Biography
SARA ZOKAEI focuses her practice on advising emerging growth companies and venture capital investors, particularly in the enterprise software, fintech, AI, digital health, e-commerce, and property tech industries, on a broad range of corporate matters across the full company life cycle. She also provides ongoing advice to public companies, particularly across the life sciences, autonomous security, and technology sectors.
In Sara’s private company advising, she regularly represents companies and investors in corporate governance and equity matters, priced equity rounds from pre-seed and seed through late-stage series financings, convertible note and SAFE financings, and secondary transactions. In her public company advising, she provides ongoing counseling on SEC reporting, corporate governance, and financing and public offering transactions.
Before joining Sidley, Sara earned her J.D. from the University of California, College of the Law, San Francisco (formerly University of California, Hastings College of the Law). She served as a research fellow at the Center for Business Law and as a student associate at UC Hastings’s Startup Legal Garage, working with startup clients on general corporate matters from incorporation through financings. She also participated in the Corporate Counsel Externship Program as an extern with Credit Karma.
Sara served as Executive Symposium Editor of Volume 73 of the Hastings Law Journal. She authored a note discussing the expansion of dispute resolution mechanisms in China in conjunction with the Belt and Road Initiative.
In Sara’s private company advising, she regularly represents companies and investors in corporate governance and equity matters, priced equity rounds from pre-seed and seed through late-stage series financings, convertible note and SAFE financings, and secondary transactions. In her public company advising, she provides ongoing counseling on SEC reporting, corporate governance, and financing and public offering transactions.
Before joining Sidley, Sara earned her J.D. from the University of California, College of the Law, San Francisco (formerly University of California, Hastings College of the Law). She served as a research fellow at the Center for Business Law and as a student associate at UC Hastings’s Startup Legal Garage, working with startup clients on general corporate matters from incorporation through financings. She also participated in the Corporate Counsel Externship Program as an extern with Credit Karma.
Sara served as Executive Symposium Editor of Volume 73 of the Hastings Law Journal. She authored a note discussing the expansion of dispute resolution mechanisms in China in conjunction with the Belt and Road Initiative.
Experience
Representative Matters
- Representation of Vertex Ventures as a lead investor in the series A financing round of LightBeam.ai, an operator of a data security and privacy automation platform streamlining and converging data security, privacy, and governance.
- Representation of ElastiFlow, Inc., a provider of a network performance and security platform designed for analyzing network traffic, in its Series Seed investment led by Venture Guides.
- Representation of Flex Ltd. (Nasdaq: FLEX) and its Fremont, California-based solar technology subsidiary, Nextracker Inc. (Nasdaq: NXT), in its upsized US$734.2 million initial public offering, making it the largest IPO of 2023.
Credentials
Admissions & Certifications
- 美国加州
Education
- University of California College of the Law, San Francisco (formerly UC Hastings), 法学博士, 2022
- University of Texas at Austin, 学士, 2018, ampla cum laude