A New Era of Corporate Law
Filmed on October 23, 2014, at “Gain: AIGA Design and Business Conference”
About this video
Corporate law may be years behind the design world but it’s rapidly evolving. Instead of stark choices between the non-profit and the for-profit models companies and investors can now choose legal forms that may better reflect and help them achieve their mission while remaining economically sustainable.
Susan Mac Cormac reviews some of the differences among these new forms and how companies are describing those differences to their shareholders and the public. Immediately following Jordan Breslow general counsel for Etsy will join her in a conversation about how this evolving area of corporate law can have a lasting impact on the design world.
Speaker bios
Jordan Breslow has served as general counsel of Etsy since November 2013. Before joining Etsy Breslow served as general counsel of New Island Capital Management an impact investment advisor general counsel of Silver Spring Networks a provider of smart grid networks and general counsel of Opsware Inc. (formerly called Loudcloud). Breslow has also been an associate and a partner in several law firms.
He has lectured at University of California Berkeley Law School and San Francisco State University and holds a B.A. summa cum laude in Anthropology from San Francisco State University and a J.D. from University of California Hastings College of the Law.
Speaker bio
Susan Mac Cormac has been a partner in the corporate department of Morrison & Foerster’s San Francisco office since 2001. She serves as co-chair of the clean technology group and private equity and venture investment practice. Mac Cormac has extensive experience representing start-up to late-stage private companies—primarily in the clean technology or sustainable space—and expertise in structure for nonprofit/for-profit ”hybrids” and new corporate forms. She regularly advises boards of private and public companies special committees and CEOs on corporate governance as it relates to sustainability and corporate social responsibility issues. Her clients include Arcadia EDF Renewable Energy Digital Divide Data Windowfarms Business for Social Responsibility Goodwill Natural Heritage Institute Rising Sun Energy and Eagle Cliff Partners.
Mac Cormac is on the faculty at both the Stanford Directors’ College and the Northwestern Corporate Counsel Institute. She graduated from Williams College with a degree in political economy and received her J.D. and LL.M. degrees from Duke University School of Law in 1993. California Lawyer magazine named Mac Cormac one of the 2012 California Lawyers of the Year for her effective work in state legislative change as co-chair of the working group for the Flexible Purpose Corporation. She is on the board of directors of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board and the Biomimicry Institute.
