Full Name
Yelena Dunaevsky
Job Title
Senior Vice President, Transactional Insurance & SPACS
Company
Gallagher
Speaker Bio
Yelena is a securities attorney and M&A and D&O insurance broker with over 20 years of experience in law, publishing and insurance industries. She is currently a Senior Vice President and National SPAC Practice Leader at Gallagher. Her areas of expertise include directors and officer (D&O) insurance for SPAC IPOs and de-SPACs and M&A representations and warranties insurance (RWI).
Yelena is a frequent speaker and author and has been featured in many publications including S&P Global, Yahoo Finance, Reuters, Investment News Today, Business Law Today, Law360, CFO.com, Business Journal, Deal Flow and Bloomberg.
She is the M&A Executive Editor of the American Bar Association’s Business Law Today and from 2020 to 2026 was the Executive Editor of the SPAC Notebook, a blog series that covered SPACs and SPAC risks. She also serves on the advisory board of ACG NJ and co-chairs its membership committee.
In 2022, Yelena was named in Insurance Business America's "Hot 100," which lists top professionals whose contributions have helped shape the insurance industry. Yelena also received the JD Supra “Readers’ Choice” and “Top Read Article” Awards for her M&A articles in 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026.
Prior to Woodruff Sawyer, Yelena practiced as a senior capital markets associate at Clifford Chance and a corporate associate at LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae (later Dewey & LeBoeuf) and earned her BS in Economics from Cornell University and her JD from Fordham University School of Law.
Yelena is a frequent speaker and author and has been featured in many publications including S&P Global, Yahoo Finance, Reuters, Investment News Today, Business Law Today, Law360, CFO.com, Business Journal, Deal Flow and Bloomberg.
She is the M&A Executive Editor of the American Bar Association’s Business Law Today and from 2020 to 2026 was the Executive Editor of the SPAC Notebook, a blog series that covered SPACs and SPAC risks. She also serves on the advisory board of ACG NJ and co-chairs its membership committee.
In 2022, Yelena was named in Insurance Business America's "Hot 100," which lists top professionals whose contributions have helped shape the insurance industry. Yelena also received the JD Supra “Readers’ Choice” and “Top Read Article” Awards for her M&A articles in 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026.
Prior to Woodruff Sawyer, Yelena practiced as a senior capital markets associate at Clifford Chance and a corporate associate at LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae (later Dewey & LeBoeuf) and earned her BS in Economics from Cornell University and her JD from Fordham University School of Law.
