Katayun Jaffari, chair of Cozen O’Connor’s Corporate Governance & Securities Group, devotes her practice to advising boards of directors and executive management teams on all aspects of corporate matters including governance as well as handling complex securities transactions for businesses in a variety of industries. Kathy has broad experience in capital market transactions, including public offerings, stock-for-stock mergers, and private placements of equity and debt. She has served as outside corporate counsel and has advised on the full panoply of corporate and securities law matters. Kathy also counsels clients in compliance matters, mergers and acquisitions, and ongoing business counseling.

Kathy writes and lectures extensively in the areas of corporate governance, including stakeholder issues such as sustainability and diversity, fiduciary duty matters, securities law compliance, and entity formations and transformations. A believer in the power of mindfulness as a tool to optimize one’s professional and personal capacity for excellence, Kathy has a particular interest in mindfulness in the practice of law as a way to support the needs of her clients. She has lectured extensively in this area, including presenting to corporate clients.

Jared L. Landaw is the Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel of Barington Capital Group, L.P., a value-oriented investment firm that assists publicly traded companies in designing and implementing initiatives to improve long-term value. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of Costar Technologies, Inc. and the Board of Trustees of Big Brothers Big Sisters of New York City, Inc. Mr. Landaw is a frequent speaker on corporate governance, shareholder activism and board diversity. He holds a B.A. from Colgate University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and a J.D. from Columbia University School of Law, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar and Managing Editor of the Columbia Business Law Review.

Ronald Orol leads coverage of activist hedge fund managers, a high-profile group of corporate investors who press for blockbuster deals and were the subject of his book “Extreme Value Hedging: How Activist Hedge Fund Managers Are Taking on the World.” Ron produces the Activist Daily and Activist Weekly briefings, which offer exclusives, trend pieces and breaking analysis about insurgent investors and their M&A efforts. Ron also authored “Corporate Governance in the Era of Activism,” a digital handbook for CNBC’s Jim Cramer. He previously worked as a financial regulation and activism reporter at MarketWatch and Dow Jones Newswires.