Selendy Gay founding partner Lena Konanova was named to Crain’s New York Business 40 Under 40, a highly competitive list of young New Yorkers leaving their mark on all facets of the business world. Crain’s 40 Under 40 highlights professionals who aren’t only breaking ground in their fields, but also championing the causes of New Yorkers who need advocacy.
Lena, a successful litigator who also leads the firm’s recruiting and training programs, was a clear choice for Crain’s. She believes passionately in making the legal industry more equitable, both in the way firms operate internally and in the cases she takes on.
Crain’s recognizes her past work representing the liquidators of Fairfield Sentry Limited, one of the largest feeder funds in the Madoff Ponzi scheme, as they seek to recover $6 billion of redemption payments from financial institutions. Further, the magazine praises Lena’s recent victories in settling cases on behalf of members of the American Federation of Teachers against loan servicer Navient and the U.S. Department of Education. In these matters, Lena and the team at Selendy Gay successfully represented public service workers who had alleged they had been misled about their qualifications for loan forgiveness, and for whom the U.S. Department of Education allegedly failed to properly implement the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.
The placement on Crain’s 40 Under 40 list follows Lena’s earlier inclusions this year on other Under 40 lists from Bloomberg Law and New York Law Journal.