Matthew E. Hamel
Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary
Matthew E. Hamel is executive vice president, general counsel and secretary of Brown-Forman Corporation.
As general counsel, Hamel leads Brown-Forman’s legal team, overseeing the traditional legal activities related to trademarks, regulatory compliance, trade practices, litigation, corporate restructurings, corporate governance, SEC and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, acquisitions and other matters.
Hamel has more than twenty-one years of international legal and corporate management experience in technology, consumer goods, and media firms. Prior to Brown-Forman, he was with Dow Jones & Company, where he served as associate general counsel and vice president, law, Enterprise Media Group. Before that position, Hamel served as vice president, general counsel and secretary for Dow Jones Reuters Business Interactive LLC (Factiva), a privately-owned, multi-national joint venture specializing in selling online business information and research tools. Before joining Factiva, he worked for nearly seven years at Colgate-Palmolive Company as division general counsel, international business development. Hamel started his career as an associate with the law firm of White & Case, representing clients from a variety of industries in such diverse markets as Warsaw, Stockholm, New York and Washington D.C.
Hamel holds a B.A. degree in economics and political science from Yale University and a J.D. degree from the University of Chicago Law School. In addition, he was a Fulbright Scholar in Sweden.