Kathy Solley is a partner in Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough’s Atlanta office, where she practices executive compensation, employee benefits and ERISA law. She has worked with public and private companies and their employee benefits needs for more than 30 years, including as in-house counsel with a large electric public utility in the northeast and then with a large, publicly traded multinational corporation. 

She serves clients on a wide range of legal matters pertaining to employee benefits and executive compensation, including nonqualified deferred compensation plans, defined benefit pension plans, 401(k) plans, group health plans, and stock options, as well as fiduciary counseling under ERISA. She counsels on day-to-day plan administration as well as the impact of employee benefits and compensation for mergers, acquisitions and divestitures.

In 1987, she drafted one of the first cash balance pension plans and has followed the changing legal environment for such hybrid plans since then. Ms. Solley guides clients through 401(k) plan corrections, including filings and closing agreements. Her fiduciary counseling has focused on benefit plan committees, both administrative and investment, and their members. 

She is Vice President and President-elect of the Southern Employee Benefits Conference, a 40-year old non-profit organization of employee benefit professionals. In addition, she is Secretary and a member of 21st Century Leaders’ Executive Committee, a non-profit providing leadership and diversity training to Georgia high school students. While continuing as a member of these organizations, Ms. Solley is a former board member of the National Women in Pensions and a former board member of the Peachtree-Atlanta Kiwanis Club. She is a member of the State Bar of Georgia. 

She earned her Juris Doctor from New York University. She earned a Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, in 1971 from Yale University, after attending Wellesley College.