Allison Bennington

Allison Bennington is a Partner with PJT Partners where she leads both its global ESG advisory practice and its activism practice. Ms. Bennington has extensive experience in global corporate strategy, ESG business strategy and solutions, activism campaigns, and corporate governance.

Prior to joining PJT Partners, Ms. Bennington was a Partner and the Chief Global Relations Officer of ValueAct Capital, a $14 billion investment fund that works constructively with its portfolio companies to build sustainable value for the long‐term. Over her 17 year tenure, Ms. Bennington led ValueAct’s global strategy and engagement efforts with a diverse set of stakeholders, including corporate shareholders, government officials, business media, academia, and other thought leaders. Ms. Bennington’s role positioned her at the nexus of corporate strategy, corporate governance, and environmental and social stewardship. While at ValueAct, Ms. Bennington helped to found the ValueAct Spring Fund, a $1.5 billion impact investment fund that invested in companies solving social and environmental problems.

Prior to joining ValueAct, Ms. Bennington was the General Counsel and helped to launch Atriax Ltd., an institutional electronic foreign exchange trading platform jointly formed by DeutscheBank, JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, and Reuters. Before joining Atriax, she was a Managing Director and ran the legal department for Robertson Stephens, a full service investment bank. Ms. Bennington began her career at Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison in San Francisco. She was subsequently a Partner at Brobeck Hale and Dorr in London where her practice focused on cross border M&A and taking European companies public on US stock exchanges.

Ms. Bennington was appointed by former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton to the SEC’s Investor Advisory Committee and is on its Investor as Owner Subcommittee, where she has authored multiple recommendations. She is a member of the American Legal Institute and the Advisory Board of the Berkeley Center for Law, Business and Economics at the University of California Berkeley School of Law. Until recently, she was a member of the Investor Advisory Group of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) Alliance and on the Executive Committee of the Investor Stewardship Group (ISG). Ms. Bennington is a former member of the Advisory Board of the Institute for Corporate Governance and Finance at NYU Law, and the Program for Corporate Governance at Harvard Law School.

Ms. Bennington is a frequent speaker on matters of both Activism and ESG investing, including at Berkeley Law and Hass School of Business, Harvard Law and Business Schools, NYU Law, Oxford University Said Business School, and multiple corporate and investor forums. Ms. Bennington received her undergraduate degree from the University of California Berkeley and her J.D. from the University of California Hastings College of the Law.