As Associate General Counsel at Humanity United, Shea is part of the organization’s legal team, which provides legal counsel to the Board, executives, and staff; supports grantmaking and other activities; and ensures compliance with applicable laws and regulations.
Prior to joining HU, Shea was an attorney with Adler & Colvin, a San Francisco-based law firm specializing in the law of non-profit organizations. There, she represented a variety of private foundations, public charities, and social welfare organizations with governance and corporate structuring matters, tax planning and compliance, grantmaking and social investing, and more. Before that, Shea represented social enterprises and renewable energy companies with Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, specializing in venture financings and general corporate and securities matters. She also managed the firm’s pro bono asylum program.
In her legal career, Shea has worked on constitutional and human rights law issues in South Africa, on peacebuilding projects in Liberia, and, through her judicial clerkship at the Ontario Court of Appeal, on civil rights and aboriginal legal challenges in Canada.
During her first career in the field of international development, Shea worked on a range of issue areas, partnering with farmers and government officials in Ghana, rural youth in Swaziland, young environmental leaders in Costa Rica, and adivasi communities in India.
Shea has a juris doctor degree from the University of Ottawa and a bachelor’s in international development and social anthropology from Dalhousie University. She is admitted to practice law in California and Ontario.