Holly J. Gregory is co-chair of Sidley Austin LLP’s global Corporate Governance  practice, and also co-leads its Chambers-recognized ESG and Crisis Management teams.  She counsels boards and senior leadership teams on the full range of governance issues. While most of the matters she works on are strictly confidential, matters in the public record include advising the Business Roundtable on its 2019 Statement on the Purpose of the Corporation, advising on governance and accountability mechanisms for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to replace U.S. government oversight, and advising the Board of The Pennsylvania State University on governance reforms.

Holly played a key role in drafting the OECD Principles of Corporate Governance and has advised the European Commission’s Internal Market Directorate and the OECD/World Bank Global Corporate Governance Forum on governance policy. She also drafted the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) Key Agreed Principles of Corporate Governance.

Holly is a founding trustee and the current President of The American College of Governance Counsel, and is an elected member of The American Law Institute.  She served as chair of the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Corporate Governance Committee, as an appointed member of the ABA Corporate Laws Committee, and as a member of the ABA Business Law Section Council, the Section’s governing body. She has taught as an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School and has served on multiple NACD Blue Ribbon Commissions.

Holly lectures extensively internationally and in the U.S. on governance topics, and she writes the governance column for Practical Law: The Journal.  Holly clerked for the Honorable Roger J. Miner, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. A summa cum laude graduate of New York Law School and Executive Editor of its Law Review, Holly served on the Board of Trustees of New York Law School from 2009 through 2011. 

Holly has been named to the NACD Directorship 100, Directorship Magazine, 2022 and all prior years (16 years total) and received Corporate Secretary’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021.  She was named to The National Law Journal’s list of “White Collar, Regulatory & Compliance Trailblazers” in 2018, identified as one of “the best and brightest minds in the legal profession” in Ethisphere’s 2017 and 2015 Attorneys Who Matter; and recognized as the “Best in Corporate Governance” at Euromoney Legal Media Group’s Americas Women in Business Law Awards 2016 and at the inaugural 2012 Awards.  She is regularly included as a leading corporate governance practitioner in publications such as International Who’s Who Legal and The Legal 500 US.