Sarah Reed is General Counsel of Charles River Ventures, a leading venture capital firm with offices in Boston and Silicon Valley. Ms. Reed was General Counsel of CRV from 2000 to 2007, then decided to broaden her experience and perspective by a stint as a partner at Lowenstein Sandler, a firm with a strong tech group, where she represented not only VC and PE funds but also the entrepreneurs and portfolio companies in which those funds invest. She rejoined CRV in June 2009.
Sarah is recognized as a national authority on legal aspects of venture capital financings, and is the founding Chairperson of an industry-wide, NVCA-endorsed initiative to create model venture financing legal documents, which is online at www.nvca.org/model_documents/model_docs.html. The NVCA Model Legal Documents have become a standard in the venture capital industry and by providing these documents with footnotes on an open source basis, the NVCA has educated many lawyers, entrepreneurs and investors about the way in which venture deals are negotiated and documented. As a result of these efforts, the NVCA awarded Sarah its Outstanding Service Award in 2007.
Prior to her first stint at CRV, Sarah was General Counsel at Palomar Medical Technologies, Inc., a Nasdaq-listed laser medical device manufacturer. Sarah began her legal career with the Boston firm of Foley, Hoag & Eliot LLP where she covered a variety of areas including venture capital financings, private placements, IPOs and SEC reporting, as well as commercial litigation.
Sarah earned her BA from Harvard College in East Asian Studies (she is fluent in Mandarin Chinese) and her JD from Harvard Law School, both cum laude. She also attended Fudan University in Shanghai and the Stanford Center for Advanced Chinese Language Study in Taiwan. She is a Trustee of the Harvard-Yenching Institute.
Sarah is a certified fitness instructor, marathoner and a mother of three, and finds the latter more physically challenging than the former.