Spotlight Interview 10 Spotlight Interview MONA BHALLA New Lateral Partner, Insurance Litigation & Regulation Team Mona was recently interviewed by her new colleague Andy Tuck, co-head of Alston & Bird’s Insurance Group. 11 I ended up taking the position as the head of the Life Bureau, and I continue to be glad that I did. I had a team of 130 people and 650 regulated entities. The irony doesn’t escape me: Earlier in my career, I protested so loudly that I did not want to be an insurance regulatory person, and guess what? I am and am very proud of it. Q: How do you plan to stay on the cutting edge now that you’re in private practice? Thankfully, the firm has given me the opportunity to continue to go to industry conferences. The NAIC has multiple conferences each year, and these are great for staying abreast of emerging important issues nationwide and globally and for connecting with regulators. That’s so critical because the practice that we’re creating at Alston & Bird is not going to be New York–specific. Yes, it’s very important to be licensed in New York from a commercial financial perspective. But there are 49 other states, and many of our clients are domiciled in those other states. So, it’s crucial to continue to go to these events and to continue to foster these relationships with my partners from my previous life. I use the word partner very liberally to encompass the commissioners, the deputy commissioners, and other insurance industry participants. Q: Well, let’s talk about your current partners. Collaboration is essential in our firm as a new lateral. How have you been navigating working with the new team members here on the insurance team? I have been so fortunate to meet so many people during the interview process, not just those dedicated to the litigation and trial practice insurance subgroup, but also members in IP, privacy, cyber, and structured finance, which has been great because many of the people I’ve met have reached out to me to help work on specific projects. For example, I have helped with a couple of structuring deals. This has been great because it’s giving me exposure to other people and to add value where needed. Q: Among all the collaborations you’ve had so far, have there been any that have been particularly successful? On the structured finance side, yes, I do believe that I have been helpful navigating some complex affiliate/ related-party issues. I’m hopeful that for the arbitration I’m working on, the fact that I have a regulatory background can help with prepping one of our expert witnesses, who is a former regulator. Being able to speak the same language is going to be very helpful, and I’m hoping I can add value. Q: Are there any particular thoughts you have about how you want to focus your practice now that you’re in private practice? Yes, I would love for the practice to be regulatory but also would like to bring my transactional experience to bear. The model involving insurance transactions varies in law firms. You could have one firm responsible for only the transactional work while another provides the regulatory overlay, and then there are others that offer both. I have both skill sets, and so, ultimately, the goal is to build out a practice that can offer both services. Q: What’s the best day of your life so far? I can’t identify a single day but would rather point to a year in my life. When I was 12 years old, my father took a sabbatical and moved the family back to India. Unfortunately, my mom died when I was very young, two years after our return to the U.S., which is the primary reason why this year was so impactful. Spending that year in India was the happiest I had seen my mother as she was reunited with her family whom she left 12 years before. I got to witness firsthand the joy my mom experienced to be in her home country and to raise her kids in the Indian tradition. I’ll never forget the many memories we made that year as a full family unit, including the month we lived on a houseboat in Kashmir. Q: Are there any experiences or anything that you haven’t done yet that you would like to do? I’ve always been drawn to education and to teaching in particular. Both of my parents were educators. Recently, I had the opportunity to guest lecture at the University of Connecticut Law School on AI in the insurance space. That gave me a little bit of a taste of what it could be like. Maybe later in my career at Alston & Bird, I’ll seek out an adjunct professor role at one of the many law schools in the New York City area. Q: Wonderful. What drew you to insurance and then, later, regulatory law? Initially, at the onset of my career, I tried to stay away from insurance regulatory law. During the five years I spent at LeBoeuf, I focused on capital markets and trained as a corporate M&A securities lawyer. But I did work with insurance companies going public, primarily representing underwriters, and I worked on a few demutualizations. I left LeBoeuf to go to Willkie to diversify my practice. After LeBoeuf and Willkie, I was looking to go in-house, and nobody other than an insurance company would hire me. At that time, I said, “Absolutely not.” Then I eventually ended up leaving to go to an insurance company, and doing what I said I didn’t want to do for the next 19 years. I was in-house at both Equitable and AllianceBernstein, and then I went to TIAA. Almost three years in at TIAA, I was approached by then-CEO Roger Ferguson with an opportunity to meet the superintendent of the New York State Department of Financial Services, who at the time was Linda Lacewell, to discuss a possible senior role at the agency. Working in government had not been a feasible option for me earlier in my career as I, like many others, was saddled with a tremendous amount of student debt, and you know government doesn’t pay market rates. But in 2019, I was in a very different financial situation, and I also had a near-death experience that made me really take stock of what I had done in my career, my life at that stage, and what I wanted to do—so I jumped at the challenge.
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