Lowenstein Sandler announces that Leia K. Galasso has joined the firm as partner in its Emerging Companies & Venture Capital (ECVC) group. Galasso has been a New York-based ECVC-lawyer serving startups and venture funds for more than a dozen years and is continuing to do so from Lowenstein’s New York City office. She is the third new partner to join Lowenstein’s ECVC group in the last four months.
Galasso represents startups and growth companies as outside general counsel, with an emphasis on venture capital financings, growth/private equity deals, recapitalizations, merger and acquisition transactions, and private tender offers. She also represents the venture capital, growth, and private equity funds (as well as family offices and strategic investors) that finance and acquire those companies. She also frequently serves as outside general counsel to founders and management across a wide range of industries—including tech, pharmaceuticals, media, entertainment, healthcare, education, and tech-enabled real estate—guiding them through structuring and negotiating stakeholder rights, corporate governance, and other critical legal and strategic matters.
Ed Zimmerman, who Chairs, and (in the 1990s Co-founded) Lowenstein’s ECVC Group, says: “We’ve been opposite Leia in numerous transactions and have been impressed by her work in the market, knowing how she has engendered real loyalty among the startup founders and early stage investors who work with her. We also know how effectively she has trained junior lawyers, as they have sung her praises to us over the years. We’ve been eager to add her to our team for quite some time and are thrilled to have her join as the third new partner in almost as many months.”
Galasso says, “I am thrilled to join Lowenstein, whose deep experience in venture deals over the last 25+ years has made Lowenstein one of the major players in ECVC in New York, the San Francisco Bay area, and beyond. I’m especially excited to leverage Lowenstein’s impressive VentureCrush platform and the firm’s Women in VC programs, led by in New York and Palo Alto by ECVC partners Meredith Beuchaw, Alyssa K. Frederick, and Chandra K. Shih, which are unique in how they forge connections across the market between entrepreneurs, investors, and other members of the venture community.”
In addition to Galasso, Lowenstein’s ECVC Group recently welcomed John Wayne Horton to the firm’s Palo Alto office in August and Abraham J. Kwon to the New York City office in June.
Beuchaw, a New York-based tech M&A partner in Lowenstein’s ECVC practice says: “Having joined the firm as a partner in 2020, it has been great to see the growth in our group, especially but not exclusively among women partners. We were impressed with Leia’s substantive skills and judgment (which we knew from being opposite Leia in deals), and we are enthused by her drive to continue to build her portfolio of great founders and early stage investor side clients.”
Galasso was previously a partner at Buhler Duggal & Henry LLP, where she worked for more than 12 years.
About Lowenstein Sandler LLP
Lowenstein Sandler is a national law firm with over 350 lawyers based in New York, Palo Alto, New Jersey, Utah, and Washington, D.C. The firm represents leaders in virtually every sector of the global economy, with particular emphasis on investment funds, life sciences, and technology. Recognized for its entrepreneurial spirit and high standard of client service, the firm is committed to the interests of its clients, colleagues, and communities.
