Humble Beginnings.
Adrian Randolph is one of six children. His mother was one of 14 in a family of sharecroppers from Marlin, Texas. His dad was one of nine from Cincinnati and his military background allowed Adrian to travel abroad during his formative years. Before age 18, he lived in Taiwan, England, Texas, and Turkey. He put himself through college and was the first member of his family to attend and graduate from college. He went on and received his graduate degree from the University of San Francisco School of Law. While at USF, Adrian participated in an externship working for California Supreme Court Justice Allen E. Broussard.
A Thriving Private Practice with Major Clients.
His first legal job was with a 40-person law firm in Sacramento, CA. Three years later, in 1991, Adrian started his own practice from scratch and built it to a 16-person firm. His clients included significant companies and public institutions like:
AETNA Insurance, State Farm, Reliance Insurance, The Hartford, City of Sacramento, County of Sacramento, Sacramento Municipal Utility District, Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency, Sacramento Regional Transit District, State of California, Union Pacific Railroad, Burlington Northern Railroad and Amtrak.
He represented these entities in a broad range of legal, ethical and employment matters:
Tort, employment litigation and counseling – including conducting independent employment investigations, ADA (employment and facilities) compliance and disputes, defending and prosecuting excessive use of force claims, defending official misconduct matters for high profile public and elected officials, defending and prosecuting constitutional claims, including First, Fourth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment allegations, and representing the railroads in employment, injury and excessive force matters.
During this time, Adrian tried more than 30 civil jury trials to verdict for various clients. A-V rated in Martindale Hubbell, Adrian Randolph was a Super-Lawyer for three years running and a member of ABOTA (American Board of Trial Advocates). He has represented clients in dozens of arbitration and mediation cases and also served as a mediator or arbitrator in dozens of more cases.
Corporate Law: 8 Years as a Senior Counsel for Union Pacific, a Fortune 500 Company.
After 19 years in private practice Adrian’s client, Union Pacific Railroad, asked him to work solely for them. He became an employee for UP in January, 2007 as a General Solicitor. Adrian managed the legal affairs for the Western Region (California, Washington, Oregon, Arizona, New Mexico, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, and Montana).
As General Solicitor, he managed a multi-million-dollar budget, two legal offices, and scores of external attorneys throughout his territory. His team handled FELA (Federal Employers Liability Act) personal injury suits, locomotive and vehicle intersection crossing accidents, employment torts, contractual disputes, land use disputes, real estate litigation, and excessive force claims.
Adrian interacted with many public and regulatory agencies for his clients (and in particular for Union Pacific) throughout his tenure. As a sophisticated and skilled negotiator, he successfully navigated through complex issues related to crisis management, dispute resolution, land use requests and regulatory issues.
Some of the entities he negotiated with were:
California Public Utilities Commission
California High Speed Rail
State of California
State and Federal Department of Justice
Department of Homeland Security
IBWC (International Boundary Water Commission)
NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board)
OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration)
FRA (Federal Railroad Administration)
Arizona Corporations Commission
New Mexico Secretary of State
Cities: San Francisco, San Bernardino, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Oakland, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Portland
Building a Regulatory Compliant and Ethical Organization.
In 2013, Adrian relocated to Omaha, Nebraska for Union Pacific and for two and a half years he was the Chief Compliance Officer. He was responsible for ensuring regulatory compliance for railroad personnel and finance and operational issues. In addition, he managed the organization’s internal culture. He supervised internal hotline calls and trends, created and administered the internal business conduct policy, navigated conflict of interest issues, created uniform discipline for internal violations, and was responsible for communicating ethical policies and creating computer-based and in-person training for 50,000 employees.
He refreshed and rebranded The How Matters, UP’s policy on ethics and business conduct. This was one of his many training and communication tools. He regularly spent time in the classroom educating dozens and, at times, hundreds of employees on ethics and compliance matters. In conjunction with his role as UP’s CCO, Adrian actively participated in Omaha’s Business Ethics Alliance.
He counseled the CEO and senior staff members on compliance and ethics matters and regularly gave presentations to the Board of Directors. He helped establish policy and identified priority organizational and operational risks.
In his career Adrian has been invited to make several major presentations including:
Tort Reform, Buenos Aires, Argentina 1993
The Adequate Investigation of an Employment Discrimination Case, Phoenix, Arizona, October, 2000
Coping with Employment Law Issues in Employee Injury Lawsuits, Lake Tahoe, California, October, 2004
Tips on How to Navigate FELA Employment Issues, San Antonio, Texas, October, 2005
Punitive Damages and Protecting the Record, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, September, 2006
Understanding the Railroad, United States Court of International Trade, New York, 2012
Annually, Mr. Randolph presents a lecture for Creighton University (Omaha, NE) MBA students on creating and maintaining an organizational ethically compliant culture.
Ethics and integrity are also tightly woven into Mr. Randolph’s personal life. He is committed to his community and his family. (In the adjacent photo that’s Adrian with his two sons.) Adrian and his wife Michelle believe in giving back. Through generous charitable donations they support (in alphabetical order) the American Heart Associations, the ASPCA, Brownell Talbot College Preparatory School, Father Flanagan’s Boys’ Home (aka Boys Town), KNOM Radio Mission, Pepperdine University, St. Jude Hospital, and the University of San Francisco.