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regional wrap-up THE WEsT She's got game W B hen Vancouver won the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, Macleod Dixon LLP was uniquely positioned to assist many of VANOC's corporate sponsors due to one partner's expertise in sports and sponsorship law. "Bell Canada was the first and biggest of all the Cana- dian sponsors to the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games and we were retained by Bell Canada aſter their market research identified my unique expertise," says Jolan B. Storch. Storch knows her sports. A former A HEART FOR THE HOMELESS rian O'Leary's passion for law is almost as strong as his passion for helping the home- less. O'Leary began in 2002 when the number of homeless people started to dramatically escalate in his hometown of Calgary. Back then, Burnet Duck- worth & Palmer LLP, the firm where O'Leary was a partner, was already providing financial support and pro bono legal services to the Calgary Homeless Foundation. But O'Leary says he felt it was time to do his part and that he had a responsibility to help. "Once I got involved, there was a snowball effect. I loved the volunteer work right from the start. I convinced BD&P to get fur- ther involved in homelessness issues and soon the firm was building homes for Habitat for Humanity, sponsoring the Feed the Hungry program, and provid- ing more pro bono legal services. BD&P usually matched the funds that my wife Anne and I donated to homeless issues," says O'Leary. Building homes for Habitat for Humanity and serving meals to home- less people at the Feed the Hungry program was quite the change of environment. O'Leary usually helped clients — including high-profile ones such as Enron Canada Corp. — through insolvency and bankruptcy issues. O'Leary has 34 years experience as an O'Leary building homes for Habitat for Humanity. insolvency/bankruptcy lawyer, was a partner at BD&P for 24 years, and was responsible for the firm's insolvency team. But a magazine article O'Leary read in a Seattle, Wash., hotel four years ago added one more pas- sion to his life. The article described Seattle's 10-year plan to end homelessness. The article fascinated O'Leary because until then, all of the efforts put into Cal- gary's homelessness were to manage the problem, not end it. Aſter being elected chairman of the Calgary Homeless Foundation, O'Leary and his fellow directors worked with community leaders to develop Calgary's 10-year plan to end homelessness, which is now in its third year of implementation. O'Leary retired from practising law on Dec. 31, but that doesn't mean his passion for homelessness ended too. During his battle with leukemia two years ago, O'Leary says he had plenty of time to think about what was most important to him in life. Now that he is retired, he and Anne are looking for- ward to the next phase in their lives. "We plan to do lots of travelling, have fun with our children and grandkids, and of course, do a lot more volunteer activities together." — DC Canadian national team athlete, Storch is now a partner with Macleod Dixon. While completing her LLB at the Uni- versity of Calgary in 1998, she played on Canada's beach volleyball team. Prior to law school, she played on the national indoor volleyball team and then played professional volleyball in Switzerland. What Storch enjoys most about prac- tising sport and sponsorship law is it allows her to marry her love of sports with her law career. "I believe I have value-added insight and connections to assist my clients and ultimately make the best possible deal for them while simul- taneously making the Canadian sport system stronger," she says. Storch says a big part of negotiating the Bell Canada sponsorship agreement with VANOC was figuring out the telecom- munications services Bell would provide. "Years later, now that the Games are about to begin, it is really rewarding to realize that all that hard work on the sponsorship agreement paid off. Now, every image seen on TV, every news story filed to the world, every real-time score transmitted — it will all traverse technology designed and deliv- ered by Bell Canada." Storch also provides legal services for Agenda Sport Marketing, which repre- sents many of Canada's top Olympians and is known for creating sports market- ing programs with big impact. "Because their ideas for things like user-generated content contests or creative public-private funding for certain sport initiatives is so innovative, working for Agenda presents legal challenges on the cutting edge and is highly rewarding work," says Storch. Storch's first client was Hockey Canada. "While working for Hockey Canada, my background as a high-performance athlete helped me understand the business side of their sponsorship and licensing agree- ments, hosting agreements, broadcast agreements, and athlete agreements." — DIANE L.M. COOK dianecook@shaw.ca www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com M ARCH 2010 13