Page 13 - NYLS Magazine • 2016 • Vol 35, No. 1

nancy lee ’97
President of myregistry.com
Nancy Lee started her first business by accident. She was 27, working at a TV production company in Japan, when friends called her back to the United States to film their projects. “Soon,” Lee said, “I had too much work for one person.” In response, she founded a company.
The company earned more than $1 million in its first year. But there were problems. “I was constantly dealing with contracts, waivers, unions—I was over my head in many aspects,” Lee said.
So Lee went to New York Law School. “It was a way to break my own glass ceiling,” she said. “It taught me what questions to ask in a business negotiation, what needed to be on paper, and helped me to understand that not all problems are big problems.”
She later gave back to the Law School by serving on its Board of Trustees (under the name Nancy Lee Berkowitz). She also established the Robert M. Giller Scholarship, in honor of her late husband.
After graduating, Lee sold her U.S. production company and returned to Japan. She started a cable channel whose core audience was women— something unheard of in that country. “At first, cable companies wouldn’t carry the channel, because they said women don’t watch cable TV,” Lee explained. But after she convinced one big cable system to carry She-TV, the ratings quickly convinced the doubters otherwise.
Lee’s next move was to her current job: President of myregistry.com. The gift registry company enables users to create one centralized registry for their desired gifts—even if the gifts are from many different stores. “My responsibility is to grow our business, our revenue, our partnerships,” Lee said.
Lee expects to remain at myregistry.com for a while, but she anticipates her work—and her company— will change. “You have to keep readjusting, understanding where the market is,” she said. “You have to embrace change.”
brian schrader ’98
Founder and President of Business Intelligence Associates, Inc.
Brian Schrader bought his first computer when he was 8 years old, using money from his newspaper route. He’s been a technophile ever since. But for him to discover how to really profit from his tech knowledge, Schrader had to practice law.
Inspiration struck when “I was dealing with e-discovery, receiving huge volumes of data on firms related to illegal securities trading,” Schrader recalled, and then realized there had to be a better way to gather, organize, and sift through the massive amounts of data provided by e-discovery.
He contacted a friend from New York Law School, Alon Israely ’00, and the two self-described “geeky techies” went into business for themselves, forming Business Intelligence Associates. Providing a variety of computer forensics and e-discovery services, the company now has 80 employees and four offices.
New York Law School played a big part in making him a successful entrepreneur. “A lot of the professors in my corporations and securities law courses had real business backgrounds, and their entrepreneurial spirit came through. Having professors that come from that kind of world— with experience in starting companies, running companies, and handling IPOs—really made a difference,” said Schrader.
Schrader has given back, particularly to the Moot Court Association, of which he was a member. Last December, he generously matched dollar-for-dollar all donations in support of the Association. And at the Commencement Exercises in May, he was one of two recipients of the Honorary Order of the Barristers Award.
Starting his own business allowed Schrader to combine two of his interests: computers and law. But that’s not why he became an entrepreneur. “I did that for the same reason as most entrepreneurs: some deep drive that makes you want to create new solutions to problems that you see. And the easiest way to do that is to create your own company,” Schrader said.
Dean Cycon ’80
Founder and Owner of Dean’s Beans Organic Coffee Company
Dean Cycon is a committed social activist. But, he said, after starting a law firm to help Native American tribes, “I found I didn’t have the constitution for being a lawyer. Much of my work was [legitimizing] the very system I was seeking to change,” Cycon said.
So he switched gears, founding a nonprofit to stop deforestation and help native people in Brazil. Unfortunately, “I noticed that nothing was changing, that charity wasn’t social change,” Cycon said.
He tried something else. “I wondered what would happen if a company were to pay a fair price to local farmers and become involved in improving social and environmental conditions,” he said. Thus Dean’s Beans was born.
The company earns $4 million annually by selling a variety of fair trade organic products. It has received many awards for helping poor farmers around the world.
Cycon’s New York Law School education helped make this possible. “I use the law all the time in contract negotiations and in fighting adverse legal systems in other countries,” he adds.
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