WSBA Governance: The Board of Governors is the governing body of the WSBA that determines the general policies of the Bar and approves its budget each year. The Board moves the Bar forward with an eye toward its long-standing mission, guiding principles, and short-term strategic goals. The Board consists of the president and members elected from each congressional district and at-large. The president-elect and immediate past president are WSBA officers.
Hunter M. Abell
President
2023-2024
Hunter M. Abell is the 2023-2024 WSBA president. He was elected to fill an at-large diversity position on the Board of Governors in 2019 and elected by the Board of Governors as president-elect in 2022. Abell is a member at the Spokane office of Williams Kastner. He is originally from Eastern Washington, where he was raised on a ranch in rural Ferry County. A graduate of the College of William & Mary, Abell attended Gonzaga University School of Law and received an LL.M. at Georgetown University Law Center. Before joining Williams Kastner, he served as a JAG officer with the U.S. Navy, and is currently a commander in the U.S. Navy Reserve. Abell previously served as chair of the WSBA Professionalism Committee and Indian Law Section. When not in the office, he enjoys hiking, fishing, and playing with his two young daughters, Libby (10) and Wynsome (8).
LEARN MORE > Read President Abell’s first President’s Corner column and a Q&A with President Abell.
Sunitha Anjilvel
President-Elect
District 1 Governor
2023-2024
Sunitha Anjilvel was reelected to the Board of Governors in 2021 and elected by the Board of Governors as president-elect in 2023. She has practiced family law and estate planning in the Pacific Northwest since 2008. Since her first admission to practice law in 1990, Anjilvel has practiced in a variety of courts in Canada, California, and Washington in family law, criminal law, and civil litigation. In 2005, she served as director of a bipartisan campaign to support a redistricting reform initiative on California’s statewide ballot. She is committed to social justice and currently is chair and member of the WSBA Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Council and a director on the board of Domestic Relations Attorneys of Washington (DRAW). Anjilvel has also volunteered for the Kinship Care Project and Northwest Immigrant Rights Project. She has a B.A. from McGill University and a J.D. from Dalhousie Law School. She is licensed to practice law in Washington and California.
Daniel D. Clark
Immediate Past President
2023-2024
Daniel D. Clark served as 2022-2023 WSBA president and served on the Board of Governors as the District 4 governor from July 2017 to September 2022. He was elected as WSBA treasurer in July 2019 and reelected as WSBA treasurer in July 2020, becoming the first member to serve as treasurer for two terms and two consecutive terms. Clark is a senior deputy prosecuting attorney with the Yakima County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, Corporate Counsel Division. His legal practice includes providing legal representation to Yakima County department heads and elected officials in civil, financial, forfeiture, and taxation litigation matters. He is the legal counsel for the Southeast Washington Aging and Long Term Care Council of Governments, an entity that provides important services for vulnerable clients. Born and raised in Yakima, Clark received his B.A. in political science, magna cum laude, from Central Washington University and his J.D., cum laude, from Gonzaga University School of Law.
Kari Petrasek
District 2 Governor
2022-2025
Kari Petrasek was elected to the Board of Governors in 2022. She is a graduate of Seattle University School of Law. She is a solo attorney, having started her own firm, Petrasek Law, in Mukilteo in January 2015. She is a civil litigator with significant experience in the areas of juvenile law, guardianships, estate planning, elder law, and family law. Petrasek is also a dedicated advocate for children, having served as a volunteer and attorney guardian ad litem for dependent children. She has been one of the Snohomish County CASA Program attorneys for over 15 years. In addition, Petrasek has served as a judge and commissioner pro tempore for Snohomish County Superior Court since 2010. She is a past chair of the WSBA Solo and Small Practice Section, the treasurer of Washington Women Lawyers (WWL), a past-president of the Snohomish County Bar Association, a member of Washington State CASA Association, a leader in the ABA Solo, Small Firm and General Practice Division (GPSolo), and a coach for the Archbishop Murphy High School Mock Trial teams. In her free time, Petrasek enjoys skiing, golfing, football, and baseball.
Allison Widney
District 3 Governor
2023-2026
Allison Widney was elected to the Board of Governors in 2023. She graduated from the University of Oregon School of Law in 2011. Before that, she earned a criminal justice bachelor’s degree from Arizona State University. After law school, she worked as a public defender in Clark County. In 2017, she moved into civil law and currently works as a personal injury defense attorney. Widney grew up in Yakima. She enjoys running, hanging with her dog named Swift (not after Taylor Swift), learning about wine, and traveling.
Mary M. Rathbone
District 4 Governor
2022-2024
Mary M. Rathbone was elected to the Board of Governors in 2022. She is a partner at Moberg Rathbone Kearns, P.S. She has a B.A. in business administration from Washington State University, with an emphasis in international business. She obtained her license to practice law through the APR 6 program. For the last 11 years, she has worked primarily in civil defense litigation. Rathbone’s passion to become an attorney was ignited at a very young age. Her father, a former superior court judge, would often care for her in chambers because she refused to take naps at daycare. When she is not at the office, she can be found balancing ballet, piano, karate, and baseball with her two children, ages 6 and 8. She also serves her local community as a member of Soroptimist International, a nonprofit that serves to better the lives of women and children through economic empowerment.
Francis Adewale
Treasurer
District 5 Governor
2021-2024
Francis Adewale was elected to the Board of Governors in 2021 and elected by the Board as treasurer in 2022 and 2023. Adewale is one of the attorneys that helped establish Spokane Community Court. His commitment to community and movement lawyering is epitomized by his work on several community-based boards and activities in Eastern Washington. He has served as chair of Refugee Connections Spokane, co-chair of Spokane Homeless Coalition and Spokane County Regional Law & Justice Council’s Racial Equity Disparity Committee, and member/trustee of Spokane County Bar Association and the Volunteer Lawyers Program. Adewale is former chair of Washington’s Access to Justice Board and a member of the Washington Supreme Court’s Interpreters Commission. He has been a founding member of the Washington Statewide Reentry Council, having been reappointed thrice by Governor Jay Inslee. Adewale is an H. George Frederickson honors graduate of Eastern Washington University and adjunct faculty at Whitworth University as well as Gonzaga Law School. He was admitted to the Washington State Bar in 2000 and has since practiced as assistant public defender for the City of Spokane. Adewale and his wife also own and run a small business in Spokane.
Todd A. Bloom
District 6 Governor
2023-2026
Todd Bloom was elected to the Board of Governors in 2023. He is a sole practitioner with over two decades of experience in providing professional services to private and publicly held companies, high net worth families, executives, and private business owners. Bloom’s prior experience includes over a decade as a tax attorney and senior manager in Big Four accounting, as well as in-house counsel. Recalled to the Navy after 9/11 and having served over a decade, Bloom retired as a Lieutenant Commander in 2018. Bloom earned his B.A. from Simpson College. He received M.B.A. and J.D. degrees from Tulane University, an M.A. from the Naval War College, an LL.M. from the University of Washington, and a diploma from the College of Naval Command and Staff. Originally from the Midwest, Cmdr. and Mrs. Bloom and their two sons came to the Pacific Northwest by way of New Orleans, Louisiana, where Bloom was first admitted to the Bar.
Matthew Dresden
District 7 North Governor
2023-2026
Matthew Dresden was elected to the Board of Governors in 2020 and reelected in 2023. He is a solo practitioner at Dresden Law PLLC in Seattle, where he handles a wide range of corporate and transactional matters, with an emphasis on media and entertainment, international intellectual property, and cross-border work. Before attending law school, Dresden worked in Hollywood for several years as an independent filmmaker. Dresden served on the Executive Committee of the WSBA’s International Practice Section for eight years, including a term as chair. He is also an adjunct faculty member at Indiana University Maurer School of Law, where he teaches a clinic on legal issues for independent filmmakers. He served as a law clerk in the Southern District of Texas for U.S. District Court Judge Vanessa D. Gilmore and U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Jeff Bohm. He has a B.A. from Stanford University, a J.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, and LL.M.s from New York University and the National University of Singapore.
Serena Sayani
District 7 South Governor
2021-2024
Serena Sayani was elected to the Board of Governors in 2021. She is a shareholder at Stokes Lawrence, P.S., in the real estate and business transaction practice group. Sayani’s commercial real estate practice focuses on acquisitions, dispositions, development, construction, and leasing. Her clients include real estate investment trusts, public and private pension plans, tax-exempt investors, developers, and other businesses. Outside of her practice, Sayani is a member of the WSBA Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Council; a board member for Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW); the co-chair of the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee for NAIOP Washington; the co-chair of the Diversity and Inclusion Committee of Stokes Lawrence, P.S.; a member of the King County Bar Association’s MLK, Jr. Luncheon Committee; and an attorney mentor-coach for the Mercer Island High School Mock Trial Team (2018-2019). Recently, Sayani was honored with the 2019 Up and-Coming CRE Attorney Award by the Puget Sound Business Journal and the Rising Rock Star Award by CREW/Elevate.
Kristina Larry
District 8 Governor
2023-2026
Kristina Larry was elected to the Board of Governors in 2023. She is a true solo with her firm Sassy Litigations where she practices trademark, small business, cybersecurity, and data privacy law. She also created the legal sub brands The Prenup Princess and The Seattle Wedding Lawyer. In addition to running her firm, Larry is a staff attorney and lecturer at the University of Washington School of Law. For 10 years she was a volunteer with the King County Bar Association’s Housing Justice Project. From 2015 to 2019, she served as a trustee of the Washington State Bar Foundation and from 2019 to 2021 she served as president. She also served on the Executive Committee of the WSBA Solo and Small Practice Section for eight years and was a member of the Practice of Law Board. In 2018, she was named as one of the 40 Under 40 by South Sound Business magazine. Larry completed her undergraduate work at the University of Wyoming and earned her J.D. at the HBCU Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University.
Kevin Fay
District 9 Governor
2022-2025
Kevin Fay was elected to the Board of Governors in 2022. Prior to serving on the Board, he served on the Executive Committee of the WSBA Corporate Counsel Section, the Washington chapter of the Association of Corporate Counsel, and the Washington Chapter of the Society of Corporate Secretaries and Governance Professionals. He recently retired from three decades of service as in-house counsel for VMware, Inc., PACCAR Inc, and Microsoft, with an eclectic practice that included corporate and securities work, software licensing and services, equipment financing, mergers and acquisitions, real estate and construction, and immigration. Prior to going in-house, he was in private practice at Mudge, Rose and Shearman & Sterling in New York City, and Bogle & Gates in Seattle. Originally from Seattle, he earned two undergraduate degrees in political science and history from the University of Washington; a J.D., magna cum laude, from the State University of New York at Buffalo; and an LL.M. from Harvard Law School.
Nam Nguyen
District 10 Governor
2022-2025
Nam Nguyen was elected to the Board of Governors in 2022. He is an assistant attorney general in the Revenue and Finance Division in Tumwater. Prior to the Attorney General’s Office, Nguyen worked in private practice in Bellevue and Houston, Texas. Immediately after law school, he volunteered in Bayou La Batre, Alabama, for AmeriCorps’ BP oil spill relief program. Aside from the WSBA, Nguyen serves on the board for the Family Support Center, a nonprofit social service organization serving homeless families in the Olympia area, and he is the chair of the Commission on Asian Pacific American Affairs. Nguyen was born in Saigon, Vietnam, and grew up in the South Seattle area. He graduated from the University of Washington and Boston University School of Law, and he has a master’s degree in foreign policy from the University of Michigan. Nguyen resides in Tumwater and enjoys running, reading, cooking, and spending time with his dog, Dog Vader.
Tom Ahearne
At-Large Governor
2023-2026
Tom Ahearne (who is permanently half-paralyzed in a wheelchair) was elected to the Board of Governors in 2023 to fill an at-large seat for diversity, equity, and inclusion. An Air Force brat who grew up all across our country, Ahearne has been a Seattle litigator since 1986 (with Foster Pepper Riviera, now Foster Garvey). Most of his cases involve one or more aspects of constitutional law, municipal compliance, insurance coverage, cybercrime losses, and/or high profile appeals. His professional activities include serving on the boards of the following: NAACP’s Alaska/Oregon/Washington Conference, Washington Defense Trial Lawyers (WDTL), Appellate Section of the King County Bar Association (KCBA), Washington Council Of School Attorneys (COSA), and Washington Chapter of the Federal Bar Association (FBA). His main nonwork activities are trying to (1) remind his wife and kids how loved and wonderful they are, (2) not stress out the lifeguards too much as he poorly swims at the pool several times a week, and (3) handpedal his tricycle in bicycle events like the Seattle To Portland (STP), Mount Baker Hill Climb, and Ride the Hurricane.
Jordan Couch
At-Large Governor
2021-2024
Jordan Couch was elected to the Board of Governors in 2021 to represent new and young lawyers in an at-large position. Couch is a partner at Palace Law, practicing workers’ compensation and personal injury. In his spare time, he is an avid outdoorsman—probably stemming from his childhood spent between an island in Alaska and the Bighorn River valley in Montana. Prior to joining the Board of Governors, Couch served as a trustee for the Tacoma-Pierce County Bar Association, chair of the Access to Justice Board’s Technology Committee, and chair of the Washington Young Lawyers Committee, and has held various leadership roles on the WSBA Solo and Small Practice Section’s Executive Committee. Couch is passionate about solving access to justice by helping lawyers build better, more client-centric practices, and never gets tired of talking about how to improve our profession (or fishing).
Brent Williams-Ruth
At-Large Governor
2022-2025
Brent Williams-Ruth was first elected as a district governor to the Board of Governors in 2020 and was elected to an at-large position in 2022. Williams-Ruth has had a varied career ranging from working as a 1L intern with the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office to working in a nonlegal role with (formerly) Fisher Radio Seattle. Since 2015, he has been the sole proprietor of a concierge estate planning, probate/trust, and elder law firm. Since starting his own firm, Williams-Ruth has volunteered with Seattle University School of Law as a mentor and judge for legal writing oral arguments. He began his volunteer service with the WSBA in 2018 when he joined the Character and Fitness Board, serving as its 2019-2020 vice chair. He resigned his position with Character and Fitness in 2020 to take his seat as a governor. In September 2023, Williams-Ruth was appointed to the Board of Regents for Seattle University. When not working or volunteering, you will find him traveling, scuba diving, and training for the 2024 Dopey Challenge at Walt Disney World with his husband, Justin, where they will both run 48.6 miles over four days.