RALEIGH – National law firm Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough is pleased to welcome Frances-Ann (FA) Criffield to the firm as of counsel in the Raleigh office.

Criffield assists clients with designing and operating executive compensation plans and programs, qualified pension and welfare benefit plans, and advises boards and board committees on corporate governance and compliance. She has spent more than 20 years counseling clients on executive compensation, complex retirement plan and health and welfare plan design and compliance issues, and guiding companies through benefits issues that arise in corporate transactions.

Her compensation practice includes working with clients – both public and private, as well as foreign-based companies and individual executives – to design and maintain equity-based and non-equity-based compensation arrangements, performance-based incentive programs, executive employment, change in control and severance contracts, and deferred compensation plans. She advises companies and compensation committees on corporate governance requirements associated with executive compensation design as well as securities law, national stock exchange regulations, and tax law requirements related to executive compensation.

Criffield's qualified plans practice includes assisting clients with benefit issues that arise in corporate transactions, plan design, fiduciary compliance and plan correction programs. She is also frequently consulted by clients on overall benefits management strategy. She works with emerging and small companies who wish to provide “right size” benefits for recruiting and retention that can grow with the employer, and helps guide large plan sponsors through complex issues that are intrinsic in managing large workforce benefits plans and programs.

She earned her JD from Duke University School of Law and completed a summer term at the Université de Genève in International Transactional Law. She earned a BA, with honors, from Meredith College and completed three semesters of honors study focused on international economics and markets at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.