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ON THE MOVE MOLLY BEERMAN NAMED VICE PRESIDENT AND CONTROLLER OF ALCOA CORPORATION Alcoa Corporation announced that Molly Beerman has been named vice president and controller of the company, and she will serve as principal accounting officer. “Molly is a seasoned financial professional with a successful track record at Alcoa of driving process and operational improvements,” said Alcoa CFO William Oplinger. “In addition to her accounting acumen, Molly’s experience makes her ideally qualified to take on this leadership role at Alcoa as we review our systems to run our new company more cost-effectively and efficiently.” Beerman succeeds Robert Collins who has been controller since 2013 and will be taking a role outside of the company. “Bob made a significant contribution to our

company during his 11-year Alcoa career,” Oplinger said. “Most recently, he played an instrumental role in the separation of Alcoa Inc. into two independent, publicly-traded companies. We thank him for his years of dedication and hard work and wish him well in his next endeavor.” Since November 2016, Beerman served as director of Global Shared Services Strategy and Solutions and led the overall planning and implementation of financial and procurement activities in alignment with the company’s overall business strategy. Prior to that, she served in a consulting role to the Alcoa Inc. finance department relating to the separation transaction. From 2001 to 2012, she held numerous leadership positions with Alcoa Inc., including as director of Alcoa’s Global Procurement Center of Excellence. In this role, Beerman

designed operational efficiency in requisition- to-payment and supplier management. She was also manager of North America Financial Accounting Services, where she led the team that provided accounting services to numerous locations. Beerman first joined Alcoa Inc. in 2001 as manager, Corporate Financial Systems, responsible for the global consolidation of financial statements. From 2012 to 2015, Beerman was vice president of Finance and Administration for the Pittsburgh Foundation, a non-profit organization. Earlier in her career, she served in financial management positions at Carnegie Mellon University, PNC Bank, and the Pittsburgh office of Deloitte. Beerman has a bachelor’s degree in business administration, accounting from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, and she is a certified public accountant in Pennsylvania.

LR: Lawyers have clients too, and they don’t want to pay by the hour for unnecessarily large o ffi ces, ostentatious fur- nishing, and oversized windows so that their lawyers can enjoy the view. DMR has seen an uptick in the need for downsizing and redesigning to speak to this. Additionally, similar to the healthcare industry, firms that can a ff ord to are expanding by creating small satellite o ffi ces so that cli- ents can see them within their community instead of hav- ing to travel larger distances to that firm’s headquarters. “Our clients appreciate that we can provide so many services seamlessly under one roof as well as the network of colleagues that we can introduce them to in related fields.”

Q&A, from page 3

us to resolve functional issues. We’ve worked with a lot of law firms, but we’ve also worked with clients in other indus- tries that have similar issues – downsizing and repurposing space, for example – that we’ve been able to convert into rel- evant solutions for our legal clients. We also bring in our ability to envision what hasn’t been done yet and use that vision to address a law firm’s current needs in a way that recognizes that they are a distinct en- tity business with unique issues that require a custom-fit solution. “DMR studies the architecture industry as much as we influence it. We are also committed to the continued education of our staff, and are not afraid to take ideas that we’ve seen in other industries and apply them to address needs in legal offices.” TZL: What is the trick to winning this kind of work? Mar- keting, project management, pricing, experience in the field, specialized proposals, etc.? LR: DMR has sta ff with skill sets that speak to clients’ needs at every stage of a project; we can be there for site selec- tion and help negotiate with the real estate broker, provide the plans, manage relationships with the builder and other contractors, and take it all the way through to choosing the right paint colors and textures, and design for the furniture. Th is has been a successful equation for 25 years, earning us both repeat business and referrals from our legal clients. TZL: What is the market like in this niche field and how long has it been a “hot” market?

TZL: In general, how does a firm anticipate a trend?

LR: People in our industry trigger the trends by looking at how our clients need to use their space and addressing their new business models in unique and creative ways. When our clients said they were not meeting with clients in their per- sonal o ffi ces, and that they were using fewer paralegals, we made the “corner o ffi ces” smaller, and provided less room in the “bull pens” in order to make additional conference rooms. DMR studies the architecture industry as much as we influ- ence it. We are also committed to the continued education of our sta ff , and are not afraid to take ideas that we’ve seen in other industries and apply them to address needs in le- gal o ffi ces. We’ve taken a lot of the principles that have been applied to revamping marketing firm spaces for millennials and applied them to our legal clients. By doing so, we’ve cre- ated an environment that fosters innovation.

THE ZWEIG LETTER January 9, 2017, ISSUE 1182 30, 2017, I SUE 185

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