Barbara Mirza

Practice Areas

Barbara is the chair of Cooley’s global compensation and benefits practice group, chair of our partnership nominating committee, a member of our board of directors and a member of our risk management committee. She has over two decades of experience as an executive compensation and benefits practitioner, and has worked with clients across the country and around the world, ranging from startups to multinationals.

She has particularly deep experience in handling the compensation and benefits aspects of corporate transactions. These have ranged in size from less than $25 million to more than $15 billion and have included stock sales, asset sales, mergers, de-SPACs and spin-offs. She also has extensive experience in preparing companies for the transition from private to public and guiding them through the compensation-related aspects of the initial public offering process.

Barbara also advises companies, compensation committees and boards of directors with respect to sophisticated, multi-disciplinary executive compensation and benefits issues outside the context of transactions and IPOs, including strategies for the drafting of annual proxies and other public disclosures and the structuring of ongoing executive compensation arrangements, including severance arrangements, employment agreements and equity and non-equity incentive plans.

Prior to joining Cooley, she practiced in the New York and Los Angeles offices of another global US law firm. While in law school, she served as co-editor-in-chief of the University of Toronto Faculty of Law Review.