Olya Antle

OLYA is an associate in the Washington, D.C., office of Cooley LLP, where she specializes in business restructuring and represents a broad range of actors in complex national and crossborder restructuring proceedings and financial litigation matters. She frequently advises private and public companies and their boards of directors on a wide range of solvencyrelated matters, working closely with her clients to develop new and creative solutions for overcoming challenges that arise in distressed situations. A frequent speaker on international insolvency topics, she serves as one of the International Insolvency Institute’s delegates to the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) Working Group V, and she is a member of the World Bank’s Insolvency and Creditor/Debtor Regimes Task Force.

Olya has a passion for cross-border company-side restructuring work. A recent significant accomplishment in this area is her work for Gamida Cell, a company that develops lifesaving therapies with the potential to cure blood cancers. Through a novel use of debt-arrangement proceedings in Israel combined with chapter 15 and 11 proceedings in the U.S., she led her team’s chapter 15 efforts and successfully obtained recognition of the Israeli proceeding in the U.S., as well as enforcement of the order confirming the Israeli debt arrangement — the first time a U.S. court has recognized and enforced an Israeli debt arrangement. She is passionate about the work of UNCITRAL Working Group V, and as a result of the connections she has built there, she was asked to serve as a bankruptcy law adviser to the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice to assist Ukraine with implementing its new bankruptcy code as part of its ascension into the European Union.

Olya was 15 years old when she first came to the U.S. through a U.S. Department of State program for high school students from former Soviet republics. Having left her entire family in Ukraine and lacking a support group or any family in the U.S., she slowly developed friendships and found mentors who were instrumental in her professional and personal journey. Although her other passion was piano performance, she ultimately was drawn to the restructuring profession. Within Cooley, she serves as a writing coach to the firm’s summer associates and volunteers as a mentor through the Cooley Academy Mentoring Program (CAMP), which supports one-on-one mentorship efforts between attorneys from different practice groups. Outside of work, she serves as Newsletter Editor for ABI’s International Committee and recently served as a member of the Executive Committee for the International Insolvency Institute (III)’s NextGen Program.