Sheri Fanaroff is a seasoned attorney with experience across the full spectrum of legal roles; she has served as General Counsel for non-profit and for-profit corporations, in private practice and in state government. Her years of experience have given her a broad perspective and knowledge in many legal fields. Sheri served for 20 years as General Counsel for the Columbia Association, Inc., the non-profit community services corporation and homeowners association for Columbia, Maryland, one of the largest planned communities in the country with 100,000 residents and thousands of commercial properties. In addition to her participation in the senior management team and her role as advisor to the Board of Directors, Sheri’s wide-ranging responsibilities included the negotiation and drafting of complex contracts, litigation management, advising on and litigating employment matters, extensive work in the field of homeowners association law, lobbying and legislative affairs, legal matters involving real estate, land use, intellectual property, information technology, insurance, environmental matters, sports and fitness, and childcare, and the development and implementation of corporate policies.
Sheri also served as Associate Deputy Commissioner for the Maryland Insurance Administration, managing its Office of Hearings, a quasi-judicial unit conducting hearings and issuing rulings in cases brought before the Administration. Prior to joining the Columbia Association, Sheri served as General Counsel for a life insurance company, as senior in-house litigation counsel managing professional liability and employment cases throughout the United States for international insurance brokerage companies and third-party administrators, and spent the first part of her career as a litigator in private practice in New York.
Given Sheri’s in-house counsel work, she was a long-standing member of the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC), was invited to served as a panelist speaker at five ACC annual meetings, and served as a member of the leadership of ACC’s Small Law Departments Committee. She also is a member of the National Association of Women Lawyers, serving on the planning committee for four of its annual General Counsel Institutes. Sheri twice received the OnCon Icon Awards Top 50 Corporate Counsel and the First Chair Top General Counsel award.
Sheri graduated from the University of North Carolina School of Law in Chapel Hill with a J.D. with Honors, as a member of the Order of the Coif and of Law Review, and was an editor for the UNC Journal of International Law. She received her B.A. in psychology from Brown University and spent a year abroad studying at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. Sheri is admitted to the Bars of New York and Maryland.