WilmerHale is pleased to announce that Neena Shenai has joined the firm as a partner, bringing her wide-ranging private sector and federal government experience to the firm’s International Trade, Investment and Market Access Practice group. She joins from Medtronic, the world’s largest medical technology company, where she was senior legal director and chief counsel for global trade. Shenai is based in WilmerHale’s Washington office.
Neena Shenai’s arrival adds her special expertise in the life sciences sector while further strengthening the firm’s capabilities in economic sanctions and export controls matters – especially for financial institutions, defense and intelligence companies and for private equity investors. In addition to economic sanctions and export controls, Shenai’s practice will focus on a broad array of issues critical to companies navigating global markets, including legal and compliance advice and counseling, compliance assessments, internal investigations, and mergers and acquisitions due diligence.
A well-known thought leader and frequent speaker at conferences and other public fora, Shenai also has extensive experience related to the whole host of legal issues arising from the cross-border movement of technologies, services, investment, and people, including import and customs and antiboycott rules.
At Medtronic, Shenai built and led the company’s global trade legal and compliance program, advising senior leadership on issues impacting the company’s operations in more than 150 countries. Overseeing all aspects of the company’s legal and compliance work in this area, Shenai advised on sanctions and export control matters, import and strategic supply chain issues, risk management and mitigation, corporate due diligence and trade policy.
Shenai joined Medtronic in 2015 from Capitol Hill, where she served as trade counsel to the House Ways and Means Committee during the chairmanships of then-Reps. Paul Ryan and Dave Camp, from 2011 to 2015. From 2010 to 2011, she served as banking, commerce, transportation, and trade policy counsel to the US Senate Republican Policy Committee chaired by Sen. John Thune (SD).
Shenai also served as senior advisor to the assistant secretary for export administration in the US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, from 2007 to 2009.
“Neena’s breadth of experience in both the executive and legislative branches as well as in the private sector is extraordinary. We couldn’t be more pleased to have her on our team,” said Anjan Sahni, WilmerHale’s managing partner. “Her deep trade knowledge and expansive network make her an invaluable resource for our clients and her new colleagues.”
“I’m thrilled to join WilmerHale, a truly dynamic firm with a well-earned reputation for excellence,” Shenai said. “I look forward to using my business, regulatory, compliance and policy knowhow to assist our clients in navigating complex and dynamic trade, investment, sanctions, and export control rules in the US and globally.”
Shenai previously was in private practice as an associate in the Washington, DC office of another international law firm. She clerked for the Hon. Evan J. Wallach on the US Court of International Trade.
A non-resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where she was previously a research fellow, Shenai is a board member of the Washington International Trade Association.
Shenai earned a Swarthmore College BA with high honors in 1998, a University of Oxford MPhil in international relations in 2000, and a JD from Vanderbilt University Law School in 2003.