About Us

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Innovative companies of all sizes as well as prestigious universities look to Tena for a unique level of in-depth collaboration, creativity and dedication as a trusted advisor.

Tena founded TZ Counsel in order to provide world class legal representation without big firm fees. Tena’s 25-year legal career includes more than 12 years in the MIT ecosystem, including acting as General Counsel and founding executive of two Harvard/MIT startups.

Her current practice focuses on handling both complex and day-to-day corporate matters. She often works closely with companies acting as outside counsel providing in-house/general counsel services. She handles patent licensing agreements, clinical research study agreements, material transfer agreements, master services agreements, collaboration agreements and more.

Accent Therapeutics, Ankyra Therapeutics, and Zenas BioPharma  are among her current biotech/pharma clients. She also serves a key role in advising a mix of health-tech, ed-tech, software and education clients including 21CS and  Six Red Marbles.  

Tena has also served as in-house counsel for a clinical research organization and a bioinformatics company, as Assistant Director and Counsel for Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Technology Transfer Office and as Counsel for MIT’s General Counsel’s Office. 

Tena was co-founder, VP of Business Affairs and then General Counsel & Secretary of edX, an online educational platform offering courses from the best universities in the world to everyone in the world with an internet connection. 

In her role at edX, Tena set up the entire legal department from the ground up. She handled issues ranging from copyright licensing, open-source software, data privacy, international contracts, export control, non-profit governance, board relationships, employment law, real estate and more. Tena and her team drafted and negotiated agreements with 100 of the best universities and corporations in the world as part of the edX consortium. 

Tena also served as General Counsel for Advanced Functional Fabrics of America (AFFOA), an entity launched out of MIT with $300M in private and public funding, also setting up the legal function for the company. 

Before going in-house, Tena was in private practice at Sunstein LLP, Goulston & Storrs and Holland & Knight.
 

Tena received her undergraduate degree from Vanderbilt University, where she received a full scholarship as the first woman to win the Grantland Rice award for sports writing.  She graduated magna cum laude from Boston College Law School. 

Joel serves as a strategic legal advisor to technology and biotech / pharma companies. His practice focuses on corporate, commercial, employment, and data privacy / AI regulatory matters. Joel also serves on several Advisory Boards for his clients. 

Throughout his career, Joel has provided guidance to hundreds of early-stage startups in the fields of biotech, health tech, clean tech, AI, SaaS, and beyond. He worked as an associate attorney for Latham & Watkins as well as Goodwin Procter. More recently, Joel spent over 5 years working as a senior in-house counsel. 

Joel’s blend of experience in working for top technology law firms and spending many years in-house has provided him with a unique perspective as an attorney and strategic advisor and has enabled him to have a deep understanding of how to mitigate the specific legal risks companies face while balancing this against driving growth.

In his in-house roles, Joel held senior positions in biotech and consumer nutrition, leading several legal functions ranging from commercial and corporate to marketing, product counseling, and data privacy. Joel also led Legal Operations in both of his in-house roles emphasizing contract negotiation streamlining, use of AI, and several other strategies focused on optimizing efficiencies in legal. 

Joel graduated from Georgetown Law with honors. During law school, Joel clerked for the U.S. Senate and the International Trade Commission. Prior to law school, Joel received BS degrees in History and Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

In his free time, he enjoys surfing, snowboarding, cycling, cooking, and spending time with his wife and daughter.

Jason provides transactional counsel to a wide range of clients with a focus on pharmaceutical and life sciences clients. Jason balances his role as Of Counsel at TZC with his role as Director of Intellectual Property for the University of Nebraska Medical Center where he has worked for the past decade. 

Jason draws on his experience handling thousands of complex agreements for the medical center to find creative solutions for TZC clients. He has completed agreements with parties located in fifty-five different countries, handling intellectual property licenses, research collaborations, material transfer agreements, confidentiality agreements, services agreements and more.

As a registered patent attorney, Jason recognizes the tremendous value in intellectual property rights and ensures they are protected and utilized to their fullest potential.  Jason manages the medical center’s patent portfolio and files patent applications on behalf of the university. The University of Nebraska consistently ranks among the top 100 academic institutions worldwide in earning U.S. patents. His experience also includes working at a Chicago patent law firm specializing in analyzing and protecting new inventions in many different fields, from fertility endocrinology to gaming software. 

As a consultant for the International Intellectual Property Institute (IIPI), a Washington, DC think tank, Jason traveled to Asia several times to hold meetings with university, government, and business leaders regarding innovation policies, as well as to present at conferences, including with the USPTO for an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit. 

Jason has taught MBA and graduate courses on Intellectual Property Law and Bioscience Entrepreneurship for the University of Nebraska. 

Jason graduated from Creighton University School of Law and earned an LLM, with honors, in International Intellectual Property from Chicago-Kent College of Law.  Prior to law school, Jason received a BS in Biology from Creighton University and worked in a neuroethology research laboratory. 

In his free time, Jason enjoys taking family trips and slow-smoking BBQ.  

Nikita handles administrative functions for TZ Counsel, including contract management, technical support, and client engagement.   

She also provides contract management services to clients. She is able to guide clients in implementing simple yet organized foundational contract management systems via SharePoint or DropBox in a way that will prepare them for a smooth transition to an automated contract management software if they would like to do so in the future. As she has experience with data migration between contract management systems, she knows how to set clients up for success. Nikita works closely with various client departments, including legal, HR, finance, and accounting. So, she understands the needs of other departments relative to legal in order to facilitate a cohesive contract management system accessible to all. She has also aided in training employees in contract management systems company-wide.

Nikita graduated summa cum laude from the University of Florida and earned a Bachelor of Arts with a double major in Linguistics and Foreign Languages and Literatures – Russian. Prior to joining TZ Counsel, Nikita worked as a teaching assistant at Florida Atlantic University’s College of Medicine Simulation Center. There, she assisted doctors and other healthcare professionals in training medical students, recently graduated nurses, and residents. She also compiled and organized statistical research data on the results of simulations, edited computer software for medical case scenarios, and acted as a simulated patient while running the computer-generated physiological changes for the high-fidelity manikins during each of the medical scenarios. In addition, Nikita received a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowship for Russian in the summer of 2019 which enabled her to study at Moscow State University (Московский государственный университет). She has received awards from the Florida Association for Food Protection and from the University of Florida’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences for her research project: “Biofilm Reduction in E. coli and C. freundii.” Nikita also taught English to Visiting Scholars at the University of Florida.

Nikita enjoys learning about languages, editing manuscripts, and writing science fiction and fantasy. She is currently working on a novel and a children’s book.