Barbara Mirza

Practice Areas

Barbara Mirza is co-chair of Cooley’s compensation & benefits practice group and a member of our Board of Directors. 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 drafting of ongoing executive compensation arrangements, including severance arrangements, employment agreements and equity and non-equity incentive plans.

Barbara is co-chair of our Partnership Nominating Committee and a member of our Risk Management Committee and Women’s Initiative Committee.

Career

Prior to joining Cooley, she practiced at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in its New York and Los Angeles offices. While in law school, she served as co-editor-in-chief of the University of Toronto Faculty of Law Review.