Vice President and Counsel for Public Policy, D.R. Horton, Inc.
Charbel J Barakat is Vice President and Counsel for Public Policy, with D.R. Horton, Inc., the nation's largest homebuilder, where he coordinates the company’s interactions with federal and state governments.
Previously, for over 10 years, he served as Chief Counsel for the company’s Florida, Gulf Coast, and Mid-Atlantic Regions. During that time, he oversaw legal affairs for an area that included 9 states and 2,000+ employees.
He was formerly associated with Akerman LLP in Miami and Milbank LLP in New York City, where he specialized in complex corporate, real estate, and project finance transactions.
Charbel currently serves as a member of the University of South Florida Board of Trustees and the Florida Supreme Court Judicial Nominating Commission, positions to which he was appointed by Governor Ron DeSantis in February 2025 and July 2023, respectively.
From July 2023 to February 2025, Charbel served as Vice Chair and acting Chair of the Board of Supervisors for the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District (the special district governing Walt Disney World Resort). As acting board chair, he presided over the successful settlement of litigation challenging the District’s governing structure and the subsequent negotiation of a 15-year, $17 billion theme park master development agreement.
He previously served on the board of directors of the Florida Development Finance Corporation, a state authorized issuer of industrial revenue bonds, and as Chair of the 2nd District Court of Appeal Judicial Nominating Commission.
Since 2022, he has served as an advisor to the Board of Directors of the Tampa Hispanic Bar Association.
In 2023, Florida Trend magazine recognized Charbel as one of 11 inaugural “Notable General Counsel” throughout the state. In 2018 and 2019, Charbel was recognized by the Tampa Bay Business Journal as one of the city’s Top Corporate Counsel.
Active in his church and community, Charbel is a member of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre, a Catholic order of chivalry dedicated to charitable support of Christians in the Holy Land, and of the Krewe of the Knights of Sant’ Yago, dedicated to the preservation and enhancement of Tampa's rich Latin heritage and culture.
Charbel is a graduate of the New York University School of Law and The Johns Hopkins University. While in law school, he was a founding managing editor of the NYU Journal of Law and Liberty.
In 2018, Charbel became a Jeopardy! champion.
A native Floridian, Charbel lives in Tampa with his wife, Daira, and their three children.
General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer, Arete Advisors, LLC
Partner, DeMarco Law, PLLC
Joseph V. DeMarco is a partner at DeMarco Law, PLLC where he focuses on counseling clients on complex issues involving information privacy and security, theft of intellectual property, computer intrusions, on-line fraud, and the lawful use of new technology. His years of experience in private practice and in government handling the most difficult cybercrime investigations handled by the United States Attorney’s Office have made him one of the nation’s most sought-after lawyers on Internet crime and the law relating to emerging technologies. In addition to his counsel practice, Mr. DeMarco serves as an Arbitrator, resolving complex commercial and high-technology disputes between businesses. He is on the National Panel of Neutrals of the American Arbitration Association (AAA) and Federal Arbitration, Inc. (FedArb).
From 1997 to 2007, Mr. DeMarco served an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, where he founded and headed the Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property (CHIPs) Program, a group of five prosecutors dedicated to investigating and prosecuting violations of federal cybercrime laws and intellectual property offenses. Under his leadership, CHIPs prosecutions grew from a trickle in 1997 to a top priority of the United States Attorney’s Office, encompassing all forms of criminal activity affecting e-commerce and critical infrastructures including computer hacking crimes; transmission of Internet worms and viruses; electronic theft of trade secrets; illegal use of “spyware”; web-based frauds; unlawful Internet gambling; and criminal copyright and trademark infringement offenses. As a recognized thought leader in the field, Mr. DeMarco was frequently asked to counsel prosecutors and law enforcement agents regarding novel investigative and surveillance techniques and methodologies, and regularly provided advice to the United States Attorney concerning the Office’s most sensitive computer-related investigations. In 2001, Mr. DeMarco also served as a visiting Trial Attorney at the Department of Justice Computer Crimes and Intellectual Property Section in Washington, D.C., where he focused his work on Internet privacy, gaming, and theft of intellectual property.
Since 2002, Mr. DeMarco has served as an Adjunct Professor at Columbia Law School, where he teaches the upper-class Internet and Computer Crimes seminar. He has been invited to speak throughout the world on cybercrime, e-commerce, and IP enforcement. He has lectured on the subject of cybercrime at Harvard Law School, the Practicing Law Institute, the National Advocacy Center, and at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, and has served as an instructor on cybercrime to judges attending the New York State Judicial Institute.
Prior to joining the United States Attorney’s Office, Mr. DeMarco was a litigation associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York City, where he concentrated his work on intellectual property, antitrust, and securities law issues for various high-technology clients. Prior to that, Mr. DeMarco served as law clerk to the Honorable J. Daniel Mahoney, United States Circuit Judge for the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
Mr. DeMarco holds a J.D. magna cum laude from New York University School of Law. At NYU he was a member of the NYU Law Review. He received his B.S.F.S. summa cum laude from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
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