New York, N.Y. – October 18, 2021 – Greenspoon Marder LLP is pleased to announce the formation of Value(s) Management and Investing (VMI). VMI is the firm’s new, female-led affiliate helping public and private companies and investment firms benefit from how they manage their sustainability-related operations, communications, risk management and assurance processes, and capital allocation and attraction decisions. The affiliate is led by Sarah Teslik, who brings decades of experience in the environmental, social and governance (ESG) and investor spaces, including years as lead of the Council of Institutional Investors, as an in-house governance and communications executive, and with experience as an attorney at top firms handling corporate and securities matters core to ESG issues.
The senior leadership team at VMI includes Julian Hamud, a highly regarded executive compensation and ESG expert who most recently served as Senior Director, Executive Compensation Research at Glass Lewis; Daniel J. Smith, an Australian-based governance expert who is a partner at Sovereign Governance Advisory and is the former head of ISS’s Governance Research Operations for Australia and New Zealand; Jef McAllister, a London-based attorney, adviser and communications professional with extensive UK/European and U.S. experience handling a range of the “S” issues in ESG including employment discrimination and harassment, DEI and social justice issues; Peter Taylor, a 20-year professional who has combined an investment career with a role as an ESG specialist; Michael Patrick, a globally focused governance and communications attorney at Greenspoon Marder LLP; and Jen Fante, a 15-year professional in the legal industry focused on budgeting, reporting, and financial analysis.
“As a firm that has been a leader in ESG issues for its own operations for decades, we are thrilled to extend our ability to help clients and make the world a better place with the creation of VMI,” said the Executive Committee of Greenspoon Marder LLP, a national full service law firm with over 20 locations across the U.S. where several key leadership positions are held by women. “We are incredibly fortunate to have Sarah at the helm of VMI – her track record of success in the space is unrivaled, and she is building an incredible team,” added Rebecca Bratter, deputy managing partner of Greenspoon Marder LLP, who will have a dual role in the new entity.
VMI’s focus is on the real value-adding work that helps companies attract more—and more patient—capital; enhances their information collection, disclosure and risk management practices; and focuses on clients’ core products and services while avoiding the often expensive and unproductive quagmire in which ESG work can often get stuck.
“We believe we set ourselves apart through our willingness and ability to tell clients what is not worth doing as well as what is essential to address, while keeping our work product tightly focused and high value,” notes Teslik. “We pride ourselves not just on understanding topics on a technical and granular level, but on being able to apply that knowledge with creativity to enable clients to be the leaders where they wish to be and not just safely average.”
Hamud added, “Governance issues were the first to gain prominence and then environmental ones, but increasingly companies and their investors recognize that social issues drive everything from reputational and risk exposure, to recruiting and retention potential, to financial sustainability, and yet many companies’ abilities to track and analyze these metrics and opportunities lag behind what is possible. VMI is here to help.”
For more information visit www.valuesmi.com or email info@valuesmi.com .
About Greenspoon Marder Greenspoon Marder LLP is a full-service law firm with over 225 attorneys and more than 20 office locations across the United States. With operations from Miami to New York and from Denver to Los Angeles, our firm attracts some of the nation’s top talent in key markets and innovation hubs. Our core practice areas include Real Estate, Litigation, and Transactional Services, complemented by the capabilities of a full-service firm. Greenspoon Marder has maintained a spot on The American Lawyer’s Am Law 200 as one of the top law firms in the U.S. since 2015, and our goal is to provide exceptional client service by developing a thorough understanding of each client’s business needs and objectives in order to provide strategic, cost-effective solutions.
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