Jennifer is an accomplished and seasoned former C-Suite executive with more than 30 years of global business and legal experience. She has served as a trusted and strategic advisor to boards of directors and executive management of public and private companies ranging in size from $100M/500 employees to $5B/25,000+ employees. Jennifer’s senior executive roles have spanned a diverse set of industries that include software (SaaS/subscription services), hardware, logistics/supply chain management, and transportation services. She has extensive operational experience leading legal, real estate, government relations and human resources, as well as deep expertise in corporate governance, executive compensation, compliance, ESG/sustainability, data privacy/security, investor relations, M&A, and global supply chain.
Until February 2022, she served as SVP, General Counsel, Chief Compliance Officer & Corporate Secretary of Zuora (NYSE: ZUO), an enterprise SaaS company that provides a leading cloud-based subscription management platform. As Zuora’s first general counsel, Jennifer was responsible for worldwide legal, regulatory and compliance matters. She built the global legal function from the ground up to support the company as it expanded rapidly to more than 1,300 employees, $350M in revenues, and operations in more than 20 countries throughout the US, Europe, and APAC. She led the company through its IPO in May 2018, assumed responsibility for global facilities and workplace resources in early 2020, and was instrumental in launching Zuora’s ESG efforts. Jennifer was a member of the CEO’s executive staff and co-sponsored the company’s enterprise risk management process.
Prior to joining Zuora, Jennifer served as SVP, General Counsel, Chief Compliance Officer & Corporate Secretary for Silicon Graphics International Corp. (NASDAQ: SGI), a high-performance computing company, where she oversaw all legal affairs. She previously served as EVP, General Counsel, Chief Privacy Officer & Corporate Secretary of Con-way Inc. (NYSE: CNW), a Fortune 500 transportation and logistics services company, and before that as VP & Corporate Counsel for Menlo Worldwide, Con-way’s supply chain management division, where she started and built out the legal function. She began her career in private legal practice in San Francisco.
Having served as Corporate Secretary to the boards and all board committees at Con-way, SGI and Zuora, Jennifer has extensive board governance experience, working closely with her boards on corporate governance issues, audit and executive compensation issues, board fiduciary duties, and risk oversight. She is a leader in building and managing crisis response plans, including leading Zuora’s cross-functional Covid-19 response team since its inception.
At Con-way, SGI, and Zuora, Jennifer developed and implemented processes that reduced friction in the sales and procurement cycles to enable growth, scale, and international expansion, resulting in deal closure time reductions of up to 50%. Jennifer was also able to leverage her deep functional expertise in closing several large and complex acquisitions of companies in the US and Asia.
Jennifer is currently a Senior Advisor at BarkerGilmore, a New York-based executive search firm, where she provides executive coaching, talent assessment, law department and succession consulting, and onboarding support to general counsel and chief compliance officers. She serves on the advisory board of Ironclad, Inc., a private (Series D) company that provides contract management software for legal teams, where she has provided input on product features and user requirements. Jennifer is also participating in the 2022 Board Institute of DirectWomen, an organization whose mission is to increase the representation of women lawyers on corporate boards. She is a frequent speaker on topics including working with board and C-Suite members as a strategic partner, and preparing for and executing an IPO.
Jennifer was awarded the Legal Momentum Women of Achievement Award in 2017 and the San Francisco Business Times Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business Award in 2018.
Jennifer received her J.D. degree from the New York University School of Law and her B.A. from Yale University. She is qualified to serve on the Compensation and Governance Committees of public company boards.