Anna E. Dodson

Anna Dodson structures and negotiates debt finance transactions. She is a partner in Goodwin’s Debt Finance practice and a member of the Private Equity group.

Anna advises sponsors, borrowers and lenders in debt financings up and down the capital structure and in a variety of transactions, including leveraged buyouts, recapitalizations, restructurings, and structured financings. She also advises private equity funds and credit, debt and opportunity funds and other non-bank lenders in structuring and executing their leverage and liquidity strategies, including subscription-backed, NAV and asset-backed liquidity lines, warehouse facilities, leverage facilities and securitizations. Anna has significant workout experience, including advising institutional investors and their portfolio companies, banks and non-bank finance companies in out-of-court restructurings. She advises distressed and special situation lenders, as well as sellers of and investors in distressed financial assets.

Anna serves on Goodwin’s Opinion Committee. She is the founder of the firm’s Neighborhood Business Initiative, a firm project that provides pro bono legal services to businesses in Massachusetts, New York and California. Celebrating its 20th anniversary, the mission of NBI is to promote equity and support wealth creation in communities that face discrimination based on race, ethnicity, immigration status, gender and/or sexual orientation by providing pro bono legal services to entrepreneurs and small business owners who are members of, or whose businesses positively impact, such communities.

Anna is recognized by Chambers USA for her work in Banking & Finance and by The Best Lawyers in America. Anna was selected for inclusion in The Legal 500 2021-2023. She was named to Mergers & Acquisitions’ 2019 Most Influential Women in Mid-Market M&A list. The award recognizes the women dealmakers with the strongest track records, the biggest footprints and the most promising futures in middle-market finance.

Anna has been honored for her pro bono work, including receiving in 2022 the National Public Service Award from the Business Law Section of the American Bar Association and in 2004 the John Adams and John Quincy Adams Pro Bono Publico Award by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. She is a recipient of the 2004 Robert B. Fraser Pro Bono Award, given annually by Goodwin. In 2008, Anna was selected for the inaugural class of “Women of Justice” by Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly in participation with the Women’s Bar Association and the Massachusetts Association of Women Lawyers. She was an honoree in Pro Bono in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly’s “Excellence in Law” in 2013.

• Author, “Building Pro Bono Opportunity in Business Law: Lessons Learned from Goodwin’s Neighborhood Business Initiative,” Business Law Today, October 24, 2022
• “Pro Bono: Big Law, Business Lawyers and How They Make a Difference: Episode 4: Big Law Business Lawyers Making a Difference in the Community – the Neighborhood Business Initiative,” Podcast, October 24, 2022