© Gittings Photography
Title: Managing Associate
Firm: Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP
Age: 33
Early in his career, Joshua Bonney, a managing associate at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, has already worked with some of the municipal bond market’s most prominent issuers and on the latest innovative deals.
Last year, he worked on Washington, D.C.’s first public-private partnership for the modernization of the district’s streetlamps, a complex financing that was the first streetlighting project to tap tax-exempt private activity bonds.
As a member of the Orrick team that represents the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Joshua worked on the MTA’s first P3 deal, and helped craft the first forward-delivery bond transaction for the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority.
Born and raised in Houston, the 33-year-old “self-selected” into public finance after graduating from Elon University in North Carolina — where he earned a bachelor’s degree, a law degree and an MBA — and getting a job at Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein LLP.
At Parker Poe, after being pulled into a summer assignment for a water and sewer refunding for the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, Joshua started to learn the ins and outs of the business from the firm’s head of public finance.
“He was very skillful at connecting the abstract concepts of public finance and making it tangible,” Joshua said. “I’d always had a public interest leaning, but to bundle finance with public policy and federal tax law into this gumbo of a practice that produces essential public projects is fundamentally attractive to me.”
He moved to D.C. in late 2019 and is now starting to see some of the projects — like the district’s new streetlights — come to life.
“That’s always been one of the coolest things to me,” Joshua said, calling his work at Orrick “a match made in heaven.”
Outside of his practice, he is involved with Black Lawyers of Orrick and is a member of the Pathfinder Program from the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity. He is also a member of the Urban Land Institute’s Young Leaders Mentorship Program in the District, which pairs young leaders with veteran market participants in the real estate development/land use industry.