Rena focuses her practice on guiding employers through the design, implementation, and administration of complex employee benefit plans.
Rena has extensive experience advising clients on all aspects of executive compensation, including negotiating and drafting equity compensation plans and awards, employment and severance agreements, and other compensation arrangements. She also advises clients on health and welfare matters related to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), HIPAA, COBRA and state and local leave laws. Rena also is knowledgeable in advising on qualified and non-qualified retirement plans as well as governmental plans.
Rena assists clients in a broad range of benefits matters related to mergers and acquisitions, taxation issues related to executive compensation arrangements (such as Internal Revenue Code §§ 409A, 162(m), and 280G (golden parachute) analysis), ERISA fiduciary and pension investment issues, and correction programs under the Department of Labor's Employee Plans Compliance Resolution System (EPCRS) and Voluntary Fiduciary Correction Program (VFCP). She also advises clients on issues related to IRS tax filings for employee benefits plans, such as Form 5500, Form 1094 and Form 1095 as well as Form 941 with respect to Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) filings.
Previously, Rena served as associate director of health and benefits compliance at a leading global advisory, brokering, and consulting company, where she regularly advised clients on health and welfare plans and compliance with various federal statutes, such as the ACA, ERISA, the Internal Revenue Code, HIPAA, ADA, FMLA, and COBRA.
Rena frequently speaks on employee benefits compliance issues under ACA, COBRA, HIPAA, and ERISA. She has also served as an adjunct professor at the University of Houston Law Center, teaching an introductory employee benefits class. Additionally, Rena volunteers with Atlanta-based organizations, such as Pro Bono Partnership of Atlanta, where she assists non-profit organizations with employee benefits needs; Black Women Will, in partnership with Thank Me Later, where she assists indigent women in drafting wills; and the Georgia Association of Black Women Attorneys Sister to Sister program, where provides mentorship to at-risk teenage girls.