Photo by Conor Doherty

Equity

Bringing Ideas to Life

An entrepreneurial spirit and a helping heart lead McKenzi Baker—and her clients—to realize their dreams.

McKenzi Baker (’21) came to BU Law with a specific career goal. “I wanted to build businesses,” she says, matter-of-factly.

And that’s exactly what she has done, basically ever since she arrived in Boston from her home state of Arkansas. Baker interned at Cooley during her 1L summer and returned to the firm throughout her time at BU Law, working mostly on issues related to company formation. She also took a transactional simulation course called Follow-On Venture Capital Financing and participated in the Startup Law Clinic (now the BU/MIT Student Innovations Law Clinic).

Now an associate at Cooley’s Boston office, Baker advises clients throughout their organizational life cycle, including on formation and corporate governance, mergers and acquisitions, venture capital financing, and initial public offerings. She also represents Black- and women-owned businesses whenever she has the opportunity. She was among the Cooley attorneys who represented Embrace Boston—the organization behind the new Boston Common sculpture that honors Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (GRS’55, Hon.’59) and Coretta Scott King (Hon.’69)—when it formed as a nonprofit. She was part of a woman-led Cooley team that advised Chief, a private networking organization for women, on its $100 million Series B funding round, which resulted in a valuation of $1.1 billion. And she represented Boston While Black, a digital network focused on helping Black people thrive in the city, when it became a benefit corporation and in its first major external investment.

Baker traces her interest in entrepreneurship to the early years of her life, when she saw members of her community form their own businesses with varying degrees of success. Some of them were formerly incarcerated people who struck out on their own because they had a hard time finding traditional jobs. Inevitably, they ran into red tape, which they found hard to navigate without an attorney. Baker thought she could help.

“I feel like I can identify with the entrepreneurial spirit,” she explains. “I like seeing a company come to life. When you talk to a founder, they have an idea in their heads. I help translate that idea into reality.”

At Cooley, Baker enjoys her representation of all kinds of clients, but she says she gets a “special joy” working with a “subset of underrepresented founders.”

“They bring a different perspective,” she says. “I consider it a privilege to help them bring their ideas into the world.”