Cambridge Forum on U.S. Public Company M&A

Ms. Muller is a Managing Director and Co-Head of Houlihan Lokey’s Board Advisory and Opinions practice. She is also a member of the firm’s Management Committee and Financial and Valuation Advisory Executive Committee. Ms. Muller is based in New York and San Francisco.

Ms. Muller is experienced in corporate governance, particularly in related-party transactions, including fairness, solvency, and other transaction-based valuation opinions. Her clients are typically boards of directors, special committees, and other fiduciaries and have included Google, Broadcom, NVIDIA, Liberty Media, CompoSecure, Dropbox, Cal-Maine Foods, Teekay LNG, Flextronics International, Dell, and VMware.

Ms. Muller speaks frequently at corporate and legal symposiums and seminars on corporate finance and valuation and provides commentary in various business publications, including The Deal, The American Lawyer, and Mergermarket. Recently, she has spoken at the National M&A Institute, the American Bar Association (ABA), and the Practising Law Institute and has guest lectured at Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School, and the UC Berkeley School of Law, among other institutions, on the role of financial advisors in M&A transactions. Ms. Muller also speaks regularly on the topic of increasing the participation of women in M&A and serves on various diversity subcommittees at Houlihan Lokey. She co-founded and chaired the ABA’s Women in M&A Subcommittee and received the ABA 2021 Women in M&A Leadership Award.

Ms. Muller is also a board member of the University of Pennsylvania Institute for Law and Economics and served as Vice Chair of the ABA’s M&A Committee.

Before joining Houlihan Lokey, Ms. Muller was a senior consultant at both Tucker Alan and Peterson Consulting, where she performed litigation consulting services that included analyzing economic damages for trial purposes.

Ms. Muller graduated cum laude with a B.A. in Mathematics/Economics from Claremont McKenna College.

Melissa Sawyer is Global Head of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP’s Mergers & Acquisitions Group and is co-head of the Firm’s Corporate Governance Practice. In addition to advising clients on public and private M&A transactions, joint ventures and strategic alliances, she also regularly advises clients on corporate governance, activism and takeover defense matters. Melissa’s experience spans multiple industries, including consumer and retail, TMT, technology, industrials and life sciences. 

A three-time winner of The American Lawyer’s “Dealmaker of the Year” (in 2020, 2022 and 2024), Melissa has been repeatedly recognized as a leading M&A adviser. She is ranked by Chambers USA in Corporate/M&A, where clients describe her as “an absolute superstar,” and was named a Client Service All-Star by BTI. She was also named to The Deal’s “Top Women in Dealmaking” and “Women in M&A: The Powerhouse 20” for shaping the industry with her novel approach to transactions and has been recognized as a Law360 MVP in Mergers & Acquisitions and Food & Beverage, one of Crain’s “Leading Women Lawyers in New York City,” “Dealmaker of the Week” by The American Lawyer and one of Lawdragon’s “500 Leading Dealmakers in America” for her work in corporate governance, M&A and activism defense. Additional accolades include receiving a Burton Award for Legal Achievement and being chosen as an Empire State Counsel Honoree by the New York State Bar Association.

Melissa has recently advised: American Equity Investment Life Holding Company, Apollo Education, AT&T, Baxter International, BBA Aviation, Benefitfocus, Boeing, Carlyle Secured Lending, CONMED, Cornerstone Building Brands, CPPIB, CSM Bakery, Diageo, Diversified Healthcare Trust, Dos Hombres, DS Smith, FGS Global, FXI, GameStop, The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, Integra LifeSciences, Kering, Neiman Marcus Group, Novartis, OTPP, Seagen, Sotheby’s, Subway, Tien Tzuo (CEO of the Board of Zuora), Tiffany & Co., UnitedHealth and Weber. 

Melissa serves on the board of advisors for NYU School of Law’s Institute for Corporate Governance & Finance, is an adviser on the American Law Institute’s Corporate Governance Restatement project, is a member of the Editorial Board of Insights: The Corporate and Securities Law Advisor and serves on the board of directors for the French-American Foundation. She is currently a member of the American Law Institute, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation. Melissa has participated in numerous panels for the Practising Law Institute and regularly writes for The M&A Lawyer, The Deal Pipeline and LexisNexis.

Education
University of Virginia Law School, J.D. 2000
Washington and Lee University, B.A. 1997
 

Shóna holds a Bachelor’s Degree in English and Spanish Literature from University College Dublin. Relocating to Canada from Ireland in 2018, Shóna joined Cambridge Forums, where she sparked a passion for event planning and management. 

Leveraging her extensive experience in client relations from previous roles in insurance and finance, Shóna thrives in orchestrating high-profile events and delivering memorable experiences for her clients. 

When not traveling around the world hosting Cambridge events, Shóna is based in Vancouver where she enjoys getting out in nature as much as possible – hiking the local trails, running along the seawall, or taking her paddle board out on the water.