Strategic partnerships, commercialization, and I lead the Procurement Legal team here at Databricks

Working on Databricks' ISV and Marketplace partnerships, and focused on streamlining business process. Also working on corporate legal matters including Databricks Ventures, equity, and subsidiary management.

Working on business development, partnerships, the Databricks Marketplace, and commercialization efforts.Notable projects:- Assisted in multiple acquisitions including Databricks' $1.3B acquisition of MosaicML- All partnerships for the Databricks Marketplace (GA starting July 2023)

*GitHub is a Microsoft subsidiaryI oversaw the Enterprise, Code-to-Cloud, Planning and Tracking, and Octoservices business units, serving as the lead attorney for these areas. I provided extensive guidance on regulatory and compliance matters, data privacy, licensing, data security, IP, and product launches. I collaborated closely with the business and other teams at GitHub to ensure success. I leveraged my strong technical and product knowledge to offer trusted advice and support to drive business objectives forward. With a focus on risk management and sound business judgment, I also championed knowledge management and automation to optimize and expand our legal practice.Notable projects:- Spearheaded legal and business strategy that ensured compliance with third-party licensing requirements, while also maintaining financial viability..- Closely advised in the launch of GitHub Connect, a telemetry pipeline that provided customers (and GitHub) with valuable insights into how their developers were using GitHub. This helped GitHub gain insights into its customers' usage of our products and helped customers get better value of out of GitHub. - Established a telemetry council to centralize the collection of telemetry data and achieve operational efficiencies. - Led a cross-functional team in introducing the first-ever effort to automate various GitHub product legal processes, resulting in improved efficiency and scalability for the team.

Lineup Advisor crowdsourced sit/start predictions for your fantasy football team because we believed the wisdom of the crowd was (and still is!) better than any expert's opinion. The service was free, easy to use, accurate, and fun! This was a side project I worked on at nights and weekends (myself plus a technical advisor). I did everything from wireframing, design, building the service (using no code), marketing, and everything in between. I learned that building was easy and marketing was hard. I shut Lineup Advisor down because I was up against my technical limitations (I'm a lawyer!) and I wasn't able to find a technical cofounder. Turns out that asking someone to join a fantasy football startup on nights/weekends isn't appealing when competing against FinTech, ClimateTech, and Crypto/Web3.Don't worry, I'm cooking something else up now :)

Lead counsel for Microsoft’s Developer Services organization as well as MakeCode. Provided front-line product counseling including guidance on data privacy, regulatory/compliance, data security, licensing, product launches/deprecation, litigation, partnerships, and IP with input from colleagues and outside counsel. Notable projects:- Responsible for the legal guidance and strategy to the team that built Microsoft’s first CI/CD system for macOS (Visual Studio App Center Build), then Azure Pipelines, and GitHub Actions. Today, this high-impact work underpins both Azure Pipelines and GitHub Actions – two of the world’s most popular CI/CD services. - Oversaw the successful resolution of a vendor dispute where vendor demanded almost $100m. Managed team of attorneys (Microsoft, GitHub, and outside counsel) and directed strategy. - Negotiated the first agreement between Microsoft and GitHub, which eventually led to Microsoft’s successful acquisition of GitHub.- Organized and facilitated regular meetings between Microsoft, GitHub, and LinkedIn legal in the Bay Area.- Served on Microsoft’s diverse talent pipeline committee with a goal to increase diversity of Microsoft Legal. - Helped launch Accessibility Insights, Microsoft’s open source accessibility reader, designed to help others quickly identify and improve the accessibility of their websites.

I was promoted to another level within the Attorney title at Microsoft.

I joined Microsoft as part of its acquisition of Xamarin (which closed in March 2016).

Many law firm attorneys want to become in-house counsel and don't know where to start. I was one of them until, after lots of interviews and trial and error, I successfully made the switch. On occasion, I coach other attorneys interested in making the switch. Here are some companies that the attorneys I coached ended up at: Facebook, Coinbase, and Uber!If you're interested in making the move, let me know!

*Xamarin was acquired by Microsoft in March 2016.Part of a two-person legal team focused on assisting Xamarin's Sales team negotiate and close commercial contracts while focusing on value-add contributions to streamline the process.

*Synopsys acquired Coverity, Inc. in March 2014; Coverity became a Synopsys Business Unit in November 2014.• Draft, review, structure, negotiate, and close a variety of contracts including software license agreements, SAAS agreements, terms of service, open source, evaluation agreements, NDAs, and vendor agreements. Assist the sales force in closing commercial transactions in a timely, pro-business manner.• Partner with business team to meet customer needs and implement strategic initiatives for the business unit. • Provide legal and strategic advice to all levels of management, including identifying legal obstacles, and recommending appropriate business solutions to achieve resolution. • Identify and resolve issues related to intellectual property matters, privacy, export, marketing, and other legal issues.• Negotiated global license agreement with leading telecommunication equipment company. • Contribute to further development and implementation of contract policy, process, and templates. • Advise on adherence to Synopsys corporate policies. Communicate new policies to internal clients. • Develop and present relevant training materials to keep relevant stakeholders educated and apprised of current processes, changes, and recent developments. • Ensure FCPA compliance both internally and with our sales partners. • Support M&A activity and advise on integration-related matters for the Codenomicon acquisition, including consulting with relevant stakeholders of Synopsys and acquired companies to identify requirements which will facilitate their transition to Synopsys.• Manage outside counsel (both US and foreign-based law firms). • Collaborate, coordinate with, and support legal colleagues in commercial contract negotiations. • Experienced with Salesforce.com, Practical Law, and Serengeti.

During my first year of law school, I thought it would be a good idea to write a blog dedicated to covering the UCSB men's basketball team for their season. Using Dean Oliver's book "Basketball on Paper" and his four factors, I analyzed the results of each game.I wasn't any good at it but I learned a few valuable lessons:- Creating content is way harder than it seems. - If you choose to blog and/or create content, choose a niche that is far more popular than the UCSB men's basketball team. If you've made it this far, I hope you find the content I create on LinkedIn - designed to help lawyers find in-house legal jobs - is an improvement from my blogging days!- Amazingly enough, even a mid-major college basketball program with a small fan base had haters so have thick skin and don't worry about the naysayers. - Seeing your (minimal) traffic on Google Analytics was very cool!