Our Team

Stacey Strongarone is Chief Operating Officer and Special Counsel at Sedreddine & Whoriskey, LLP. She brings over 25 years of experience in the nonprofit sector to support SedWho clients with management and operations matters, including advising executives, executive teams, and senior leaders; leading strategic planning and change management processes; and offering other general operations and problem-solving support.

Prior to joining SedWho, Stacey spent 20 years at the Vera Institute of Justice, where she served as VP and Chief of Staff, launched Vera’s California office, and built out Vera’s national work on access to counsel for people in immigration detention. She’s operated her own coaching and consulting business; worked at the Center for Community Problem Solving at NYU and La Raza Centro Legal in San Francisco; and served in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. Stacey served on the Liberty Hill Foundation Community Advisory Board in Los Angeles and co-chaired the Breast Cancer Action Board of Directors.

Stacey has her JD from NYU School of Law, her BA in Economics from the College of the Holy Cross, and is a certified professional coach and yoga instructor. She is based in Brooklyn and admitted to practice law in New York.

Ryan McCarthy is Senior Counsel at Sedreddine & Whoriskey, LLP. Prior to joining SedWho, Ryan spent over ten years providing counsel on governance, transactional and general corporate matters to executive teams and boards of directors. He began his career at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP, in the firm’s Corporate and Capital Markets practice groups, before transitioning to in-house roles at Fluent, Inc. and SeatGeek, Inc. Ryan brings a thoughtful, measured approach to his work, taking care to appropriately weigh legal risks associated with organizational initiatives and working collaboratively with relevant stakeholders to find optimal solutions.

Ryan graduated with a JD from Duke University School of Law in 2015, where he served as Senior Staff Editor for the Duke Journal for Constitutional Law & Public Policy and Senior Notes Editor for the Duke Forum for Law and Social Change, as well as a Legal Extern at Disability Rights North Carolina. He received a BS in Mathematical Business from Wake Forest University in 2012. Ryan is admitted to practice law in New York.

Eli Blood (Nathaniel Elias Blood-Patterson) is Senior Counsel at Sedreddine & Whoriskey, LLP. Eli has more than ten years of experience advising nonprofits and mission-driven organizations, including work in support of immigrant rights, criminal law reform, and data-driven research. Prior to joining SedWho, Eli served as General Counsel for the Immigrant Justice Corps, where he led the organization’s legal response to changes in federal policy and funding under the Trump administration, in support of a national network of legal fellows. Earlier in his career, Eli worked as Associate General Counsel for the Vera Institute of Justice, leading transactional legal work for large-scale, federally funded programs focused on direct service delivery, research, and advocacy. Before Vera, he supported international academic exchange programs and criminal law reform projects in jurisdictions across Asia with the U.S.-Asia Law Institute at N.Y.U. Eli has significant experience advising programs involving government partners, political risk, federal funding, and information security.

Eli graduated with a J.D. from N.Y.U. School of Law in 2014, where he served as a president of the Asia Law Society and as a staff editor on the Journal of International Law and Politics. He earned a B.A. in English Literature from Haverford College in 2011. Eli is admitted to practice law in New York.

Maria Quintero Rueda is an associate at Sedreddine & Whoriskey, LLP. Prior to joining SedWho, Maria was a Legal Fellow at Lawyers Alliance for New York, where she advised nonprofit organizations on a broad range of corporate and transactional matters, including governance, contracts, tax-exempt compliance, and other operational and regulatory issues.

Before moving to the United States, Maria practiced law in Colombia, where she served as Head of Legal at a high-growth technology company and as Legal Counsel for a multinational fintech company. In those roles, she advised on commercial transactions, corporate matters, regulatory compliance, and day-to-day legal and operational issues across multiple Latin American jurisdictions.

Maria earned her LL.M. from New York University School of Law and her law degree from Universidad de La Sabana in Colombia.