Afra Afsharipour joins JSL's Vickie Hubbard for Episode 17 of Not Your Average DEI Podcast! Afra and Vickie discuss Afra's journey from law school to practicing at a Big Law firm to being a Professor of Law at UC Davis, the experience of women in law today, and her vision for tomorrow.
Afra Afsharipour is Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Law at the University of California, Davis School of Law. She served as Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 2018-2024. She holds a B.A. (magna cum laude) from Cornell University and a J.D. from Columbia Law School (Harlan Fisk Stone Scholar), where she was an articles editor of the Columbia Law Review and a submissions editor of the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law. Prior to joining the Davis faculty, Professor Afsharipour was an attorney at the international law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP where she advised clients on domestic and cross border mergers and acquisitions, public and private securities offerings, and corporate governance and compliance matters. She served as a law clerk for Judge Rosemary Barkett of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
Professor Afsharipour’s scholarship focuses on corporate governance and business law in a transnational and comparative context. Her scholarship also applies an equality lens to corporate governance and practice, using interdisciplinary theories and empirical research. She has taught Business Associations, Mergers and Acquisitions, Startups and Venture Capital, Corporate Governance and Antitrust. Professor Afsharipour is a research member of the European Corporate Governance Institute, an elected member of the American Law Institute and an American Bar Foundation Fellow. Her scholarship has been published in leading law journals, including the Columbia Law Review, Chicago Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, and other leading journals and books. She is the co-editor of Comparative Corporate Governance (Afra Afsharipour & Martin Gelter, eds., Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., 2021). She authored the Handbook on Corporate Governance in India: Legal Standards and Board Practices (The Conference Board 2016) and co-authored the 2021 edition of the book. Professor Afsharipour has delivered numerous talks, nationally and internationally, and has been a visiting scholar in India, China, and Taiwan.
