AFP CA, Greater Los Angeles Chapter: Professional Development Seminar and Monthly Luncheon
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Luncheon Program
The State of Philanthropy in Los Angeles—A Board Member’s Perspective
Virgil Roberts, JD
Virgil Roberts is Managing Partner and founder of the law firm Bobbitt & Roberts, which specializes in representing entertainment industry clients in television, film and music. Prior to this, Roberts was President of Solar Records, one of the most successful African American-owned record companies in the 1980s. His early work as a civil rights attorney with Manning & Roberts included representing the NAACP in the Los Angeles school desegregation case Crawford v. Board of Education.
Mr. Roberts currently serves on the boards of Community Build , the African American Board Leadership Institute, Claremont Graduate School, Families in Schools, the Alliance of Artists and Record Companies, Southern California Public Radio, Broadway Federal Bank, The Bridgespan Group, Community Foundation Trust Land, the Alliance for College Ready Public Schools and The James Irvine Foundation. He has served as Chairman of the Los Angeles Education Partnership, Chairman of the Board of the California Community Foundation, Treasurer of the Los Angeles Private Industry Council, and Vice Chairman of the Public Education Fund Network. While he was board chair of the Los Angeles Annenberg Metropolitan Project (LAAMP), the organization raised and spent more than $120 million to reform public education in the Los Angeles basin.
Attorney Roberts has been honored by the Los Angeles Urban League, the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, the University of Southern California’s School of Education, and the UCLA Black Alumni Association and the California Legislative Black Caucus Foundation, to name a few.
Roberts holds a bachelor’s degree from UCLA and a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from Harvard Law School where he was a Felix Frankfurter Scholar. He is married to writer/editor Brenda (Banks) Roberts, former deputy for Mayor Tom Bradley and author of "Jazzy Miz Mozetta," a children's book that won the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Award for its illustrations.
Professional Development Seminar
How to approach corporations in integrating philanthropy into their business model
Kent Seton, Esq.
Kent E. Seton, Esq., a former collegiate All American tennis player from USC, has spent the last 14 years of his legal career involved in representing charities, foundations and corporations in aspects of their legal existence. From formation to dissolution, to mergers and acquisitions to creating related entities in fund development strategies to creating subsidiaries for tax and liability purposes or other needs, to helping formulate and structure for profit and nonprofit related entity structures to advising corporations on engaging in philanthropy to representing and advising celebrities on their philanthropy to helping provide the legal compliance for large national promotion and marketing campaigns related to charitable fund generation to acting as general counsel for some well known large operating charities such as the LA Mission and the YWCA of LA to overseeing all types of legal counsel as general counsel, including litigation attorneys in highly contested proceedings to trademark disputes to labor counsel to real estate counsel. Kent is truly a “trusted advisor”.
Kent approaches each client differently as each client is different, has different goals, missions and structures. He listens very carefully to his clients activities and tries to provide them with well thought out options and opportunities while being very mindful of the tax, corporate and fundraising rules that apply to charitable organizations and those involved in charities and/ or trying to “surf” in the philanthropic world.
He represents and has represented the American Red Cross of Greater LA, United Cerebral Palsy of Greater LA, St Vincent Meals On Wheels Foundation, the largest meals and wheels organization in LA County, Woodcraft Rangers, Movember (raised over $120 million last year), the Magic Johnson Foundation, Forest Whitaker, Leeza Gibbons, Pamela Buffet, Ian Somerhalder, Carlos Boozer, large well established corporations, celebrities, athletes, high net worth individuals, business men and women, and professional fundraisers to name a few.
Whether you need to pick his brain on an “idea” you have, or you need legal counsel to advise you on complex structural questions between multi-entity structures, for profit and nonprofit, to engaging in innovative corporation partnerships to cause marketing to social entrepreneurship to determining the best vehicle to utilize in engaging in philanthropy to general legal counsel needs of major operating charities with hundreds of employees, Kent is an able and well versed lawyer that talks in ways that all can understand to receive sage legal and practical advice and supervision.
Kent also has extensive experience in representing business start ups and corporations in all types of matters including entity and jurisdiction selection, shareholder agreements, operating agreements, etc.
Kent is supported by a team of five (5) staff members, and many lawyers who are part of a “loosely organized” team including two more closely aligned lawyers that provide depth and breadth of knowledge, August Caimi of the Caimi Law Corporation, who is the former General Counsel to Conrad Hilton and Hilton Hotels and Matt Rabin, an expert branding and licensing lawyer with significant entertainment and corporate experience, formerly at MGM and Fox. Current clients include such notables as Mark Burnett Productions .
Seton Law Firm is located in Beverly Hills, California with a satellite office in Irvine, California.
