On April 19, 2023, AAI announced three new members to the AAI Advisory Board. Melissa Maxman is Managing Partner of Cohen & Gresser’s Washington, DC office. Evan Starr is Associate Professor of Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland. Judith Zahid is Co-chair of the Antitrust group at Zelle, LLP and Managing Partner of the Oakland office.
“We are delighted that Melissa, Evan, and Judith have joined the AAI Advisory Board,” said AAI President, Diana Moss. “They bring valuable experience and insight to AAI’s Advisory Board braintrust, including in areas of labor economics, private antitrust litigation, and international issues,” she added. AAI’s volunteer Advisory Board consists of outstanding experts in the fields of antitrust and consumer protection law, economics, and business in the United States and abroad.
Melissa H. Maxman is the Managing Partner of Cohen & Gresser’s Washington, D.C. office. She has decades of litigation experience at both the trial and appellate levels, primarily in the areas of antitrust, RICO, environmental law, complex commercial disputes, and white collar defense. She has extensive experience advising domestic and foreign corporations on global antitrust issues. She has represented clients in complex civil and criminal matters before the Federal Trade Commission, the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, and in private civil matters. Melissa has been recognized in The Legal 500’s U.S. guide in the commercial litigation, corporate investigations, white collar defense, general commercial disputes, and antitrust categories, where she is described as a “brilliant thinker and lawyer” with a “deep knowledge in antitrust” who is “a passionate defender of her clients in litigation.” She has also been recognized by Chambers USA in the antitrust litigation specialists category, in which she was described as “strong knowledgeable counsel with strong litigation, policy, and legislative skills and experience.” She has also been named one of Washington, D.C.’s Super Lawyers each year since 2011. Melissa has also been recognized by Lawdragon as one of 2022’s 500 Leading Litigators in America.
Evan Starr is an Associate Professor of Management & Organization at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. He received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan and a bachelor’s degree from Denison University. He originally hails from Claremont, California. Starr’s current research examines issues at the intersection of human capital accumulation, employee mobility, entrepreneurship, and innovation. In a recent set of projects utilizing employee-employer matched data and survey data that he and coauthors developed, Starr examined the use and impacts of noncompete agreements and their enforceability on the provision of firm-sponsored training, employee mobility and earnings, and on the creation, growth, and survival of new ventures.
Judith Zahid is Managing Partner of the Oakland office and co-chair of the Firm’s Antitrust group. Judith’s practice is focused on assessing complex antitrust claims and pursuing recoveries on behalf of individual corporate clients in many different industries, with a growing expertise in the pharmaceutical and healthcare sectors. She has represented plaintiffs in numerous high-stakes price-fixing and monopolization cases, with recoveries from those cases totaling well over $2 billion. While Judith is involved in all aspects of the cases she litigates, she places particular emphasis on her work with industry and damages experts.
