Corporate Counsel
Debra L. Pawl is an attorney with over twenty years of experience, including serving as Vice President and General Counsel of Closure Medical Corporation, now part of Johnson & Johnson. As a member of the Executive leadership team of the post-IPO company, Debra contributed to the strategic decisions directing the company through its growth from a $10 million business, and to the development of a set of shared values to define the culture as one driven by and committed to innovation and compliance. These shared values significantly contributed to the strategic direction of the company and its commitment to developing products that met the needs of the marketplace.
Debra developed and instituted functional structures and policies to support compliance and technological innovation. Drawing on her years of experience as an Intellectual Property (IP) Attorney, she maintained enthusiastic and visible support for the encouragement, identification, protection and acknowledgment of innovation as related to the company’s products and technology. This generated competitive advantage for the company and helped drive it to be the leader in medical products for wound closure and management. Under Debra’s direction in the legal function, the company was diligent in protecting the intellectual property that secured the foundation for its growth through evolving IP strategies and protection programs.
Debra is a founding member and former President of the Triangle Intellectual Property Law Association (TIPLA) and a member of the Ohio Bar. Additionally, she is licensed by the U.S. Department of Commerce to practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office in Washington, D.C. She served on the Foundation Board for the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics.
Debra earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Toledo College of Law, where she was the 1982 recipient of the Nathan Burkan Memorial Copyright award sponsored by the American Society for Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP). She also holds a Bachelor of Science degree, cum laude, and a Master of Science degree in biology and chemistry from John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio.
As an IP Attorney, she has held positions with The Standard Oil Company (Ohio), now BP America, Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corporation, The BFGoodrich Company, J.M. Huber Corporation, and the Washington, D.C. firm of Cushman, Darby & Cushman. Prior to practicing law, Debra was a research chemist for The Diamond Shamrock Corporation and instructed chemistry and anatomy and physiology at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland.
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