TARA L. DUNN
Tara began her career as an entrepreneur, partnering to launch Denver’s iconic Great Divide Brewing Company while she pursued a master’s degree in counseling psychology. After she realized that the brewery required her full attention, Tara spent over a decade collaborating to build the business, co-founding the Colorado Brewers Guild to protect Colorado’s craft beer industry along the way. Restless in thinking about new and unique ways to help others achieve their best outcomes, Tara went to law school to become a corporate attorney and support clients in achieving their business potential. With this background, she brings a distinct point of view to her legal practice, always considering her clients’ legal and business issues from an entrepreneur’s perspective. Tara’s experience in managing complex projects and transactions helps her to understand issues and create solutions that work for the business.
During the first ten years of her law practice, Tara worked at some of the world’s most recognized law firms, including Hogan Lovells (then know as Hogan & Hartson) and Morrison & Foerster. She then joined an NYSE-listed IT services company as Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, where she was the legal team lead on credit financing activities, public company reporting, and compliance matters. Looking to return to her entrepreneurial roots, in 2017, Tara launched her own law firm with a focus on supporting businesses in achieving their best outcomes. She has been recognized as a Colorado SuperLawyer since 2020 and has represented companies of all sizes, from start-ups to Fortune 100 companies, in corporate and transactional work, including mergers and acquisitions, private placements, capital markets transactions, credit financings, public company matters, director and officer liability issues, corporate governance, public offerings, and in her favorite role, as outside general counsel. Since law school, Tara has been particularly interested in the fiduciary duties of corporate directors and officers, and she has written and lectured extensively on this topic. The Delaware Supreme Court cited her academic writing on these issues in its 2006 decision, In re the Walt Disney Derivative Litigation. In law school, Tara was Business Editor of the Denver University Law Review and graduated Order of St. Ives.
In addition to her law practice, Tara’s other professional passion is leadership and development. She is Dare to LeadTM trained and has nearly three decades of experience serving on corporate boards of directors, including in co-founder or chair roles, with Great Divide Brewing Company, the Colorado Brewers Guild, the Denver Metro Chamber Leadership Foundation, Shift Events, Rocky Mountain MicroFinance Institute and the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce.
