Bio

Sandi Knox is a founding lawyer of Sidley’s Palo Alto office and the Emerging Companies and Venture Capital practice, and leads the firm’s Corporate Venture Capital practice. She is also the Palo Alto office co-chair of SidleyWomen. Sandi draws on over twenty years of practice in Silicon Valley, as well as experience as a global technology company general counsel, to advise emerging technology and life sciences companies, venture capital funds and corporate venture capital arms of Fortune 100 companies and other strategic investors in technology and life sciences transactions, corporate governance and executive compensation matters. She excels at taking a holistic, long-term view of clients’ strategic goals and translating them into creative and efficient financing and technology development transactions, while bridging gaps that can exist between Fortune 100 companies and their emerging growth technology partners, each of whom are critical to the other’s innovation objectives. Sandi was noted as part of Sidley’s team named the winner of Financial Times' 2021 “Innovation in Sustainability and ESG” award for its work helping aviation and airlines industry clients reduce greenhouse gas emissions. She was also named to The American Lawyer’s inaugural list of “West Trailblazers” in 2021. Prior to rejoining Sidley in 2016, Sandi served as Vice President and General Counsel for DDN Storage, the world’s largest privately held provider of big data storage solutions to global companies with extreme data storage needs. At DDN, she was responsible for all of the company’s legal matters worldwide, including technology transactions, equity and debt financings, board and corporate governance matters, executive compensation and human resources matters, litigation, and manufacturing, trade, and export compliance matters relevant to hardware and software products and services sold to customers around the world. She brings to Sidley a deep understanding of the challenges global, fast-moving technology businesses face, and the need for practical, high-value advice from outside counsel. Earlier in her career, Sandi was an associate at a renowned Palo Alto-headquartered law firm, where she represented a broad range of technology companies in venture capital financings, mergers and acquisitions, initial public offerings, secondary securities transactions and public company corporate governance and reporting matters. She also was previously in-house counsel with Electronics for Imaging, where she managed some of EFI’s most important OEM relationships with partners in Japan and Europe. While in law school, she was a summer law clerk with the Environment and Natural Resources Division (Policy, Legislation and Special Litigation Section) of the U.S. Department of Justice, where she analyzed environmental legislation for the executive branch and assisted with briefing to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in litigation regarding the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA) on behalf of the United States Trade Representative. Sandi has been an active advisor to numerous clients of Sidley’s Emerging Enterprises Pro Bono Program, which provides free corporate and technology transactions legal support to social impact mission-driven small- and medium-sized for-profit enterprises, market-focused nongovernmental organizations, and nonprofits in developing countries across Africa, Asia, Central and South America and the Caribbean.