The International Women’s Insolvency and Restructuring Confederation (IWIRC) named the five finalists for its sixth annual Rising Star Award.

• Eloise Fardon is an attorney with Stephenson Harwood in Hong Kong. Her areas of practice include insolvency and restructuring, general commercial litigation and regulatory litigation.
• Valerie Batner Peo is an attorney with the Insolvency and Financial Solutions practice group at Buchalter Nemer in San Francisco, where her practice includes representing secured and unsecured creditors, with a particular emphasis on bankruptcy issues specific to the enterprise software industry.
• Cara Porter is a law clerk to the Honorable Alan Jaroslovsky in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Santa Rosa, CA.
• Alexandra “CC” Schnapp is a law clerk to the Honorable C. Ray Mullins in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Atlanta. She is committed to service and is actively engaged in the local bankruptcy community through such activities as the coordination of the Bankruptcy Section of the Atlanta Bar Association’s CARE Program (Credit Abuse Resistance Education).
• Amanda Steele is an attorney with Richards, Layton & Finger in Wilmington, Delaware. She focuses her practice on corporate bankruptcy, restructuring and other insolvency matters, routinely represents both creditors and debtors in all aspects of chapter 11 cases, and has worked on some of the biggest debtor cases in the country.

IWIRC is an international, networking and professional growth organization for women in the restructuring and insolvency industries. The IWIRC Rising Star Award is given to an IWIRC member with eight or less years of experience in her field who has made considerable contributions to her professional success and displayed a high-level of commitment to enhancing the professional status of women in the insolvency and restructuring profession.

The sixth annual Rising Star Award will be given at a luncheon that will take place during IWIRC’s 23rd Annual Fall Conference in San Francisco, October 26, 2016.