About Me

Experience

Rhea Hospitality

Principal and Manager | Cary, NC & Las Vegas, NV | November 2007 - Present

• Raised $5.5M for acquisition and renovation of The Retreat on Charleston Peak, a hotel outside of Las Vegas.
• Lobbied for and negotiated a public-private partnership between Memento Mori, LLC and the Town of Cary, NC, for the construction of the Mayton Inn, a $14.5M, 45-room boutique hotel, with ~$4M in incentives and Town-backed loans.
• Raised $3.5M in private equity, $11M in private loan funds, and $2.5M in public loans for the Mayton Inn.
• Developed and submitted the site plan, minor special use permit, development review board, and variance applications for the Inn.
• Negotiated construction and development contracts with a variety of trades and vendors.
• Financed, built, and opened The King’s Daughters Inn during the market downturn of 2008-2009.
• Managed outside counsel in the successful syndication of federal and state historic tax credits during the market crash of 2008.
• Oversee all aspects of IT, bookkeeping, reservations, and guest relations.
• Develop in-house tools to assist in the automation and execution of work tasks by others.
• Develop and maintain several tools which integrated data from three separate POS systems and timeclocks, resulting in a net savings of 10 hours of labor per payroll run.
• Spearheaded a project to design and implement a custom communications system which saved the company $100k.
• Constructed internal business intelligence analytical tools and data visualizations using Python, SQL & Flask.
• Successfully guided the development or acquisition, and the subsequent operation, of three hotels, and a total of 135 employees.
• Build and maintain the data infrastructure for the business, including cloud services such as AWS, DigitalOcean, and Azure.

PhD Posters, LLC

Member and General Counsel | Durham, NC | November 2005 - Present

• Address complex laws, rules and regulations related to an online business with physical locations in multiple jurisdictions.
• Work with overseas counsel to establish Canadian subsidiary for international expansion.
• Manage all in-house legal work, including trademark acquisition, drafting of licensing agreements, and devising the route for expanding the business model.
• Oversee the adoption of new licensees, from initial contact to execution of the license agreement.
• Help grow the company, which has expanded from a singe site to the current eight locations.

Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE)

Senior Program Officer | Philadelphia, PA | May 2015 - January 2016 IT Consultant | Philadelphia, PA | July 2020 - Present

• Researched university speech codes, classifying them with respect to constitutionality.
• Communicate with university staff to discuss and educate regarding the constitutionality of speech codes.
• Provided ad-hoc assistance with technical matters (IT support, website support, etc.).
• Using Python, developed and deployed a tool to more efficiently track which universities needed to be updated, and which staffer had most recently made updates.
• Design, build, and deploy new internal phone system based on 3CX.
• Manage the transition from Lastpass to Okta for internal security controls.

Triangle Apartment Association

Government Affairs Director | Raleigh, NC | January 2008 - March 2009

• Developed and directed governmental and regulatory policies and objectives; coordinate the operations of the organization as related to government relations.
• Analyzed facts, laws, cases, rules and regulations, and applied findings to determine the potential impact on the association’s constituency. Provided education to the membership regarding ongoing developments.
• Analyzed proposed legislative actions and determined the potential impact on the association’s membership.
• Interfaced with elected officials at all levels (municipal, state and Federal), of all political parties, to advocate for positive changes in the legal and regulatory environment.
• Coordinated with friendly groups to increase our overall impact.
• Monitored legislative and regulatory activities and developed positions on such.
• Educated association members on the legislative and regulatory environment, and coordinated member responses.

Duke University School of Law

Faculty Fellow for IP Law | Durham, NC | January 2005 - August 2006

• Faculty fellow under the Center for the study of Public Genomics.
• Researched the effects of software patents owned by universities, with specific foci on the creation and dissemination of genomic data.
• Developed and taught upper-level law course on Intellectual Property Licensing.
• Work both independently and collaboratively to produce and publish academic research, and engage in periodic academic conferences and meetings to present findings.

Academic Experience

Duke University Medical Center | Durham, NC | August 2006 - August 2007
      Doctoral Candidate, Department of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics
Duke University School of Law | Durham, NC | January 2005 - August 2006
      Faculty Fellow, The Center for the Study of Public Genomics

Education

Duke University Graduate School | Durham, NC | December 2004
      M.S. Biomedical Engineering
Duke University School of Law | Durham, NC | May 2003
      J.D. Cum Laude
Carnegie Mellon University | Pittsburgh, PA | May 2000
      B.S. Biology, Concentration in Computational Biology; Minor in Chemistry; Minor in Policy and Management

Professional Licenses

• North Carolina Licensed Attorney, #31468
• Licensed before the United States Patent and Trademark Office, #52782
• North Carolina Real Estate Commission, #250323 (INACTIVE)

Publications

1. U.S. Patent No. 9,364,012 (issued Jun. 14, 2016). (Colin R. Crossman, attorney of record)
2. Kepler, T.; Crossman, C.; Cook-Deegan, R.; Metastasizing patent claims on BRCA1. Genomics (2010) doi: 10.1016/j.ygeno.2010.03.003
3. Crossman, C.; Arming our Enemies: How parallel imports could increase Anti-microbial resistance. 2006 North Carolina Journal of International Law & Commercial Regulation. Vol 31(4): 823-845.
4. Reichman J.H, Rai, A, Uhlir P, and Crossman C.; Pathways across the Valley of Death: Novel intellectual property strategies for accelerated drug discovery. 2008 Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics, Vol 8(1).
5. Colin Crossman & Arti Rai, A Brief History of BioPerl (December 2, 2005). Available at: https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/faculty_scholarship/3686
6. Webbink, Crossman, Griffin, and Silverstein; Red Hat’s Comments to the Joint FTC/DOJ hearing on Competition and Intellectual Property Law, March 20, 2002. http://www.ftc.gov/opp/intellect/020320webbink.pdf (alternate link: https://crc32.com/020320webbink.pdf)