Meredith Sidewater | Executive Profile | AT

By Robert Green Atlanta Trend

• Dec 01, 2012

Patience and Persistence

In her role as Senior Vice President and General Counsel of LexisNexis Risk Solutions, Meredith Sidewater is responsible for all legal, compliance and regulatory matters pertaining to the massive data aggregator best remembered by many Atlantans as ChoicePoint. But it has been over four years since ChoicePoint was purchased by LexisNexis parent company,Reed Elsevier, for $3.6 Billion. Neither the company nor Sidewater have been idle since the 2008 acquisition took place.

“We assess risk and streamline underwriting for 99% of all US auto insurance claims and more than 90% of all homeowner claims,” said Sidewater, “and provide over 14 million background checks per year to almost one third of the Fortune 1000. We have other lines of business, too. We do stay busy.”

Meredith Sidewater was born in Atlanta and went to local schools through eighth grade -until a family move to Hollywood, Florida placed her in a small private high school that was excellent but offered none of the usual social atmospherics. “We didn’t even have a football team.” So when time came for college, she decided to go to a large school that offered everything - including quality academics and athletics. “The University of Michigan was great for me,” said Sidewater, “and Ann Arbor was a wonderful college town.” She majored in history and decided to go to law school.

Because she had missed Atlanta and knew that she wanted to move back after finishing her education, Sidewater decided on the University of Georgia School of Law in Athens. “I enjoyed healthcare law,” she said, “but law school for me was something to be endured, like boot camp. It was a valuable lesson in practicing persistence – not giving up.”

After graduating from law school, Sidewater clerked for Gwinnett County State Court judge Melodie Snell Conner, the first female trial judge in the county. Her work for the judge included reviewing motions and writing memos to suggest decisions on cases. After two years working for Judge Conner, she accepted a position as an attorney in the litigation group at McCallaRaymer, a national law firm for the real estate industry based in Atlanta. Sidewater’s work at McCallaRaymerincluded acting as lead counsel on a highly publicized boundry line dispute …………………………..

Sidewater then moved to Blackburn Walther & Sloan to do litigation work primarily regarding family law and was just beginning to think about doing something other than firm work when an interesting offer popped up: in 1998 a new software startup contacted her about joining them as their in-house attorney. She joined and was soon doing more than handling legal affairs. As is often the case with in-house counsel, her responsibilities included a number of business side activities. “The company went the way of a lot of software startups in the late 90s,” said Sidewater, “but I enjoyed it. It only lasted a year. But it was invaluable for me to learn that I really wanted to work in-house.”

Sidewater decided to contact Data aggregator ChoicePoint, which had spun out of Equifax less than 18 months earlier.  They were interested in her immediately and she was hired by General Counsel Michael de Janes in January 1999. Sidewater soon found herself working as the main in-house counsel for ChoicePoint’s largest business unit, the insurance group. Although corporate work for ChoicePoint was 100% new to Sidewater, she made an immediate impact by employing her highly developed capacity for hard work, patience and persistence. “It also helped that I got along great with the head of the insurance business unit,” she says.

ChoicePoint was a very entrprenurial environment in those early days. “I was focused on getting deals done – merger and acquisition work – managing what little litigation work there was, and reviewing and negotiating service agreements with large customers like State Farm, Hartford and Nationwide. We provided data to all personal line insurance carriers for auto and home,” Sidewater says.

Over time, business drivers required Sidewater to become an expert in many areas of regulatory law such as the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act, Graham Leach and the many state versions of these federal laws. From her start at ChoicePoint in 1999 through 2005, Sidewater had been promoted several times and had become Vice President and Lead Counsel for the Insurance Services Group. 2005 was also the year of the famous ChoicePoint data breach………………………….

In response to the breach, ChoicePoint brought in Carol DiBattiste in the new position of Chief Privacy Officer in 2005.DiBattiste had served as the Under Secretary of the United States Air Force was the former deputy administrator and chief of staff at the Transportation Security Administration. A bit later, Michael de Janes was moved to the position of “data czar,” and DiBattiste became General Counsel of ChoicePoint as well. DiBatiste’s goal, which she made good on, was to insure that the firestorm of 2005 never occur again. Sidewater felt at the time that the company had made a brilliant choice and they immediately formed a close working relationship. Sidewater became Deputy General Counsel in 2006, obtained responsibility for Employee Screening as well as the Insurance Group, was managing the work of a number of attorneys and became DiBattiste’s all but officially named successor. “Carol DiBattiste was the most inspirational, fair and passionate person that I had ever worked with,” says Sidewater. “I wish everyone could have a mentor like her.”

DiBattiste and Sidewater continued working together both through and after the acquisition of ChoicePoint by Reed Elviser/LexisNexis in 2008.In early 2011, DiBatitste retired and Sidewater became Senior Vice President and General Counsel of LexisNexis Risk Solutions.

In her role as General Counsel, Sidewater finds her work as compelling as ever. “In the last decade,” she says, “the laws rules and regulations regarding privacy and data security have evolved swiftly.” As the General Counsel of a company whose product is data to evaluate risk – whether or not to move forward with a business transaction – Sidewater has a unique perspective on the speed of business. “Important sectors of the US economy would slow to a crawl without the work we do but we also have an obligation to provide data that is safe, accurate and secure – and it’s not a balancing act. We don’t do some of one and some of the other – we have to do both all the time.”

The day to day management of her staff makes her work somewhat more administrative than it used to be, but Sidewater is still “hands on” on all matters important to the company. “I’m very involved in mergers  and acquisitions, important litigation and regulatory matters,” she says, “and always work closely with our Privacy, Security and Governmental Affairs groups. Work with the business side is constant.”

In the normal course of business, matters to be addressed come to Sidewater from the business units or from her own modeling and forecasting. She handles these matters appropriately and informs her CEO about what is occurring during their regularly scheduled meetings. She also keeps Reed Elviser informed, because of their ownership interest, but her group is not managed by the parent company.

All in all, Sidewater has enjoyed being an in-house attorney because it has given her such a strong sense of accomplishment. “We have to smooth the way for more business and handle all the necessary ‘hurdles’ that pop up – like regulatory matters. And we also have to handle the usual corporate work. It’s a privilege to get to do this work,” she says. Indeed, Sidewater and her team have recently had to respond to a letter from the Chairman of the US Senate Commerce Committee, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, pertaining to the use of data and privacy issues.  In her job, giving input on public policy at the highest levels is just part of the job description. “It’s a dynamic industry and change is either occurring or about to occur.”

Sidewater’s positive attitude of patience and persistence is manifest in all aspects of her life. “I don’t let the negativity of other people affect me and I don’t let negative situations affect me, either,” she says. “Only 10% of life is what happens to you and 90% is how you react.” Indeed, when Sidewater discovered that she had the BRCA1 mutation in 2006(?), she dealt with it as rationally and calmly as she handles her business affairs. Variations of the BRCA1 gene can lead to a greatly increased risk of breast cancer as part of a hereditary breast-ovarian cancer syndrome. Women with an abnormal BRCA1 gene have up to a 60% risk of developing breast cancer by age 90 and a 55% increased risk of developing ovarian cancer.  Based on medical advice and growing evidence that it is the best thing to do under the circumstances, Sidewater decided to undergo prophylactic removal of her breast and ovariesin 2008. She graciously shares her experience with others as a means of supporting those undergoing similar life events.

Volunteer and industry association work take up a good deal of her spare time. Sidewater serves on the Board of Directors of the Consumer Data Industry Association, the international group that has represented consumer data companies for over 100 years. She also serves on the Board of Directors of the Atlanta Chapter of the American Red Cross and in January 2013 will become the President of the Atlanta General Counsel Forum.

Sidewater has been married for 16 years and has two children ages 9 and 11. She and her family reside in the Chastain Park area of Atlanta.

Secret to Success: Read the situation accurately. Find out what is really happening or what the other person really means or really wants before acting.