Patrick Murray is a longtime ISLP volunteer and current board member with significant experience in multinational transactions, cross-border investments, and international dispute resolution, all of which he brought to his previous role as coordinator of legal volunteers for ISLP’s Haiti Program. Patrick’s expertise with M&A and decades of experience in the asset management industry uniquely positioned him to work on a number of recent ISLP matters, including a large-scale infrastructure project in Central Asia, and African clean energy development with ISLP partner PowerGen.
PowerGen is a leader in Africa’s clean energy transition, offering smart solar mini-grids that supply power to homes and businesses – particularly in areas that are out of reach of the main power grids. PowerGen’s mini-grids are bringing reliable and affordable energy to those who previously lacked it, thus giving users access to educational and economic opportunities that otherwise would be unavailable.
As an ISLP volunteer, Patrick has assisted PowerGen with a variety of corporate and transactional issues. Underscoring the value of the ISLP model and Patrick’s legal counsel, PowerGen explained that, “for a growing social enterprise, legal resourcing isn’t typically a high priority, but it quickly becomes a necessity when the number of impactful contracts grows. Our needs for support came about rather quickly, and ISLP stepped in without hesitation to provide us with critical support. Without this support, we would have struggled to move through the legal phases of developing our projects.” PowerGen noted that with Patrick’s legal expertise, it “has been able to develop strong partnerships across the energy access sector, in large part because the support means [its] team can prioritize the development and implementation of projects.” Patrick shared that “after having spent many years representing an innovative producer of equipment for the solar industry, and seen in Haiti how access to clean energy is key to community development, I was eager and enthusiastic to make my experience available to PowerGen as it revolutionizes the distribution of energy, in much the same way cell telephones revolutionize communication, throughout Africa.”
Patrick is a Retired Partner and former Managing Partner of Winston & Strawn’s Paris office. In addition to his role as an ISLP board member, he serves on the advisory board of Partners in Health, a major provider of health care for the world’s poor, and works actively with Zanmi Lasanté-Paris, a French NGO supporting education and rural development in Haiti’s Central Plateau region.