Professor Cynthia Williams joined the Indiana University, Maurer School of Law as the Roscoe C. O’Byrne Chair in Law. Previously she taught at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, in Toronto, as the Osler Chair in Business Law. Before joining Osgoode, she was a member of the faculty at the University of Illinois College of Law, where she is an emerita Professor of Law, and, prior to that, she practiced law at Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York City in securities, mergers and acquisitions, and civil rights.

Professor Williams writes in the areas of securities law, corporate law, corporate responsibility, comparative corporate governance, and regulatory theory, often in interdisciplinary collaborations with professors in anthropology, economic sociology, and organizational psychology. Professor Williams’ work has been published in the Georgetown Law Journal, the Harvard Law Review, the Journal of Corporation Law, Theoretical Inquiries in Law, the University of New South Wales Law Journal, the Virginia Law Review, the Academy of Management Review, the Corporate Governance International Review, and the Journal of Organizational Behavior, among others.

Professor Williams has lectured and taught in China, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Scotland, South Korea, Spain, the UK, and throughout Canada and the United States. Professor Williams also engages in policy work through her board membership in the Climate Bonds Initiative, a U.K. Charity established to create a new asset class, Climate Bonds, in order to finance the transition to a low-carbon economy; in the Commonwealth Climate and Law Initiative, a U.K.-based NGO evaluating the fiduciary obligations of directors and managers to incorporate climate change into strategies, oversight, and disclosure across twelve commonwealth and common-law countries, including the U.S.; and through her membership on the Global Future Council on Climate and Nature Governance of the World Economic Forum.