Ms. Akard is counsel in Davis Polk & Wardwell’s Corporate Department and works in the Menlo Park office. She concentrates on executive compensation and employee benefits matters, such as executive employment agreements, employee equity programs, securities and tax implications of such arrangements, and issues arising in the contexts of merger and acquisition transactions. She has also worked on public offerings of common stock and debt securities and other corporate transactions.

Transactions she has worked on recently have included the acquisitions by Oracle of PeopleSoft and Retek; Mercury Interactive in various acquisitions; NetIQ in the sale of its WebTrends business unit; Mondavi on its acquisition by Constellation Brands; Francisco Partners in various investments; ARM Holdings plc on its acquisition of Artisan Components; Yamanouchi Pharmaceutical on the divestiture of its consumer products businesses in the United States; and Comcast on its joint venture with Motorola. Recent capital markets transactions have included advising on employee benefit matters for AMI Holdings, UltraClean Holdings, Callidus Software and NPTest Holding in their respective initial public offerings.

She joined Davis Polk in 2000 and became counsel in 2007.

Ms. Akard graduated from Duke University in 1991 and in 1998 she received her J.D., cum laude, from the Georgetown University Law Center, where she was a primary editor of The Tax Lawyer. She is admitted to the bars of California and New York.

Before joining Davis Polk, Ms. Akard was an associate at Sidley & Austin from 1998 to 2000.