-Coordinating Judge of the Homicide Division, and presiding judge in the Major Civil Trial Division. He served as a presiding judge in the Commerce Case Management Program (Business Court), and also served as a Supervising Judge of the Philadelphia County Grand Jury. Prior to becoming a judge, he practiced law at the Defender Association of Philadelphia, where among other responsibilities, he served as chief of the Family Court Division. Judge Jones obtained his bachelor’s degree from Southwestern College in French, and his J.D. degree from American University, Washington College of Law.

He has previously served as an adjunct professor at St. Joseph’s University’s Graduate School, Temple University School of Law, and The National Institute for Trial Advocacy. Judge Jones has been an adjunct professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School since 1993. He has taught Handling Capital Cases and Criminal Evidence for the National Judicial College. At the request of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, he oversaw the development of a curriculum for trial judges presiding over capital cases within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania–the Supreme Court’s Capital Case Initiative program. He was a contributing author of Presiding Over a Capital Case, A Benchbook for Judges (William J. Brunson, Esq., et al. eds., 2009).

Judge Jones was named one of the 500 leading judges in America by Lawdragon magazine in 2005. He has been appointed a Business Court Representative to the American Bar Association’s Business Law Section, and served as a liaison to the Judicial Division of the ABA.

Judge Jones is a member of the University of Pennsylvania American Inn of Court. He currently serves on the Advisory Board of New Directions for Women; the Salvation Army Advisory Board, the Drexel University Law School Board, the Advisory Board of the George Mason School of Law – Law & Economics Center Judicial Education Program, and previously served as a member of the Executive Committee of the National Conference of Federal Trial Judges.  He is a member of the Model Civil Jury Instructions Committee for the Third Circuit. In 2012, Judge Jones was appointed to the Committee on Criminal Law of the Judicial Conference of the United States by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr.

Robert C. Heim is a partner at Dechert LLP. He is a nationally known trial lawyer who focuses his practice on antitrust, securities, products liability and complex commercial litigation. Mr. Heim is a past Chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association and past President of the National Conference of Bar Presidents. He is an elected Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and the International Academy of Trial Lawyers.

Mr. Heim has been consistently ranked as a leading lawyer in Chambers USA, which has praised him as “an outstanding trial lawyer,” and “extremely knowledgeable of the law and very well respected by the courts.” The 2014 edition designated him a Star Individual for his general commercial litigation practice in Pennsylvania, noting that clients describe him as “an excellent resource.” In 2014 he was the only private lawyer named as one of the three finalists for The Legal Intelligencer‘s Attorney of the Year Award. Mr. Heim was also recognized by The Legal 500 United States 2013 for his product liability and mass tort defense work within the pharmaceuticals and medical devices industry. He has been listed by The Best Lawyers in America for antitrust, arbitration, bet-the-company litigation, commercial litigation, mass tort class action litigation and mediation and was recognized as one of the top 10 trial lawyers in Pennsylvania. Describing him as “a pillar of the Philadelphia litigation community and a product liability legend” in its 2015 edition, Benchmark Litigation has regularly listed Mr. Heim as a Litigation Star, most recently in the areas of insurance, general commercial litigation, antitrust, appellate, products liability, securities, and white collar litigation. In 2014 he was the recipient of the Louis H. Pollak Champion of the Public Interest Award, in recognition of his advocacy and commitment to the public interest legal community.

Mr. Heim was appointed by the late United States Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist to the Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Civil Rules and has recently completed a second term. He has been an invited speaker at the Fifth Circuit and Third Circuit Court of Appeals conferences. He also has been Chair of the Pennsylvania Continuing Legal Education Board. He has lectured on both trial and appellate advocacy and taught appellate advocacy at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Mr. Heim has represented numerous Fortune 100 companies in trial and appellate matters in both state and federal courts throughout the country. They include BP Amoco, Comcast, Toll Brothers, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Altria Corp., Pfizer, US Air, Verizon Communications, AIG, Verizon Wireless, Adelphia Communications, and Wegman Supermarkets.

Barbara Hankinson graduated with honors from Community College of Philadelphia and received a Ford Foundation Scholarship. With this she was able to attend the University of Pennsylvania majoring in Molecular Biology. For nine years (October 1985 until January 1995) she worked at Thomas Jefferson University.  She initially worked as a research technician and later as the program coordinator for the Pregnancy Loss Center, a collaboration between the Divisions of Medical Genetics and Rheumatology within the Department of Medicine at Jefferson.  At The Pregnancy Loss Center, she diagnosed and treated women with recurrent spontaneous abortions.  This was an innovative basic and clinical research program in which women were “immunized” with their spouse’s white blood cells in hopes of stimulating a protective immune mechanism that would allow pregnancies to progress to term without immune rejection such as occurs in organ transplants. During those 9 years over 3,000 women were treated and follow up information obtained.  This research and the clinical program resulted in several publications and presentations at national meetings.

In 1994 she made a career shift into the financial services industry.  As an independent representative she was able to open her own office, manage and train other agents and held accountability for all compliance, state and federal regulations. Her target market is Middle American Families.

The passion and energy Ms. Hankinson brings to the Advisory Council stems from her experiences of living and working as an active leader in shaping her community. Since 1977 she has lived as a Charter Member of the Lipscomb Square Housing Cooperative, a non-profit, non-traditional homeownership initiative.  Lipscomb Square was the initial stakeholder which anchored the Hawthorne Community and still serves as a Powerful Partner for future homeownership and economic development. The Cooperative has generated and preserved homeownership.  Its vital mission now is to Sustain our Wealth and Transfer it to the next generation.  Ms. Hankinson wants to study Gentrification from the inside out, using the Sanctuary Model.

Ms. Hankinson is an Elected Committee Person 2nd Ward 21st Division, Minority Inspector and was a PA Candidate for 186 Legislative District House of Representatives, Special Election April 2012.

Recently Ms. Hankinson applied to the graduate program at the University of Penn for the Masters of Science in Organizational Dynamics and the Masters of Philosophy Organizational Dynamics.  She hopes to attain both degrees. She is a life time learner always open to new possibilities and creative ways to serve and implement positive change strategies. There are so many opportunities to engage and release the latent power in our communities. All we need is the will.

Marla J. Gold, MD, is Dean Emerita and Professor of Health Management and Policy at the Drexel University. Dr. Gold has dedicated her career to understanding and creating integrated systems of health care delivery, issues of public health infrastructure and health administration and leadership. In the early 1990s, she served as Philadelphia’s Assistant Health Commissioner for Infectious Disease Control in the Public Health Department, where she was responsible for all reportable and communicable diseases and conditions in Philadelphia. In that role she served as director for the City immunization program, as the regional grantee for the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act and had oversight for all activities pertaining to prevention and control of tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases. During her tenure in the Philadelphia Health Department, she worked to establish a system of HIV care for under and uninsured Philadelphians at the City’s district health centers and addressed challenging programs including needle exchange and the availability of condoms as part of a comprehensive health education in Philadelphia High Schools.

She has extensive experience working with diverse leaders in health care, government (local, state and federal levels), social services, community-based organizations and neighborhoods in designing and implementing such programs as region-wide comprehensive HIV care. In 1996, she created a multi-site HIV Care program which later grew to be known as the Partnership Comprehensive Care Practice. Today the Partnership is one of the largest regional comprehensive HIV programs, providing an array of social and clinical services to men and women with HIV/AIDS. She served as Chief of the Division of HIV/AIDS Medicine and Vice Chair of the Department of Medicine at the former MCP Hahnemann Medical School.

Dr. Gold assumed the Deanship of the Drexel University School of Public Health in 2002. Under her leadership, the School grew markedly in enrollment, increased its degree offerings and greatly increased its research portfolio, becoming an authority on public health in the region. The School has a longstanding commitment to issues of health equity and a growing education, research and practice focus on the elimination of racial and ethnic health disparities. Dr. Gold has published in the area of HIV policy, treatment and prevention and lectured extensively on an array of related topics to diverse audiences. Dr. Gold has been a member of the Philadelphia Board of Health over two Mayoral administrations.  Currently she serves on the Philadelphia Mayor’s Advisory Committee for “Healthy Philadelphia” – interventions designed to reduce obesity, diabetes and smoking among the region’s population.

Among her honors are the US Public Service Assistant Secretary of Health Award for outstanding service to persons with HIV/AIDS, the Sisterhood award from the National Commission of Christians and Jews, and Health Care Provider of the Year in Pennsylvania from the Veterans of Foreign Wars. She has been listed as a “top doctor” for women with HIV/AIDS, in Philadelphia Magazine. In November, 2007, she was among the recipients of the “Women of Distinction” awards from the Philadelphia Business Journal for her life work in medicine and public health and in 2012 Women E-News honored her for her leadership in designing comprehensive health services for women with HIV.

She received her BS from Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, New Jersey, and an MD from University of Medicine and Dentistry New Jersey Medical School, Newark, New Jersey. She completed her internal medicine residency and infectious disease fellowship at the Medical College of Pennsylvania. She attended the Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) for senior women in medicine in 1997 and more recently in the Executive Leadership/Management Course at the Harvard School of Graduate Education.