Speaker Bios
Afra Afsharipour is John D. Ayer Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Business Law and Society at the UC Davis School of Law. She served as Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 2018 to 2024. She researches in the areas of comparative corporate law, corporate governance, mergers and acquisitions, and transactional law.
Professor Afsharipour’s scholarship has appeared in the Columbia Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, and other prestigious journals. She co-edited Comparative Corporate Governance, authored the 2016 edition of the Handbook on Corporate Governance in India: Legal Standards and Board Practices, and co-authored the 2021 edition. She is quoted regularly by leading national and international news outlets, and her research has been featured in the New York Times and the American Lawyer, as well as other national news outlets. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute.
Jacques Baritot is Associate General Counsel on the Commercial Legal team at Coinbase, where he leads complex commercial transactions and strategic partnerships in the rapidly evolving cryptocurrency and technology sectors. His experience spans both law firm and in-house roles supporting high-growth tech and fintech companies. Jacques brings a pragmatic, business-minded approach to legal strategy and enjoys mentoring students interested in tech and startup law.
Cindy Dole is Deputy General Counsel and Corporate Secretary at Samsung Catalyst Fund, which focuses on investments in cutting edge AI hardware. She is responsible for managing day-to-day legal activities that range from general corporate advice to venture capital investments in early and growth stage technologies to joint ventures and strategic partnerships. Prior to joining Samsung, she was an associate at Morgan Lewis & Bockius, where her practice focused on negotiating joint ventures, strategic development partnerships and other commercial relationships, as well as providing general corporate advice to emerging growth companies.
She received her B.A. from UCLA and enjoyed a career in marketing and technical communications in the biotech industry before attending law school at the UC Davis School of Law.
As CalPERS Investment Director, Corporate Governance, Drew Hambly is responsible for the pension fund’s stewardship activities, including global proxy voting and engagement. Previously, he held similar roles at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, State Street Global Advisors, and Moody’s Investor Service. Drew has worked in stewardship for the past 25 years, starting at the Investor Responsibility Research Center and joining CalPERS in 2022.
He graduated with a B.A. in Economics from American University and earned his M.B.A. from the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University.
Professor Amelia Miazad is an expert on the nexus between corporate law and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues. Her research has been published in leading law reviews, including Vanderbilt Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, and the UC Davis Law Review. Her work has been quoted by the business and legal media, including The Financial Times, Politico, The World Economic Forum, Law360, and The Recorder.
Before coming to UC Davis, Professor Miazad was a Senior Research Fellow at UC Berkeley School of Law, where she founded and led the Business in Society Institute. She is also the creator and host of The ESG Beat Podcast, where she interviews both practitioners and academics on topics ranging from shareholder proposals on racial equity audits to board oversight of climate change.
Commissioner Khalil “KC” Mohseni ’12
Khalil “KC” Mohseni is Commissioner of the California Department of Financial Protection & Innovation (DFPI), the State’s financial regulator. Commissioner Mohseni was appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom on February 7, 2025, and has served as DFPI’s Chief Deputy Commissioner since November 2023. He is committed to the Department’s mission to protect consumers and foster trust and innovation in the financial marketplace.
Prior to joining DFPI, Commissioner Mohseni was Chief Operating Officer at the State Controller’s Office; Deputy Director of Administration at the California Department of Housing and Community Development; Project Director for the California Homeless Data Integration System at the Business, Consumer Services, and Housing Agency; and Chief Fiscal Officer at the Board of State and Community Corrections, where he oversaw the implementation of the Financial Information System for California.
Professor Menesh Patel joined the UC Davis faculty in 2018. His primary research interests are in the areas of antitrust, securities, and corporate law. Before joining UC Davis, Professor Patel was a research scholar at the Program in the Law and Capital Markets, a joint program of Columbia Law School and Columbia Business School. Prior to Columbia, he practiced law at Sidley Austin, in the firm's Chicago and San Francisco offices. In 2012-2013, Professor Patel was a law and economics fellow at Stanford Law School.
Professor Patel received his J.D. from Stanford Law School, where he served as articles editor of the Stanford Law Review. In addition to his law degree, Professor Patel holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and undergraduate degrees in economics and mathematics from the University of Iowa.
As a Partner at DLA Piper, David Richardson serves as outside general counsel to technology startups around the world and represents private companies, private equity funds, and venture capital funds that span the technology sector. He has extensive experience in general corporate and securities representation with a particular focus on financing transactions and global M&A deals. He also represents a number of the top M&A R&W insurance carriers in policy underwritings in hundreds of transactions each year. He is particularly well-known within the construction-tech and proptech markets and has established a portfolio of clients in the developing market.
Sanam Saaber is General Counsel at Axonius, where she oversees the company’s global legal, compliance, and corporate governance functions. As Vice President of Box, she scaled the rapidly growing company’s legal team and supported it through its IPO. More recently, she has served as Chief Business Affairs and Legal Officer at Azra Games and Chief Legal Officer at Iterable. She began her legal career at Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP and then at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP.
Professor Darien Shanske holds a J.D. from Stanford Law School, a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in Rhetoric, an M.A. from McGill University in Philosophy, and a B.A. from Columbia University. Before law school, Professor Shanske worked as a financial consultant to California local governments; after law school, he worked as an attorney in the public finance department of Sidley Austin in San Francisco. Professor Shanske then clerked for Judge Pierre N. Leval of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Professor Shanske’s academic interests include taxation, particularly state and local taxation, local government law, public finance, and political theory, particularly jurisprudence. Some of his current projects are on the local property tax, the state and local fiscal relationship, the fiscal constitution of California, and the role of reciprocity in Aristotle.
Tina Singh has represented corporations, financial institutions, investors and technology start-ups in a wide range of emerging new technologies. She launched Singh Law Corporation after serving as an attorney at the top national law firms Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft, Crowell & Moring, and Manatt Phelps & Phillips, where she was one of the first corporate law firm partners of Indian origin in the United States.
She lectures on the legal aspects of entrepreneurship at the University of California Berkeley and Santa Clara University. She has served on the board of directors for several technology companies, has broadcasted on TechBiz TV on the International Channel, and has served as the Legal Chair for a highly acclaimed guide book for entrepreneurs entitled Essentials of Entrepreneurship. She was elected to the Board of Directors of the Palo Alto Area Bar Association by her peers and served in this capacity for nine years.
Brian Sytsma is Special Counsel at the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS). In this role, he supports the General Counsel and advises CalSTRS leadership on legal and policy issues. Before joining CalSTRS, he was in private practice, gaining experience in civil litigation, estate planning, and business law.
He began his public service as a journalist in the U.S. Army National Guard, including a deployment in support of NATO’s peacekeeping mission in the Balkan region of Europe. He went on to serve the U.S. Department of Defense for nearly 20 years as a civil servant and consultant. In those roles, he managed outreach and communications programs at active Army installations in Europe and led communications initiatives related to environmental cleanup, property transfer, and base redevelopment at closed Air Force installations across the United States. He earned his J.D. from Lincoln Law School of Sacramento, attending at night while managing his small public affairs business.
Matthew Tolve is the General Counsel of Altimeter Capital, a technology-focused crossover investment manager with ~$12B in assets under management. Prior to joining Altimeter Capital in April 2024, he was the General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer at Tribe Capital, where he oversaw all legal and compliance aspects of Tribe’s venture capital, digital asset, SPAC, and co-investment products, with more than $1.5B in AUM. Before Tribe, Mr. Tolve held in-house legal and compliance roles at Silver Lake Partners and White Oak Global Advisors.
He began his career in the venture and asset management industry with Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe (2010-2014) and Ropes & Gray (2014-2020), where he primarily represented investment advisers, private funds, portfolio companies, officers, and directors in securities litigation, SEC exams, and regulatory matters. He holds Economics and History degrees from Colby College (2002) and a law degree from UC Davis School of Law (2009). Before law school, Mr. Tolve completed the Chartered Financial Analyst program and worked as a financial analyst.
Victoria Wong is the Deputy General Counsel of Sierra, a technology startup in San Francisco delivering an agentic AI platform for customer experience. Prior to Sierra, she served as a Director, AGC, at Coinbase, the cryptocurrency exchange, leading the commercial legal team and building and scaling Coinbase’s mergers and acquisitions, ventures investments, and corporate governance programs.
She was previously a corporate associate at Fenwick & West LLP for 7 years, working on a broad variety of legal matters for technology clients, including M&A, EC/VC, and capital markets transactions. At King Hall, Victoria was the Class of 2015 Medalist; an editor of the UC Davis Law Review; and a member of the Business Law Journal, the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, and the Filipino Law Students Association.
Ayako Yasuda is a professor of finance at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, where she holds the Maurice J. and Marcia G. Gallagher Chair in Finance. She is a senior fellow of the Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research (ABFER) and a fellow of the Private Equity Research Consortium.
Professor Yasuda is an applied financial economist who focuses on venture capital, private equity, institutional investing, and sustainable finance. Her research has been published in leading academic journals, including the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, and the Review of Financial Studies, and has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, the Financial Times and The New York Times. She co-authored the textbook Venture Capital and the Finance of Innovation (3rd edition, 2021). She previously held an academic position at the Wharton School, served as an independent director at the Japan Investment Corporation, and worked as a financial analyst at Goldman Sachs.