Claudia H Allen

Claudia H. Allen, a nationally recognized expert on corporate governance, is a Senior Advisor at the KPMG Board Leadership Center, where she brings extensive experience advising boards, management and investors in public and private companies on corporate governance matters and related issues, such as shareholder activism and engagement, board/committee process and structure, fiduciary duties, ESG, risk and culture. Prior to joining the Center, she was a partner and co-chair of the Corporate Governance practice at the national law firm Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP, where she also represented public and private companies in mergers and acquisitions and securities matters. 

Claudia is a frequent writer and speaker on corporate governance issues for groups including the American Bar Association, the Ethics and Compliance Institute, Latino Corporate Directors, the Minority Corporate Counsel Association, the National Association of Corporate Directors, the National Investor Relations Institute, Practical Law Institute, the Society for Corporate Governance, and Women Corporate Directors. She has also appeared on CNBC’s Power Lunch and Squawk on the Street.

Claudia is a Fellow of the American College of Governance Counsel, Official Reporter for the Model Business Corporation Act (the corporate statute followed by a majority of states), a member of the American Bar Association’s invitation-only Corporate Laws Committee, and Vice Chair of the Markets Advisory Council of the Council of Institutional Investors.  She also serves on the Steering Committee (and is a past Chair) of the Annual Ray Garrett Jr. Corporate and Securities Law Institute at Northwestern University Law School, the Corporate Governance Coordinating Committee of the Business Roundtable, and is a founder of the Private Directors Association.  Claudia was named to the 2023 Directorship 100.

Claudia’s landmark studies of forum selection provisions in charters and bylaws and majority voting in director elections have been widely cited, including by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Report of the New York Stock Exchange Commission on Corporate Governance.

Claudia is a magna cum laude graduate of Yale and received her J.D. from Columbia University Law School where she was a James Kent Scholar and Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar.