The Grunin Center is hosting this symposium with the Journal of Law & Business. This event will be livestreamed and the recording will be posted for a limited time after the symposium.
When: October 18, 2024
Where: NYU School of Law
RSVP Here to Attend (In person or livestream)
Now Open: A Call for student note submissions for the Symposium on Legal Issues in Social Entrepreneurship, Impact Investing, and Sustainable Development hosted by the Grunin Center.
The selected note will be featured in a special edition of the NYU Journal of Law and Business' Spring edition, published alongside articles featured and discussed in the Grunin Center and Journal of Law and Business' Symposium on Legal Issues in Social Entrepreneurship, Impact Investing, and Sustainable Development. Students interested in their note being published should submit an abstract to the Journal of Law and Business no later than 9:00 AM October 10th, 2024. Submissions are open to any and all JD students. Submissions should be sent to law.jlb@nyu.edu with the subject of "Symposium Student note." The author of the selected note will be informed on October 11th, 2024, with the draft of the completed note due no later than January 18th, 2025. The student note will be published in volume 21-2 of the Journal of Law and Business set to be published in the late spring of 2025. The student whose note is selected is also invited to attend the Symposium held on October 18th, 2024.
About the presentations:
Presenter: Deborah Burand
Faculty Director of the Grunin Center; Professor of Clinical Law; Director of International Transactions Clinic
New York University School of Law
Deborah Burand is a professor of clinical law at NYU Law. She directs the International Transactions Clinic and is the Faculty Director of the Grunin Center for Law and Social Entrepreneurship.
She writes and lectures on issues related to social entrepreneurship, sustainable finance, impact investing, social finance innovations, microfinance and microfranchising/social franchising.
During 2010 - 2011 Prof. Burand served in the Obama Administration as general counsel to the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (now called the International Development Finance Corporation (DFC)), the development finance institution of the United States. She also has worked in the microfinance sector, most recently as executive vice president of strategic services at Grameen Foundation, a global microfinance network. Earlier in her career, she worked as a senior attorney in the international banking section of the Federal Reserve Board's legal division, and at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, first as the senior attorney/adviser for international monetary matters and later as the senior adviser for international financial matters. She also worked in private practice at Shearman & Sterling, where she advised bank advisory committees in the negotiation and implementation of Brady Bond deals that restructured the sovereign debt of Vietnam and Peru, and supported, on a pro bono basis, the development of the world's first debt-for-nature swap.
She is an independent director on the board of MicroBuild (a proof-of-concept fund launched by Habitat for Humanity International that is aimed at growing the housing microfinance sector while expanding decent housing for the poor). She also is on the board of Calvert Impact Capital.
Prof. Burand has been a consultant to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Omidyar Network, and Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), among others. She also was the co-topic leader on finance for the 2009 Clinton Global Initiative. In 1993-1994, she was an international affairs fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations (during which she was seconded to the International Monetary Fund and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development),and is currently a member of the Council. She also is a member of The Bretton Woods Committee.
She is a member of the Bars of New York and the District of Columbia. She earned her BA, cum laude, from Depauw University and a joint graduate degree, JD/MSFS with honors, from Georgetown University.
Presenter: Anne Tucker
Professor of Law
Georgia State University College of Law
Anne Tucker teaches and researches contracts, corporations, securities regulations, and investment funds.
Tucker’s research focuses on three areas of business law. The first is on the regulation and administration of funds (both public and private funds) and how pooled investments can achieve significant personal and social ends, such as retirement security and private funding for social entrepreneurship. Second, she focuses on impact investing and contract terms that reinforce impact objectives alongside financial returns. Third, she studies corporate governance, including the role of institutional investors as shareholders.
Tucker also researches civil litigation, focusing on settlement and private resolutions as an outgrowth of her work as the inaugural Faculty Director of the Legal Analytics & Innovation Initiative (LAII). Tucker works on sponsored research projects, including SCALES – OKN (Systematic Content Analysis of Litigation EventS Open Knowledge Network.
Professor Tucker has published over 25 book chapters and articles, including in journals such as Northwestern Law Review, the Harvard Business Law Review, the Journal of Corporate Law, the Journal of Financial Economics, and the American Business Law Journal.
Professor Tucker is a member of the American Law Institute (elected 2019) and a business associations subject matter expert for the Next Generation Bar Exam.
Prior to joining the College of Law, Tucker practiced corporate law with Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker LLP. She also clerked for Judge Alice D. Bonner and Judge Elizabeth E. Long at Georgia’s Business Court, a specialized court adjudicating high-dollar, complex, commercial and business litigation. While at the court, Tucker simultaneously served as the program director, overseeing the initial development of the Business Court and writing about the role of specialized courts in modern civil jurisprudence.
Tucker received her J.D. magna cum laude at Indiana University, Bloomington-Maurer School of Law, where she served as the senior managing editor of the Federal Communications Law Journal, the official journal of the Federal Communications Bar Association. She is a member of the Order of the Coif and earned the Public Interest Service Award. Before attending law school, she served as a Governor’s Fellow for Indiana Gov. Frank O’Bannon. Tucker received her B.A., summa cum laude, at Butler University in Indianapolis.
Join Anne and Deborah on October 18 for an in-depth discussion of their article, tentatively titled "Legal Literature Review of Social Entrepreneurship and Impact Investing."
Presenter: Sarah Dadush
Professor of Law and Director
Responsible Contracting Project, Rutgers Law School
Professor Dadush’s research lies at the intersection of business and human rights. Her scholarship explores various legal mechanisms for improving the social and environmental performance of multinational corporations. She is the founding Director of the Law School's Business & Human Rights Law Program and the Responsible Contracting Project (RCP), the mission of which is to improve human rights in global supply chains through innovative contracting practices.
She is a leading member of the American Bar Association (ABA) Business Law Section Working Group to Draft Human Rights Protections in International Supply Contracts, and its European counterpart, the European Model Contract Clauses for Responsible and Sustainable Supply Chains Working Group. She also serves as Co-Chair of the Responsible Investor Model Clauses (RIMC) sub-committee of the ABA's Corporate Social Responsibility Committee.
Before joining the Rutgers faculty in 2013, Professor Dadush was Legal Counsel for the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), a specialized agency of the United Nations based in Rome. Prior to that, she was a Fellow at NYU Law School’s Institute for International Law and Justice and an associate attorney at the global law firm, Allen & Overy. She received her J.D. and LL.M. in International and Comparative Law from Duke University School of Law in 2004.
She teaches Contracts, Consumer Law, Business & Human Rights, Corporate Social Responsibility, and International Development Law & Finance.
Commentator: David Frydlinger
Partner
Cirio law firm
David Frydlinger is a Swedish attorney at Cirio law firm in Stockholm. David has 20+ years experience from advising companies in the Nordics and globally in complex customer-supplier contracting, relational contracts, sustainability law and other areas.
David is also author/co-author of eight books, for example ""Contracting in the New Economy: Using Relational Contracts to Boost Trust and Collaboration in Strategic Business Relationships"" (Palgrave Macmillan 2021) and most recently ""Rules for Sustainable Business: Laws, Contracts and Morality (Wolters Kluwer, 2024) on sustainability law. He has also co-authored articles on relational contract in the Harvard Business Review and has co-authored the article ""Overcoming Contractual Incompleteness: the Role of Guiding Principles"" with 2016 Nobel laureate in economics Oliver Hart (Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, 2023).
Join Sarah and David on October 18 for an in-depth discussion of her article, tentatively titled "What the EU's Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive Says About Contracts."
Presenter: Jaime Begara Breton
Legal Advisor
FinDev Canada
Jaime Begara Bretón is a member of FinDev Canada’s legal team, and he works as a transactional attorney advising on funds, M&A, debt capital markets, restructurings, and corporate and project financings with private companies established in emerging economies. FinDev Canada is Canada's bilateral development finance institution.
Jaime is an LL.M. graduate from New York University School of Law, Class of ‘22. While at NYU Law, he focused on impact investing and development finance. For his efforts in these fields, he was the recipient of the White & Case Award in Law & Social Entrepreneurship, which is a merit-based award, awarded annually by the Grunin Center for Law and Social Entrepreneurship at NYU School of Law to one LL.M student and one J.D. student who exhibit academic excellence and commitment to the field of law and social entrepreneurship.
Jaime also has a Masters in Business Law from Universidad de Navarra (Madrid, Spain), Class of ‘17, and he holds a Bachelor of Law and a Bachelor of Business Administration and Management from Universidad Pontificia Comillas (Madrid, Spain), Class of ‘16.
Prior to FinDev Canada, Jaime worked as a corporate attorney at Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York, advising on equity and debt capital markets transactions in the U.S. and Latin America. Jaime began his career as a corporate attorney with Allen & Overy in Madrid (Spain), advising on public and private M&A, securities offerings, corporate governance, restructurings, and banking and finance.
Jaime is a member of the New York State and Madrid (Spain) bar associations.
Commentator: Mary Rose Brusewitz
Member/Partner
Clark Hill PLC
Mary Rose Brusewitz is member in charge of Clark Hill’s New York office. She concentrates her practice on international transactions involving Latin America, Africa, Asia, India, Europe and the US. She has substantial experience in emerging markets development and finance and is active in impact investing, sustainability, accountability, ESG/SDG compliance, and corporate governance. She represents a provider of currency hedging to the impact space, as well as several funds and other clients that are active in investing debt and equity, including in financial inclusion, renewable energy, sanitation and housing. Brusewitz’ expertise includes structuring, implementing administering, and exiting impact debt and equity investments, coordinating groups of investors, including DFIs, privately managed funds, commercial banks, for profits and nonprofits, blended capital structures, project and structured financing, private equity, cross-border investments, joint ventures, restructurings, workouts, insolvencies, dispute resolution, and mediation.
Brusewitz was a compliance panel member and panel chair of the independent accountability mechanism of the Inter-American Development Bank. She is a pro bono supervising attorney at the International Transactions Clinic at NYU School of Law.
She earned her BA in anthropology and her JD at UCLA. She is a member of the New York State Bar.
Join Jaime and Mary Rose on October 18 for an in-depth discussion of his article, tentatively titled "A Policy Approach to Prevent Mission Drift in Equity Impact Investments."
Presenter: Bruce Buchanan
C. W. Nichols Professor of Business Ethics
New York University Stern School of Business
Bruce is the C. W. Nichols Professor of Business Ethics and Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern. He served as the founding Director of the Stern School Business and Society Program, an interdisciplinary department comprising scholars and clinical faculty from philosophy, economics, law, management, and psychology.
Presenter: Hans Taparia
Clinical Professor of Business and Society
New York University Stern School of Business
Hans Taparia joined New York University’s Stern School of Business in 2014 and is currently a Clinical Professor of Business and Society. He teaches courses on social entrepreneurship, professional responsibility and marketing. He also co-leads NYU’s Program in Social Entrepreneurship, a university-wide offering that guides students as they contemplate and design their own businesses built with purpose.
Professor Taparia spent most of his career as an entrepreneur. He co-founded and led one of America’s leading health food brands, Tasty Bite, which was then sold to Mars. He was also the co-founder of a management consulting firm and incubator, through which he co-founded Bangalore-based Tejas Networks, one of the world’s leading telecommunications product companies that is now part of the Tata Group.
Hans writes on purpose driven business and design, and his articles and essays have appeared in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, The New York Times and Los Angeles Times. He serves on boards of several social enterprises in the food space as well as the Acumen Fund, one of the original pioneers in social impact investing. Hans received his B.S. in Management from M.I.T.
Join Bruce and Hans on October 18 for an in-depth discussion of their article, tentatively titled "Capture, Redesign, Release: A Novel Approach to Reversing Extreme Market Failure."
Presenter: Nick Smith
Assistant Professor of Law
University of Idaho College of Law
Nick Smith is an assistant professor of law and director of the Entrepreneurship Law Clinic at the University of Idaho College of Law. He was in private practice in Idaho and American Samoa, where he focused on business and real estate transactions. He joined legal academia from an in-house position at a publicly-traded fintech firm. Nick earned a JD summa cum laude from the the University of Minnesota and a BA in linguistics from Brigham Young University.
Nick's primary research interests include corporate social responsibility; environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors in business decision-making; and social entrepreneurship.
Join Nick on October 18 for an in-depth discussion of his article, tentatively titled "Regulating by Contract: A Functions-Based Approach to Anti-ESG Laws."
Presenter: John Tyler
General Counsel, Secretary, Chief Ethics Officer
Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation
In addition to John's responsibilities with the Kauffman Foundation for the last more than 25 years, he is a lecturer at Columbia University for its Masters in Nonprofit Management program, where he has designed and, for the last 7+ years, taught courses on foundations and social purpose businesses. He also teaches the nonprofit law course at the University of Kansas Law School. He is a frequent speaker and guest lecturer on a variety of topics and has authored or co-authored more than two dozen articles, book chapters, etc.
Join John on October 18 for an in-depth discussion of his article, tentatively titled "Regulating 'Social Entrepreneurship' in the United States: Is There Enough There . . . There? (Is There Sufficient Differentiation to Regulate Differently? Could There Be?)."