About Sylvia Burks

Ms. Burks has extensive experience in legal and business aspects of international transactions. Her career focus in her current practice and as a partner for 15 years at Coudert Brothers LLP and Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, is primarily on complex mergers and acquisitions, strategic partnering and joint development arrangements, and other corporate collaborations. Ms. Burks is a frequent speaker and panelist on subjects pertaining to domestic and international business transactions.

In addition to her M&A practice, she has extensive experience in venture capital financings and corporate and securities transactions. Ms. Burks’ practice concentrates on the representation of technology and life sciences companies, including companies in the software, Internet, networking and hardware industries, pharmaceutical and medical devices. Ms. Burks earned her law degree from the University of Texas School of Law. Following graduation, she studied law at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, practiced law at Boden Oppenhoff & Schneider, Germany’s then largest law firm, in Cologne, Germany, and worked in the Competition Directorate at the Commission of the European Union in Brussels, Belgium. She received her MBA from the Anderson Graduate School of Management at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Ms. Burks was awarded grants from the Fulbright Commission (Vienna, Austria), and the German-American Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) (Bonn, Germany), under which she studied law in German. Ms. Burks is a member of the Innovation Center Denmark Advisory Board and the Danish American Research Exchange.