Biography

Dana C. MacGrath is an Investment Manager and Legal Counsel at Bentham IMF, responsible for leading the company’s investments in international arbitration matters and contributing to its commercial litigation funding efforts. She joined Bentham in 2019 from Sidley Austin LLP, where she was a partner focusing on international arbitration and commercial litigation. 

Dana’s ability to structure funding deals that address the special needs of parties engaging in or representing clients in international disputes is informed by having conducted arbitrations before the leading international arbitration institutions, as well as before ad hoc arbitration panels, and by serving as an arbitrator herself. She has also represented U.S. and foreign parties in disputes regarding the enforceability of arbitration agreements and arbitral awards, forum selection and choice of law clauses, sovereign immunity and discovery in the international context.

Dana has been recognized as a leading practitioner of international arbitration in various directories, including Chambers USA, Who’s Who Legal: Arbitration, Latinvex in “Latin America’s Top 100 Female Lawyers” and Expert Guides’ Guide to the World’s Leading Experts in Commercial Arbitration. 

Dana has long been a leader in her field. She is the current president of the Board of Directors of ArbitralWomen, an international nonprofit organization that promotes the equal representation of women and diversity in international dispute resolution. She is also a member of the Arbitration Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York and was its former Chair (September 2015-June 2018). She is co-chair of the CPR Institute Arbitration Rules Revision Committee and a member of the CPR Arbitration Committee. She is also a member of the International Arbitration Club of New York, the ICC Commission on Arbitration Task Force on Reducing Time and Cost in Complex Arbitration, the ICC Commission on Arbitration Task Force on National Rules of Procedure for Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Awards Pursuant to the New York Convention of 1958, the International Bar Association and the American Bar Association. 

She is an adjunct professor of law at Brooklyn Law School, where she teaches a seminar on international commercial arbitration and coaches the Brooklyn Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot team. Dana is the immediate former co-chair of Y-ADR, the young arbitrators group of the CPR Institute.

Dana earned her J.D. from New York University School of Law and her B.A. cum laude, from Middlebury College.