Marsha Simms, JD ’77

Board Member

Marsha Simms is a native of St. Louis, Missouri and a long time resident of New York  City. She attended Radcliffe College, graduated from Barnard College and received her law degree from  Stanford Law School. Since graduating from Barnard she has served on the Nominating Committee of  the Alumnae Association of Barnard College and mentored a number of students. She served on the  board of the Stanford Alumni Association, the Stanford Law School Board of Visitors and chaired the Law  School’s Annual Fund.

She spent her entire professional career practicing law at major New York law firms, first  at Shearman & Sterling (where she spent two years in its London office), and then at Weil, Gotshal &  Manges LLP, where she was a partner in the Banking & Finance group at her retirement in 2010. Her  major clients included Citibank, N.A., General Electric Capital Corporation, R.H. Macy & Co., Inc., The  Estee Lauder Companies, Inc. and Sotheby’s. 

During her career Ms. Simms was involved with numerous bar associations, including  the Association of Black Women Attorneys, the Metropolitan Black Bar Association, the New York City  Bar Association, where she chaired the Professional Discipline Committee and Committee on Minorities  in the Profession, and the American Bar Association, where she chaired several committees of the  Business Law Section, chaired the African Law Initiative Council, and was a member of the Commission  on Women in the Profession and the Meetings and Travel Committee, and is currently a member of the  Central and Eastern European Division of the Rule of Law Initiative. She also served as the President of  the American College of Commercial Finance Lawyers. She is currently a trustee of the American Law  Institute.

Ms. Simms served as a director of Sotheby’s from 2011 until 2019, when it was taken  private, where she served on the Nominating and Governance, and Audit, Committees.

Ms. Simms was and continues to be active in pro bono and civic activities. She is a  member of the board and avid supporter of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, where  she was co-chair of the Board of Directors for two years. For over 20 years she served on the board of  trustees of WNET-Channel Thirteen, where she chaired the Audit Committee and was elected a Life  Trustee. She served for many years on the board of the American Arbitration Association. She served as  counsel to the Federal Advisory Committee on the African Burial Ground. She is currently a trustee of  the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, where she chairs the Audit Committee and is a member of the Executive,  Pocantico and Compensation Committees.

Ms. Simms has made it her mission to reach back and help those as she has been helped  so many times. One of the best compliments she ever received was when one of her “children” said  “Marsha has talked lots of Black women off the window ledge.”