Marcella Barganz

Prior to this role, Marcella was a senior associate in Mayer Brown’s Banking & Finance practice in the Chicago and New York offices. She represented a broad range of firm clients in a variety of domestic and cross-border investment and finance transactions. The range of her work included international project finance and infrastructure transactions, domestic and cross-border lease financings, cross-border future cash flow securitizations, private securities offerings, and an emerging market debt restructuring.

Marcella is a member of Mayer Brown’s New York Pro Bono Committee and actively represents many pro bono clients, including individual applicants in a U Nonimmigrant Status (U Visa) case, a civil rights organization in connection with multiple Voting Protection Hotlines, a Census Protection Hotline and election monitoring work, immigrants living in New York City shelters in connection with work permit applications, a transgender applicant in connection with a name change application, and public housing residents in connection with New York City Housing Authority petitions. She also introduced and secured Mayer Brown’s pro bono representation of The Children’s Village, a nonprofit organization that offers education and support to more than 21,000 youth and families a year who are impacted by the child welfare, immigration or youth justice systems, in relation to a complex financing matter that was honored as Mayer Brown’s 2019 Transactional Matter of the Year.

As part of Mayer Brown’s Project Equity initiative, Marcella founded and continues to produce a novel youth mentoring program in partnership with The Children’s Village that is in its fourth year running and was featured in this Law360 article. The Children’s Village’s celebrated Mayer Brown as its corporate honoree in April 2024 in recognition of this mentoring program and the referenced pro bono matter.

Marcella is a Co-Chair of Mayer Brown’s New York Women's Forum and is a member of the Women's Leadership Committee and the Mayer Brown Ethics & Loss Prevention Committee.

Marcella received her JD from the University of Wisconsin Law School where she served as a Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Wisconsin Women’s Law Journal. She spent a semester of law school in The Netherlands at the University of Groningen Law School where she studied European Union law and European civil and commercial law. Marcella received her BA in Economics and English, summa cum laude, from St. Mary’s University. She is a past Soros Foundation Network Grant recipient.