Megan R. Baca

As the co-head of her law firm's digital health initiative, Baca puts together deals at the intersection of modern high technology and biomedical science. It's an exciting practice, she said, because digital health promises to be a huge new industry.

Baca said she has solid experience working on the traditional partnerships and collaborations common among pharmaceutical companies. And she also has a strong early background in computer science coupled with a love of learning about technology. "Perhaps purely out of stubbornness, I just never gave it up," she said.

The combination makes her uniquely qualified "to understand exactly what big pharma thinks about risk allocation in a licensing deal [and] how software and consumer products companies think about their technology and their data, and how these two sides can work together," Baca said.

For instance, recently she advised a business on its acquisition of an artificial intelligence company developing a platform to expedite drug development by giving pharmaceutical companies AI tools to better analyze their complex data sets.

Last summer, she represented a company that provides AI-powered pathology tools and services in its acquisition of a specialized laboratory services company.

Another good example of the kind of deals she guides was the purchase by a very large medical products company of a very small company that has developed a unique device and app to help people stop smoking. "There were all sorts of interesting issues that came up, given the size disparity and the investment size and the economics of the two companies," Baca said.

She also works on more traditional deals, such as representing TPG Capital in its acquisition of AT&T's television business early last year or advising McAfee Corp. last summer on the $4 billion sale of the enterprise side of its business to Symphony Technology Group while still retaining the consumer side. "It was very complicated," Baca said about disentangling the company into two standalone businesses.

- Don DeBenedictis