Silicon Valley law firm Gunderson Dettmer Stough Villeneuve Franklin & Hachigian has hired veteran in-house counsel Sangeetha Raghunathan as a corporate partner in San Francisco. 

Raghunathan joins the firm’s corporate and securities practice from fintech company Earnin, where she served as general counsel, chief compliance officer, corporate secretary and head of government relations for just under three years, according to her Linkedin profile. 

In her new role at Gunderson Dettmer, Raghunathan will focus her practice on regulatory and compliance support for companies in the fintech, web3 and modern finance spaces, the firm said. 

Brian Patterson, corporate partner and member of the firm’s management committee, said: “Sangeetha brings exactly the right experience for the important regulatory and compliance issues many of our clients are working to navigate, especially as more companies leverage fintech, ecommerce, web3 or mobile payments technologies or business models.”

Prior to joining Earnin in 2019, Raghunathan held various in-house roles at major fintech players including crowdfunding company Indiegogo and consumer electronics warranty and insurance platform SquareTrade, where she led the company’s $1.4bn sale to insurance giant Allstate in 2016. 

Before that, she spent three years as associate principal counsel at Disney and worked as privacy and data security counsel at Visa between 2010 and 2011. 

On her appointment, Raghunathan said: “As in-house counsel, I had the opportunity to impact one company at a time. At Gunderson, I will have the opportunity to work with a wide range of companies and investors, which together will have a sizable impact on the industry.”

Raghunathan's hire follows Gunderson Dettmer opening an office in São Paulo last month, its first base in Latin America. The firm has represented LatAm-based companies in almost $4bn of M&A deals since 2014, most recently working on the acquisition of banking tech provider Technisys by SoFi. The practice has also handled more than 600 cross-border venture and growth equity financings in the region since 2017.