Veta Byrd-Pérez serves as Senior Associate General Counsel at Rice University, and has been at Rice since 2006. She received her B.A. in Economics, summa cum laude, from Spelman College in 1994 and her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1999. She also completed coursework in international business at L’Ecole Superieure de Commerce in Dijon, France. She is a member of the State Bar of Texas (1999) and a member of the Houston Bar Association and the National Association of College and University Attorneys. Prior to her employment at Rice, she was an associate at Vinson & Elkins, LLP in Houston, Texas, specializing in international mergers and acquisitions, project finance, and commercial lending. Her principal areas of practice at Rice are in art, contracts, digital education, sponsored research, technology transfer, intellectual property, real estate and construction.