Ms. Baker is chair of the firm’s national Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation Practice Group. She represents boards and compensation committees of public and not for profit businesses in executive compensation matters. She also handles non-qualified deferred compensation and equity incentive arrangements for both private and public entities, and represents employers and high-level executives in employment agreements, severance arrangements and golden parachute plans. In addition, her practice covers representation of employers in the design, implementation and administration of tax-qualified retirement plans (including 401(k) plans, defined benefit plans and ESOPs), ERISA representation of institutional fiduciaries and advice to financial institutions concerning ERISA issues arising in pension fund investing.
Ms. Baker is a member of the board of directors of the American Bar Association Retirement Funds. She is Past Chair of the American Bar Association Taxation Section Employee Benefits Committee, and formerly chaired the Illinois State Bar Association Employee Benefits Section Council and the Chicago Bar Association Employee Benefits Committee. She is a charter member of the American College of Employee Benefits Counsel. Ms. Baker co-chairs the ABA-JCEB National Institute on Executive Compensation and the ALI-ABA Course of Study, Pension, Profit-Sharing, Welfare, and other Compensation Plans. She is also a member of the ABA Business Law Section Federal Regulation of Securities Committee where she has been active in dialogues with the SEC staff on matters involving Rule 16b-3, registration of nonqualified deferred compensation, Form S-8, Rule 701, implementation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and executive compensation disclosure issues.
Ms. Baker is nationally recognized as a leading practitioner in the employee benefits and executive compensation field, and is a frequent author and speaker. Recent topics include the intersection of federal securities laws with tax-qualified retirement plans, deferred compensation under Internal Revenue Code Section 409A, and IRS Executive compensation audits.