When Lissa Broome, the Burton Craige Distinguished Professor and director of the Center for Banking and Finance at UNC School of Law, gathered more than 215 attorneys at The Ritz-Carlton in Charlotte last week, the marquee moment wasn’t a keynote, but an envelope. 

On Thursday evening, Broome awarded 10 second-year law students $10,000 scholarships for their third year of law school. The students, who will serve as editors on Volume 31 of the North Carolina Banking Institute journal, received funding made possible by Carolina Law alumnus Mike Mascia ’98 and his family, who contributed five scholarships, and the 56 firms and banks that sponsor the annual Banking Institute, who funded the rest. 

The 10 scholarship recipients are: 

For many students, a $10,000 scholarship in the third year means the freedom to take a lower-paying public interest job, pursue an unpaid internship, or simply graduate with less debt. But the center’s commitment to students ran deeper than one evening’s award ceremony. Sponsor contributions also covered $25,800 in summer stipends for students with unpaid internships at the N.C. Business Court or a U.S. Bankruptcy Court, and $12,400 for four students traveling to Tuebingen, Germany, including weekly support for three staying on for unpaid internships. The total is $138,200 in student support this year. 

The Banking Institute, now in its 30th year, is the center’s flagship CLE program. Twenty-two students participated in the program. In three rotating segments, staff members walked attendees through their published journal notes in a focused conversation with their editors, a format that drew unsolicited praise from the audience for both the depth of the scholarship and the students’ ability to distill complex legal arguments on the spot. 

Three student editors also led fireside chats with principal speakers. Among them was Rohit Chopra, who ran the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from 2021 until his departure in February 2025, making for a timely conversation on the future of federal consumer finance regulation. Editor-in-Chief Sarah Campbell, Institute Editor Kalysta Strauss, and Executive Editor Jackson Fisher each took a turn. Mascia also arranged a dinner for the 2L journal staff to meet Charlotte finance attorneys. 

Ed O’Keefe, co-head of the Financial Regulatory Advice and Response group at Moore & Van Allen in Charlotte, also received the Center for Banking and Finance Leadership Award. This was only the eighth such award given in the Center’s twenty-five years of existence. Ed is a member of the Center’s Board of Advisors, its Steering Committee, chairs the board’s Nominations and Governance Committee, and has coordinated multiple panels at the Banking Institute over the years. Ed first joined the Board of Advisors when he became Global General Counsel of Bank of America in 2009.  

Volume 30 of the North Carolina Banking Institute journal was distributed at the event and is available online.