Biography: Corporate Governance

Holly J Gregory counsels corporate directors, executives and investors on the full range of governance issues, including fiduciary duties, conflicts of interest, board and committee structure, audit committee investigations, board audits and self-evaluation processes, shareholder initiatives, proxy contests, relationships with shareholders and proxy advisory firms, compliance with legislative, regulatory and listing rule requirements, and governance "best practices." Representative clients include Church & Dwight, Comverse Technology, The Ford Foundation, JC Penney, Prudential Financial, The Shaw Group, TE Connectivity and Visteon.

Ms Gregory has worked on various governance-related public policy projects. She played a key role in drafting the OECD Principles of Corporate Governance and advised the Internal Market Directorate of the European Commission on corporate governance regulation. She has also advised the World Bank and the joint OECD/ World Bank Global Corporate Governance Forum on governance policy for developing and emerging markets.

In addition to her legal practice and policy efforts, Ms Gregory has helped organise governance-related programmes for the SEC, OECD, World Bank, Yale's Millstein Center for Corporate Governance and Performance, Transparency International and Columbia University School of Law's Institutional Investor Project. She has lectured extensively on governance topics including at events sponsored by the US State Department (in Japan and Turkey), the Conference Board, the National Association of Corporate Directors, the American Corporate Counsel Association, the Society of Corporate Secretaries and Governance Professionals, the National Association of Public Pension Attorneys, and Institutional Shareholder Services, among others. She has written extensively on governance-related topics. She is regularly recognised among the "100 Most Influential People in the Boardroom" by the National Association of Corporate Directors and Directorship Magazine.

Ms Gregory served on the secretariat of the OECD business sector advisory group on corporate governance and as senior counsel to the OECD boardroom guide advisory group. She is a founding co-chair of the corporate governance committee's subcommittee on international developments of the business law section of the American Bar Association, and serves by invitation on the corporate laws committee. She chaired an ABA task force for the corporate governance committee on the distinction between shareholder and director roles and co-chaired the ABA task force of the corporate laws committee that drafted the 6th edition of the Corporate Director's Guidebook. Ms Gregory has served as a member of both the nominating and bylaw committees of the International Corporate Governance Network. She has served as pro bono counsel to the Brooklyn Public Library, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the New York Junior League, and the New York City Opera and the National Public Radio Foundation.

Ms Gregory has served on a number of the National Association of Corporate Director's blue ribbon commissions including those on shareholder communications, the governance committee, director liability, board evaluations, executive compensation and the role of the compensation committee. She writes a monthly column on corporate governance for Practical Law: The Journal.

A summa cum laude graduate and former executive editor of the Law Review at New York Law School, Ms Gregory served as a law clerk to the Honorable Roger J Miner, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, before joining the firm. She was elected in 2009 to the New York Law School board of trustees.