Anya Verkhovskaya

Anya Verkhovskaya is a chief executive officer, expert witness, and human rights activist. She is the President and CEO of Class Experts Group, LLC, Director of the Board for Friends of Be an Angel, and the Board Member of Be an Angel e.V.

Anya Verkhovskaya
Born	December 31, 1969 (1969-12-31)
Education	Brown University, IE Business School, Molloy College, Moscow Medical College
Occupation	President, chief executive officer, expert witness, human rights activist
Title	Founder of Class Experts Group, LLC
Children	3

Early Life, Family, and Education

Verkhovskaya was born on December 31, 1969, in Moscow, former Soviet Union, to Jewish parents. Before fleeing the former Soviet Union as a political refugee at 19, she was an actress and dancer at Chamber Jewish Musical Theatre.

Upon arrival to New York nearly a year later from Europe in 1990, Verkhovskaya earned a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing from Molloy College (1993) and worked as a Senior Registered Nurse focusing on pediatric oncology and neurology at the New York University Center, Tisch Hospital.

At the same time, Verkhovskaya volunteered for Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation (currently USC Shoah Foundation Institute). Founded by Steven Spielberg, the organization was dedicated to doing audio-visual interviews with survivors and witnesses of genocides. In 1995, she left nursing, moved to Los Angeles, and became the Foundation's Regional Director for Europe and Asia. The life stories of more than 9,000 Jewish, Romani, and other Holocaust survivors and witnesses were videotaped due to Verkhovskaya's work over four years. Among numerous documentaries resulting from this work, she co-produced and, with the support of President Gorbachev, introduced Children from the Abyss into school and university curricula in the countries of the former Soviet Union.

Verkhovskaya married while working for the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation in Bulgaria and was later divorced. She gave birth to a son in 1999, a daughter in 2002, and a son in 2005.

Film Production

The Last Days

Verkhovskaya was the field producer and the production manager in The Last Days, a documentary feature receiving an Oscar nomination in 1998 and an Oscar win at the 1999 Academy Awards in the 'Best Documentary Feature' category, and which was nominated for an Eddie Award for 'Best Edited Documentary Film' at the American Cinema Editors Awards.

The film tells the stories of five Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust, focusing on the horrors of life in the concentration camps and stressing the optimism and desire to survive. Steven Spielberg served as executive producer.

Children From the Abyss

Verkhovskaya coproduced Children from the Abyss (2001), a documentary that won the 54th Annual Christopher Award in the Television & Cable category.

In Children from the Abyss, part of Broken Silence (2002), a five-documentary series produced by Steven Spielberg, Holocaust survivors detail their experience of resistance, betrayal, collaborators, rescuers, bystanders, and the desire for revenge.

Verkhovskaya was the interviewer and Regional Coordinator for the documentaries, Survivors of the Holocaust (TV Movie 1996) and The Lost Children of Berlin (1997).

Expert Witness and Class Action Administration

Verkhovskaya's expertise in community outreach in eastern Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union resulted in her first consulting and then becoming a class action administrator in several complexes, large-scale domestic and international administration programs starting in 1999.

Shortly, as the court-appointed notice administrator in the In re Holocaust Victim Assets Litig., 105 F. Supp. 2d 139 (E.D.N.Y. 2000), Verkhovskaya played a vital role in a worldwide Phase I notice program that processed more than 500,000 initial questionnaires relating to a $1.25 billion settlement. In Phase III, she coordinated delivery notices to over 10,000 Jewish communities in 109 countries. In both Phases I and III of that matter, Verkhovskaya administered international help and call centers that directly assisted more than 100,000 potential claimants, created a class-appropriate notice targeting members of the Romani community in 48 countries, directed hundreds of staff in communicating with Romani communities and individuals, and notified more than two million people of the settlement.

The government of Germany appointed Verkhovskaya to lead notice, and claims collection efforts in the German Forced Labour Compensation Programme (GFLCP). Under her direction, the program located more than 43,000 Romani survivors in 17 countries in central and eastern Europe who were potentially eligible for humanitarian aid. Verkhovskaya oversaw the creation of a comprehensive database for the GFLCP and the Holocaust Victim Assets Programme and coordinated direct assistance with claim completion for more than 11,000 Romanies in eight central and eastern European countries.

Chairman Lawrence Eagleburger appointed Verkhovskaya, former U.S. Secretary of State, to consultant the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims (ICHEIC) on notice and outreach strategies. He supervised the notification of claimants and face-to-face assistance programs in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

This experience led Verkhovskaya to find A.B. Data, Ltd.'s Class Action Administration Division, and she moved to Milwaukee in 2001 to eventually become its Partner and COO. During her tenure at the firm, she was appointed by the Israeli government as the administrative Director of Project HEART (Holocaust Era Asset Restitution Taskforce) to provide essential tools, strategy, and information to enable Israel and its partners to secure restitution for eligible Jewish Holocaust victims and their heirs. Project HEART was one of the most comprehensive multilingual notice campaigns, covering 137 countries.

She assisted in launching a multilingual, interactive website, establishing a 24-hour call center in 13 languages, distributing more than 500,000 documents to potentially eligible families of Holocaust victims, handling more than 80,000 telephone calls, conducting archival research, and creating the most comprehensive online database of nearly two million records looted Jewish property. In addition, under her supervision, Project HEART reached out to 15,000 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to engage them in the project to provide personal assistance to thousands of Holocaust victims and their heirs in making their claims.

In 2018, Verkhovskaya founded Class Experts Group, LLC, a 2022 Inc. 5000 company. Her work as a class administration, expert witness, and human rights activist led to her appointment as the Settlement Administrator in the matter of Leslie Ann Wilkie Peltier et al. v. Deb Haaland et al., No. 20-cv-03775 (D. D.C.), a class action lawsuit to redress alleged breaches of trust by the United States Department of the Interior, the United States Department of the Treasury, and the United States of America concerning the accounting and management of two Judgment Awards of the Indian Claims Commission (ICC).

The $59 million settlement provides relief to several generations of tribal families. As part of this litigation, Verkhovskaya worked over several years to develop a novel class notification and claims adjudication process that would quickly and efficiently distribute settlement funds to surviving tribal members and their heirs, many of whom are aging.

Verkhovskaya is considered a nationally recognized expert witness who has provided expert analysis, testimony, and litigation support services in federal and state class actions relating to consumer protection, human and civil rights, Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), securities fraud, ERISA, antitrust, pharmaceuticals, and insurance, as well as in fairness actions before the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, among others.

Verkhovskaya has also provided expert witness testimony in numerous class action cases, some of which include:

• Sidney Naiman v. Total Merchant Services, Inc. and Quality Merchant Services, Inc.
• Jim Youngman and Robert Allen v. A&B Insurance and Financial, Inc.
• Estrellita Reyes v. BCA Financial Services, Inc.
• Abante Rooter and Plumbing, Inc., Mark Hankins, and Philip J. Charvat v. Alarm.com Incorporated, and Alarm.com Holdings, Inc.
• Thomas H. Krakauer v. Dish Network LLC.
• Diana Mey v. Frontier Communications Corporation
• In re Collecto, Inc. Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) Litigation
• In re Scottish re Group Securities Litigation
• Cordoba v. DirecTV, LLC.
• Abante Rooter & Plumbing, Inc. v. Alarm.com Inc.
• Youngman v. A&B Insurance and Financial, Inc.
• Krakauer v. Dish Network, LLC.
• Jarrett Jenkins, Emmot Steele, Frances Royal, Danai Ewan, and Charmaine Whyte v. National Grid USA Service Company, Inc., Keyspan Gas East Corporation, Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation, and The Brooklyn Union Gas Company
• Benzion et al v. Vivint, Inc.

Selected Expert Witness Case descriptions for Telephone Consumer Protection Act

Krakauer v. Dish Network, LLC, No. 1:14–CV–333 (M.D.N.C.)

Submitted an expert report and rebuttal and provided live testimony at deposition and before a jury regarding analysis of more than 1.6 million telephone call records. The court admitted Verkhovskaya's expert opinion over a Daubert challenge in a case where the exclusion of the report would have meant the failure of the class. Later, denying a motion to overturn the jury verdict awarding the course more than $20 million in relief, the court found that "Verkhovskaya provided clear, cogent testimony explaining her methodology and the bases for her opinions." Damages in the case were trebled to more than $61.5 million, and the award was upheld on appeal.

McMillion v. Rash Curtis & Associates, 4:16-cv-03396 (N.D. Cal.)

In a class action brought against a debt collector who used skip tracing to make more than half a million calls in violation of the TCPA, Verkhovskaya used reverse append and other industry-leading techniques to separate debtors from non-debtors in the defendant's telephone call data and to identify telephone calls made to wireless telephone numbers. Verkhovskaya testified both at deposition and a jury trial explaining her method. The class was awarded over $267 million in damages, one of the most significant TCPA damages awards ever.

Chinitz v. Intero Real Estate Services, 5:18-cv-05623 (N.D. Cal.)

Submitted an expert report, rebuttal report, and deposition testimony concerning TCPA class identification and notification issues. The court overruled the defendant's motion to strike/exclude and denied the defendant's motion for summary judgment on the plaintiff's TCPA claims. The parties subsequently settled on the TCPA class.

Ukraine

Since 2022, Verkhovskaya has been the Director of the Board of Friends of Be an Angel, Inc., a nonprofit organization focused on raising funds in the U.S. and Canada to provide humanitarian aid in Ukraine and evacuate Ukraine, refugees to EU countries.

Moreover, she has been a board member of Be an Angel e.V., a nonprofit organization based in Germany, Moldova, and Ukraine that supports European refugees, delivering and distributing humanitarian aid in Ukraine and evacuating Ukrainian refugees to EU countries.

Awards & Nominations

Year	Award	Organization/Category
2023	Wisconsin Titan 100
2022	Litigation Support Services Firm of the Year	Innovation & Global Excellence Award
2022	5,000 America's Top Private Companies	Inc. Magazine
2021	IE Foundation's 1st Prize Winner In the Humanities	Breaking the Silence: Interviewing Holocaust Survivors in the Former Soviet Union
2021	Bronze Winner, Most Awarded	Best in Biz
2020, 2021	Bronze Winner
2019	Company of the Year, Silver Winner	Women World Awards
2019	Small Business 100 Winner	Best of Small Business Awards
2019	Appreciation Award	American Heart Association
2015	VIP Woman of the Year	National Association of Professional Women
2014	Distinguished Worldwide Humanitarian Award	WorldwideHumanitarian.com
2013	Women Executive of the Year, Bronze Winner	The Golden Bridge Award
2012	Patriotic Employer Award	Office of the Secretary of Defense
2011	Stevie Awards Winner	Women in Business
2011	Stevie Awards Winner	Women in Business, Best Executive of the Year
2010	Stevie Awards Finalist	Women in Business, Best Executive of the Year
2009	Stevie Awards Finalist	Best Executive of the Year
2002	2003 Christopher Award	Co-producer for the Broken Silence
2003	Christopher Award Winner	Television and Cable: Children from the Abyss
2000	Online Film & Television Association (OFTA) Award Nominee	Best Documentary Picture: The Last Days (1998)
1999	Eddie Award Nominee	Best Edited Documentary Film: The Last Days (1998)
1999	Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Oscar Award Winner	Best Documentary Feature: The Last Days (1998)
1999	Online Film & Television Association (OFTA) Award Nominee	Best Documentary Picture: The Last Days (1998)
	Utah Film Critics Association Award	Best Documentary Feature Film: The Last Days Christopher Award Winner
		Television and Cable: Children from the Abyss 1998 Winner/1999 Nominee

Other honors

• The Museum of Photographic Collections. Permanent Collection. Eight-piece Series (1998)
• Off-Broadway Photographer. Published in the Theater – New York Magazine (1993 – 1996)
• Winner of Numerous Ballroom Competitions

Filmography

Year	Title	Role(s)
2001	Children from the Abyss	Co-producer
1998	The Last Days	Field Producer and Production Manager
1997	The Lost Children of Berlin	Interviewer and Regional Coordinator
1996	Survivors of the Holocaust

Board Memberships

Organization	Role
Friends of Be an Angel, Inc., Milwaukee, WI	Director of the Board
Be an Angel e.V., Berlin, Germany	Board Member
A.B. Data, Ltd., Class Action Administration Company, Milwaukee, WI	Founder/Member, Board of Directors
Class Action Administration Partnership, New York, NY
Fraud Prevention and Detection Task Force, Washington
American Depository Company, Milwaukee, WI
Institute of Russian Jewish American Diaspora, New York, NY

Patents

• Patent Title: Reverse Printed Book

The patent was applied for and later abandoned.