Brooks provides strategic counsel and communications support to companies involved in a broad range of special situations and high-profile corporate events, including mergers and acquisitions, shareholder activism defense and proxy contests and crisis management. She also assists clients with ongoing investor relations and corporate communications strategies. Her areas of expertise include:

Mergers & Acquisitions

She has worked with clients on friendly, unsolicited and contested transactions. Select assignments include L Brands in its sale of a majority stake of Victoria’s Secret to Sycamore Partners; Progenics Pharmaceutics in its merger with Lantheus; Sierra Wireless in its sale to Semtech; Emerson with its combination of its industrial software businesses with AspenTech; Frontier Airlines on its proposed transaction with Spirit Airlines; MoneyGram in its sale to Madison Dearborn Partners; Healthcare Trust of America in its sale to Healthcare Realty Trust; Nucor in its acquisition of C.H.I Overhead Doors; Juniper Networks in its sale to Hewlett Packard Enterprise; Choice Hotels in its takeover proposal for Wyndham Hotels & Resorts; Encore Wire in its sale to Prysmian; Chico’s FAS in its sale to Sycamore Partners; Sterling Check Corp. in its sale to First Advantage; U.S. Silica in its sale to Apollo Funds; Arch Resources in its combination with CONSOL Energy; and Bitfarms in its defense against an unsolicited proposal from Riot Platforms.

Shareholder Activism

She supports companies in private and public activism situations, as well as proxy contests. She has helped defend companies against Ancora Advisors, Barington Capital, Elliott Management, Land & Buildings and Starboard Value, among others. Select assignments include: Progenics Pharmaceutics (Velan Capital); L Brands (Barington Capital); MEDNAX (Starboard); Berry Global (Ancora Advisors); Ventas (Land & Buildings); Healthcare Trust of America (Elliott Management); MEI Pharma (Anson Advisors and Cable Car Capital); LL Flooring (F9 Investments); and Zuora (Scalar Gauge Fund).

Public & Investor Relations

She works with clients to enhance their overall corporate communications strategies, including corporate positioning and message development, quarterly earnings preparation, employee communications, thought leadership and profile raising, analyst days and annual shareholder meetings.

Crisis and Special Situations

She has experience supporting clients with crisis preparedness and responses resulting from a range of situations including litigation, reputational attacks, regulatory inquiries, short attack campaigns, cybersecurity incidents, corporate reorganizations and leadership changes, both planned and unplanned.

Brooks joined Joele Frank in 2019. She received a BA in Communications from Wake Forest University.