ProfilesUsha Rodrigues

Usha Rodrigues is the M.E. Kilpatrick Chair of Corporate Finance and Securities Law and associate dean for faculty development at UGA’s School of Law.

A former English student turned corporate lawyer, Rodrigues now teaches law school students about what she calls, “the beauty of business organizations,” which can be structured in a variety of ways but all share the same ultimate aim: to give managers of the business—whether corporation, partnership, LLC, or nonprofit—enough flexibility to manage the business effectively, while providing enough accountability to prevent opportunism. Her research examines this central governance challenge as well as issues relating to transparency and disclosure that publicly traded corporations face under U.S. securities law.

“The generosity of private donors makes all the difference to my research at Georgia Law. This support allows me to widen the scope of my research by funding initiatives like the Financial Regulation Symposium, which brought regulators from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve together with scholars to evaluate financial regulation. In short, private support allows my research to have an impact, not just in Georgia, but also on the wider world.”