The 2021 Berkeley Forum for Corporate Governance

Afra Afsharipour is Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Law at the University of California, Davis School of Law. She served as Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 2018-2024. Professor Afsharipour’s scholarship focuses on corporate governance and business law in a transnational and comparative context. Her scholarship also applies an equality lens to corporate governance and practice, using interdisciplinary theories and empirical research. Professor Afsharipour is a research member of the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI), an elected member of the American Law Institute (ALI) and an American Bar Foundation Fellow. Her scholarship has been published in leading law journals, including the Columbia Law Review, Chicago Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, and other leading journals and books. She is the co-editor of COMPARATIVE CORPORATE GOVERNANCE (Afra Afsharipour & Martin Gelter, eds., Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., 2021). She authored the HANDBOOK ON CORPORATE GOVERNANCE IN INDIA: LEGAL STANDARDS AND BOARD PRACTICES (The Conference Board 2016) and co-authored the 2021 edition of the book. Professor Afsharipour has delivered numerous talks, nationally and internationally, and has been a visiting scholar in India, China, and Taiwan.

Prior to joining the Davis faculty, Professor Afsharipour was an attorney at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP and served as a law clerk to the Hon. Rosemary Barkett of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Afsharipour holds a B.A. (magna cum laude) from Cornell University and a J.D. from Columbia Law School (Harlan Fisk Stone Scholar), where she was an articles editor of the Columbia Law Review and a submissions editor of the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law.

Ed Batts is a corporate partner in Gibson Dunn’s Palo Alto office. For 25 years, he has counseled technology clients, including in the semiconductor supply chain; enterprise software and cloud; hardware and devices; 5G and satellite; and large-cap enterprises that engage in many of these sub-verticals at once.

In technical expertise, Ed focuses on mergers and acquisitions, including cross-border transactions, spin-offs, tender offers, and going private transactions. He also counsels public companies on corporate governance and fiduciary duties, as well as crisis management on cyber-security and internal investigations, activist investor situations, and accounting issues. He has significant experience in equity capital markets and venture capital transactions.

Ed has been named multiple times both a BTI Client Service All Star and an Acritas/Thomson Reuters Star, and has been recognized by Best Lawyers for his work in corporate law. He is a member of the American Nuclear Society and published author on nuclear waste issues. He also is a military officer veteran and former U.S. federal special agent.

Ed received his law degree from Stanford Law School in 1998 and earned his B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles, summa cum laude, in 1995.

Jamie is co-chair of the firm’s M&A group. The strength of Jamie’s practice is in its high-profile variety – a curated mix of cutting-edge public, private, buy-side, sell-side and multi-industry clients. She also regularly counsels takeover and activist defense engagements, proxy contests, joint ventures, strategic equity investments, and founder and management teams. Jamie enjoys her regular advisory role with boards of directors and special committees regarding corporate governance and strategic matters. She sits on the executive advisory board of the Berkeley Center for Law and Business. Jamie is also affiliated with the International Bar Association as a Corporate and M&A Law Committee Officer. Jamie’s representative tech clients include Uber, Tableau, Zoom, Twilio, Fastly, Sunrun, Netflix, Dropbox, Automattic, Levi Strauss & Co., Procore, Ellie Mae, Looker, Chegg and MINDBODY. Jamie’s representative life sciences clients include Medivation, Arena Pharmaceuticals, Five Prime Therapeutics, Kite Pharma, Portola Pharmaceuticals, Principia Biopharma, Forty Seven, Abaxis and Dova Pharmaceuticals. Her representative investment banking clients include Qatalyst Partners, Centerview Partners and Morgan Stanley.

Steve Lipin is founder and chief executive officer of communications advisory firm Gladstone Place Partners and a trusted advisor in the field of strategic, financial and corporate governance communications. Steve has spent over 35 years at the intersection of the corporate world, Wall Street and the media, as a leading financial journalist and top communications strategist to C- Suites and Boards of Directors. Steve started Gladstone Place Partners in 2017 after 16 years at Brunswick Group, where he was U.S. Senior Partner. Steve is also a lecturer at Berkeley Law where he teaches a class on M&A and proxy contests.

At Gladstone Place Partners, Steve has worked on assignments such as Take-Two Interactive’s $12.7 billion acquisition of Zynga, 3G’s $7.1 billion acquisition of Hunter Douglas, Acceleron Pharma’s $11.5 billion sale to Merck, Dunkin Brands’ $11 billion sale to Inspire Brands and The Walt Disney Company’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox assets. Steve has worked on many landmark M&A deals such as InBev’s acquisition of Anheuser-Busch, AB InBev’s acquisitions of Grupo Modelo and of SAB Miller, Air Liquide’s purchase of Airgas, Marriott International’s acquisition of Starwood, Burger King’s combination with Tim Horton’s and American Airlines’ sale to US Airways.

He has also advised many companies on shareholder activist defense and shareholder engagements, including most recently The Walt Disney Company’s successful proxy contest against Nelson Peltz; Illumina’s proxy contest against Carl Icahn, as well as activism defense work for AT&T, Duke Energy, Marriott, PepsiCo, Yahoo!, Macy’s, AIG, Freeport-McMoRan and Arconic, among others.

Before communications, Steve spent 17 years in financial journalism, 10 of which were at The Wall Street Journal. Steve was the Journal’s Finance Editor, supervising the paper’s coverage of mergers, commercial banking, private equity and corporate finance, after five years as the M&A beat reporter during which he was nominated for a Pulitzer. He joined the Journal in 1991 to cover banking after stints at Institutional Investor and American Banker.

Born in New York City, Steve graduated from Boston College with a bachelor’s degree in Economics. He is a board member of the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in Economics and Business Journalism at Columbia Journalism School, the Columbia Journalism Review and of Youth INC. He has three children, including one in the JSP program at Berkeley Law, and lives in New York City with his wife.

Irene Liu is the founder of Hypergrowth GC and serves as an Executive in Residence at the UC Berkeley School of Law. With deep expertise in artificial intelligence, Irene is also an AI Advisor for the California Senate, Berkeley Law’s AI Institute, and Women Defining AI.

After successfully building and scaling international, multi-billion dollar technology companies, she now channels her expertise into helping other companies grow as an advisor, thought leader, and executive coach.

Irene worked as a Trial Attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice in the Antitrust Division and at the Federal Trade Commission in the Bureau of Consumer Protection. She later became the Chief Financial and Legal Officer at Hopin, a technology community engagement platform, where she oversaw legal, finance, policy, and trust & safety teams. Additionally, she served as General Counsel at Checkr, a modern background check provider, where she led legal, compliance, policy, finance, and customer education teams.

Irene is a frequent contributor to the Thomson Reuters Institute and hosts the “Coffee Break with Irene” series on Berkeley Boost and the “Hypergrowth GC” video series on Luminate+.

The Honorable Kathaleen S. McCormick was sworn in as Chancellor of the Court of Chancery on May 6, 2021. Chancellor McCormick first joined the court as Vice Chancellor on November 1, 2018. Prior to joining the Court, Chancellor McCormick was a partner in the Delaware law firm Young Conaway Stargatt & Taylor, LLP, where she focused her practice on litigating internal governance and corporate disputes, primarily in the Court of Chancery. Before entering private practice, Chancellor McCormick was a staff attorney with the Community Legal Aid Society, Inc.

Chancellor McCormick received her undergraduate degree from Harvard and her law degree from Notre Dame Law School. She is a Delaware native and a graduate of Smyrna High.

Professor Amelia Miazad’s scholarship and teaching focuses on corporate law and environmental and social risk governance. In her recent scholarly work, Professor Miazad analyzes the consequences of climate risk for corporate law, delving into areas such as antitrust, securities law, and fiduciary duties. Her recent scholarship includes “Investor Climate Alliances” (forthcoming, Washington University Law Review); and “D&O Insurers as Climate Risk Monitors” (forthcoming, Boston University Law Review). She is regularly invited to present her scholarship to audiences in the U.S. and internationally. Professor Miazad has been quoted by the business and legal media including The New York Times, National Public Radio, The Financial Times, Politico, The World Economic Forum, and Law360, among others. In addition to the courses she teaches at UC Davis School of Law, Professor Miazad has developed and instructs courses tailored for corporate executives and board members focusing on environmental and social risk governance. Previously, she served as a Senior Research Fellow at UC Berkeley School of Law, where she founded and led the Business in Society Institute. Professor Miazad received her J.D. from Berkeley Law.

David is co-chair of Cooley’s global capital markets practice group. David practices general business and corporate law, representing both emerging and public companies in a variety of matters, including capital markets transactions, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reporting and compliance and corporate governance matters. He routinely represents issuers and investment banks in complex securities offerings, including IPOs, follow-on offerings, 144A offerings, PIPEs, deSPACs and direct listings. His practice also includes company formations, venture financings and general corporate matters.

Peter Werner is co-chair of Cooley’s global emerging companies and venture capital practice group and partner-in-charge of the firm’s San Francisco office. Peter’s practice primarily focuses on the representation of high growth companies and their investors. He regularly assists clients with financings and mergers and acquisitions, in addition to entity formation, governance matters and securities transactions. Peter is a member of Cooley's firmwide pro bono and mental health and wellness committees. Peter also is one of the founders and curators of Cooley GO, a microsite with tools, forms, guidance and data for entrepreneurs and emerging companies.

Peter represents companies across many of the industries that are most prominent in the Bay Area and beyond startup ecosystem, including artificial intelligence, consumer products, fintech, insurtech, spacetech, enterprise software and digital health.