NICHOLAS DEROMA

Nick has extensive experience as the chief legal officer and a key member of the senior executive leadership team in major global corporations. He is recognized as a highly skilled lawyer with in-depth business acumen, sound judgment, and is well respected as a person of the highest moral character and ethical standards.  Nick is an outstanding leader and an independent thinker who is also well known for his intelligence and collegial style in working with others. 

Nick is the former Chairman of the Board of Directors of the American Liver Foundation, a non-profit organization, dedicated to the prevention, treatment and cure of liver disease. He currently continues to serve on the Board Directors and is a member of the Executive and Audit Committees. He is also a former Partner and now long-serving and valued member of the Advisory Board of Rosenzweig & Company, a global talent management firm focused on critical, specialized executive searches.

From 2012 through 2014, Nick served on the Board of Directors of Dialogic, Inc., a California-based  communications company.  Dialogic became privately held beginning in 2015.  When it was a public company, Nick was Chairman of the
Nominating and Governance Committee and a member of the Audit Committee. 

Until his retirement in 2012, he served as the Executive Vice President and Chief Legal and Compliance Officer for Alcoa, Inc.  Earlier, he was the Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer of Nortel Networks, Inc.  Prior to his tenure at Nortel, he was employed by the IBM Corporation for 25 years and served in key senior executive legal positions in Asia, Europe, and the United States.  Located in Hong Kong, he was General Counsel and Secretary of the IBM World Trade Asia Corporation.  Later he served in Paris as Vice President and General Counsel of the IBM World Trade Europe-Middle East-Africa Corporation, where he was responsible for the legal operations in 67 countries.  After two years as Assistant General Counsel, IBM, in charge of the corporate headquarters legal staff, Nick was appointed and served as General Counsel, IBM North America, IBM’s largest business unit.

Nick is a cum laude graduate of William & Mary Law School, where he was an Editor of the Law Review. He received his bachelor’s degree in Finance, cum laude, from the University of Connecticut.  In addition, he was awarded an Executive MBA from the Harvard Business School, Harvard University.

For more than fifteen years, Nick was a member of Mentor, a private institute dedicated to the comparative study of the judicial and economic systems of Europe and the United States.  He served as a member of the NYSE Legal Advisory Committee, and the Board of the Canada-U.S Law Institute. He is a member of various professional associations and is admitted to practice before the bars of Virginia and the District of Columbia.

Nick and his spouse, Sandra, reside in Connecticut.