NAPABA Awards - In-House Counsel Leadership Award

In-House Counsel Leadership Award

The NAPABA In-House Counsel Leadership Award honors a NAPABA member who is a senior legal executive who has achieved professional excellence and demonstrated outstanding leadership in the legal profession. This individual champions meaningful opportunity and collaboration with NAPABA member law firm partners and actively works to expand diversity, access, advancement, and opportunity within the legal profession.

Award Qualifications

Please be advised that awardees must be:

Current with their NAPABA membership; and
Present to be eligible to receive award.

Selection Criteria

The award recipient will be selected on the basis of the following factors:

Current senior legal executive within a corporation (General Counsel, Chief Legal Officer, Executive Vice President of Legal, etc.)
Demonstrated professional excellence and leadership in a corporate legal department
Demonstrated efforts to collaborate with, mentor, and/or elevate NAPABA member law firm partners
Contributions that have fostered a more inclusive and representative legal community
Commitment and service to the Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islanders (AANHPI) community

Required Materials

The following information must be provided for each nominee in order for a nomination to be considered:

Statement of support detailing the nominee's outstanding achievements and how they have met the award criteria (maximum of 5 pages);
Current CV or resume of the nominee;
Biography; and
One or more letters of support

Nominations are Now Open

2025 Awardee | Kazuko Wachter

Kazuko Wachter is General Counsel and Corporate Secretary at EquiLend, a technology provider for the global securities finance marketplace, where she oversees global legal and regulatory matters for the company. Previously, she was Chief Legal and Strategy Officer of Prism Financial Products, a hybrid securities brokerage and fintech firm with offices across the UK, Europe, and New York. Prior to joining Prism, Kazuko was the Division General Counsel of the Content Solutions Division at Moody’s, the fintech arm of the Moody's Corporation. At Moody’s, she won the Blake Award, which is bestowed upon the top deal negotiating attorney, as voted by the global sales management. Prior to Moody’s, she was a lawyer for the law firm Arnold & Porter LLP, where she specialized in corporate and securities matters and transactional intellectual property law, representing both public and private companies.

Kazuko is a leader in the AANHPI legal community, serving as Board Director (2020-2024), Co-Chair of the In-House Counsel Committee (2023-2025), and Board Liaison of the Mentoring Committee and Women’s Committee of the Asian American Bar Association of New York. She also served as the Co-Chair of the Moody's Asian Leadership Initiative from 2017-2019, where she led numerous professional development programs for the advancement and retention of Asian and Pacific American talent, including the launch of the first ever mentoring program for Asian employees at Moody's. She is also a member of L Suite, an invite-only global community of general counsels, Women’s General Counsel Network, an invite-only network of women general counsels, and WOMN, an executive women’s network. She has a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, and a J.D. from Temple University, where she was also a member of the Political and Civil Rights Law Review.