Consumer Arbitration Richard Woods
Vice President and General Counsel
Richard Woods is Vice President and General Counsel for the Council of Better Business Bureaus. Mr. Woods has been with the CBBB since 1987. As Deputy General Counsel, Mr. Woods’s responsibilities focused primarily on business-to-consumer dispute resolution, nonprofit governance, and contract negotiation. A previous position with CBBB was Legal Counsel to the BBB Wise Giving Alliance, which evaluates nationally-soliciting charitable organizations in relation to the BBB charity standards. Prior to that, Mr. Woods served as Director of Research for CBBB’s Dispute Resolution Division.
Mr. Woods received his B.A. from Duke University and his J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He is a member of the Association of Corporate Counsel. Mr. Woods recently served as a U.S. delegate to the ISO committee drafting standards for internal customer complaints handling and third-party dispute resolution.
Rodney L. DavisVice President, Dispute Resolution Services
Prior to assuming the position of Vice President, Dispute Resolution Services, Mr. Davis served as Director of Operations for the DR Division overseeing the development and administration of the dispute resolution center. Mr. Davis managed the creation of the dispute resolution center for the CBBB. This included the development and implementation of an image enabled database to facilitate the management of cases throughout the BBB network. The dispute resolution center handles over 32,000 complaints annually and has handled 1.8 million cases since inception in the late 1970's. Mr. Davis has developed dispute resolution programs working with companies in the automotive industry, the Federal Trade Commission and attorney's general to resolve disputes related to the automotive industry.
Mr. Davis received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Public Administration from the University of Virginia, in 1983. Mr. Davis has extensive training in dispute resolution, conducted numerous training sessions in dispute resolution, given speeches on ADR and was a participant in a negotiated rulemaking session sponsored by the Federal Trade Commission.
Mr. Davis also serves as a member of the board for the National Institute of Automotive Service Excellence and the UVA Alumni Organization, the Serpentine Society.
Advertising Dispute Resolution and Self-Regulation
C. Lee Peeler
President, National Advertising Review Council and Executive Vice President, CBBB
C. Lee Peeler is responsible for leading the advertising industry’s system of self-regulation, a system dedicated to fostering truth and accuracy in advertising. He oversees the operation of NARC investigative and appeals units, briefs elected officials on self-regulatory initiatives, works to expand advertising self-regulation to industries that are not yet regular participants and consults with representatives of foreign governments on the value of industry self-regulation.
Mr. Peeler joined NARC and BBB in 2006, following a 33-year career at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), where he held a number management positions. While at the FTC, he served as Associate Director of the Division of Advertising Practices (1985-2001) and Deputy Director, Bureau of Consumer Protection (2001-2006.)
He has spoken and testified widely on consumer protection issues including truth in advertising, consumer credit, electronic commerce, privacy and data security. Mr. Peeler received his B.A. and J.D. degrees from Georgetown University.
Andrea C. Levine
Director of the National Advertising Division (NAD) and
Senior Vice President, CBBB
NAD has resolved over 3,700 advertising cases, and it has generated a 96% compliance rate without legal sanction or regulatory authority. Over the course of her legal career, Ms. Levine has handled a wide range of advertising challenges: these include drafting a comprehensive blueprint for truthful and accurate airline advertising; formulating (at the request of the industry) advertising guidelines for car rentals; analyzing and evaluating environmental marketing claims; and handling product safety issues particularly as they pertain to toys and other products intended for use by children. She served ten years as an Assistant Attorney General for the State of New York.
Ms. Levine has extensive litigation experience in both State and Federal Court, and has operated at the highest levels in our justice system as a member of a litigation team that appeared before the United States Supreme Court. Immediately before joining NAD, Ms. Levine was special counsel to the Ryan Community Health Network in New York, a non-profit managed care company. Early in her legal career, Ms. Levine served for seven years as a staff attorney in a poverty law program, Community Action for Legal Services, providing legal representation for low-income families in New York City. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from New York University and her law degree from Brooklyn Law School.
Dispute Resolution Training
Carol P. Stuart
Senior Director, Training and Performance
Ms. Stuart joined CBBB in 1985 and has served in a number of dispute resolution positions. Since 1991, she has overseen the dispute resolution training activities of the BBB, training several thousand volunteers to serve as BBB mediators and arbitrators. She has also trained Air Force and auto manufacturer personnel on collaborative negotiation and conducted personal finance training for military service members and their families.
She is an expert in the field of dispute resolution, training development and delivery and has received in excess of 120 hours of mediation and arbitration training. In addition to supervising all aspects of arbitrator program, Ms. Stuart provides training to BBB personnel throughout the U.S. and Canada on a broad array of topics.
Ms. Stuart has mediated for the BBB of Metro Washington D.C. and the District of Columbia Superior Court. She currently arbitrates for the Fairfax County Office of Consumer Affairs and Telecommunications (1995-present), and for the District of Columbia Bar Association (1994-present). She has been a member of the Attorney-Client Arbitration Board since 2005 and has served at Vice Chair of that committee from 2006-2009. In 2005, Ms. Stuart received a Special Merit Award and in 2009, a Distinguished Service Award from the District of Columbia Bar Association for her volunteer arbitrator and committee service.
EU Safe Harbor/Privacy Dispute Resolution
Frances J. Henderson
Associate General Counsel and Director, Privacy Initiatives
Frances Henderson directs the Council of Better Business Bureaus’ European Union Safe Harbor Dispute Resolution Program and advises the Council on national and international consumer privacy issues, including protection of privacy on the Internet. She also served as a US delegate to meetings of the APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) Privacy SubGroup tasked with developing and enforcing privacy rules for cross-border data transfers.
Ms. Henderson has extensive experience in private law practice, with a primary focus on international trade compliance and technology security matters. Immediately prior to joining the CBBB, she headed the international trade practice at the law firm of Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal, where her clients included government entities as well as large and small corporations in a wide range of industries. Before entering private practice in the United States, Ms. Henderson was a Lecturer in Public Law at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. She has written and spoken frequently on international trade and security topics and on corporate compliance management. Ms. Henderson has a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Glasgow, Scotland, a Master of Laws degree from the University of Virginia Law School, and a J.D. from the University of Minnesota Law School. She is a Certified Information Privacy Professional.
