Let's Dip into the DIP Order

Lisa Bittle Tancredi is a bankruptcy and creditors’ rights partner working from the firm’s Baltimore and Wilmington, Delaware, offices. Lisa represents a spectrum of clients, including corporations, national banks, community banks, institutions, funds, investors, sureties, high-net-worth individuals and lenders, both inside and outside of the bankruptcy court. In the syndicated loan arena, she works with agents and participating lenders to address distressed debt facilities.

Lisa is a past President of the Bankruptcy Bar Association for the District of Maryland (2014-2015) and a former chair of the Maryland Local Rules Committee (2013-2016). Lisa served as a reporter of bankruptcy cases in the Fourth Circuit for the American Bankruptcy Institute (ABI) and was co-chair of the ABI’s Employee Benefits Committee. She frequently lectures and gives seminars to local and national groups, and she has published several articles.

Lisa earned a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Virginia Tech, cum laude, where she was a member of sorority Kappa Alpha Theta and the Pi Tau Sigma and Tau Beta Pi engineering honor societies. After a brief stint working as a mechanical engineer, Lisa turned to the law. She graduated from the University of Maryland School of Law where she was awarded the American Jurisprudence Awards for Legal Writing and Commercial Paper, the Arnold Bridgewater Prize, and inducted into the Order of the Coif. During law school, Lisa clerked for the Office of the United States Trustee in Baltimore, a component of the Department of Justice responsible for overseeing the administration of bankruptcy cases, and it was during that clerkship that she acquired her affinity for bankruptcy law. Following law school, Lisa served a judicial clerkship for the Honorable James F. Schneider of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Maryland.

Christopher S. Sontchi is a judge on the Delaware Bankruptcy Court. He was appointed in 2006 and his current term will expire in 2020.

Sontchi served as a law clerk to Hon. Joseph T. Walsh in the Delaware Supreme Court. He was a member of the law firm of Ashby & Geddes, PA, where he represented a wide variety of nationally-based enterprises with diverse interests in most of the larger chapter 11 reorganization proceedings filed in Delaware.

Judge Sontchi obtained his Bachelor of Arts Phi Beta Kappa with distinction in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Later he earned his J.D. at the University of Chicago. Sontchi is also a Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School and an Adjunct Professor of Law at Widener University in Wilmington, Delaware.

Beth’s practice focuses on restructuring and insolvency and commercial litigation, including corporate bankruptcy proceedings and other creditors’ rights issues.

She served as law clerk to the Honorable Kevin R. Huennekens, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Beth earned her JD, cum laude, at the University of Richmond School of Law in 2008.

Duncan Pickett is the CFO at Realterm.

Previously, Duncan was the Managing Director at Berkeley Research Group, LLC. His role there included direct assistance to companies, boards of directors, and debt investors. He has experience across a wide array of real estate asset classes, including the office, gaming, and retail sectors. Most recently, he and his team assisted in the formation of VICI Properties (NYSE: VICI), a publicly traded REIT spun out from Caesars Entertainment.

Mr. Pickett holds bachelor’s degrees in accounting and finance from the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce.