Texas 89th Legislative Session Recap
Michelle Wittenburg, Governmental Affairs Consultant & Attorney at Law
About the program and speaker:
Michelle Wittenburg has broad-based and extensive experience with the Texas Legislature and state government in general. She has worked in all three branches of state government over the past 30 years, having spent three sessions working in the Texas Senate and then as the Executive Assistant to the first female and first Republican ever elected to the Texas Comptroller’s post. Most recently, she served as the General Counsel to the first Republican Speaker of the House since Reconstruction, where she led the Speaker’s efforts to pass landmark tort reform, ethics, and governmental reorganization legislation. She also has experience with public utility, health care, insurance, criminal and civil jurisprudence, licensing, budgetary, education, and gambling issues, amongst others. Additionally, she has significant political experience, having consulted, managed, and fundraised for successful legislative and statewide campaigns.
Michelle is a proud Red Raider who received her bachelor’s degree from Texas Tech University and earned her law degree cum laude from South Texas College of Law (and also attended the University of Texas School of Law), where she was an editor of law review and an award-winning national moot court participant. Having worked for former Third Court of Appeals Justice Lee Yeakel (now a retired federal district judge) and Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht (the current Chief Justice of that court), she has experience with the appellate courts that handle administrative law issues. After law school, Michelle worked for Holland & Knight LLP, the fifth-largest law firm in the nation, and was a partner at a Texas-based firm, where she practiced in the firm’s governmental affairs department. In 2006, she established her own governmental affairs firm, Wittenburg & Associates, where she currently provides governmental and business consulting and advocacy services to business, association, non-profit and political clients. Michelle is consistently ranked by Capitol Inside as one of the top 30 lobbyists in Texas – amongst almost 2000 registered lobbyists.
Additionally, Michelle is the President of KK125 Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation and a board member of Patients for Stem Cells. Emanating from her personal history and attachment to the issues and under the umbrella of these organizations is a record of legislative and regulatory pro bono success on both the state and federal levels, where she helped pass
Texas’s and the recent federal “Right to Try” bills as well as working with Senators Tan Parker and Paul Bettencourt to pass first-of-its-kind stem cell legislation that allows the terminally ill and those with severe, chronic illnesses to have broader and more expeditious access to promising stem cell therapies. Michelle has also appeared in several documentaries that seek to educate the public and change laws regarding the life-altering roles that novel therapies can play in our health. Recently, she was recognized as the top individual fundraiser in the Austin/San Antonio region for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.
In her spare time, Michelle – a fortunate fifth-generation Texan who was raised on her family’s 150+ year-old Central Texas ranch – spends as much time as possible with her horses, cats, dogs, goats and donkey
Agenda:
6:45am - Coffee & Networking
7:10am - Breakfast Buffet
7:25am - Introductions & Announcements
7:50am - Speaker Introduction
8:20am - Q&A
8:30am - Leave inspired or curious!
