CHICAGO, July 2, 2025: Morgan Lewis continues to strengthen its transactional healthcare and regulatory bench with the addition of partner Jeanna Palmer Gunville, resident in Chicago. Jeanna brings her diverse practice representing hospitals and health systems, academic medical and surgery centers, and post-acute care providers in their legal, business, and operational objectives.
"Jeanna’s deep experience advising a wide array of healthcare providers, including not-for-profit health systems and private equity-backed portfolio healthcare providers and vendors on transactions as well as ongoing regulatory compliance, will immediately enhance our ability to support healthcare clients pursuing growth across sectors,” said Firm Chair Jami McKeon. “With Chicago serving as a hub for healthcare transactions, Jeanna’s trusted relationships and broad transactional knowledge align with our expanding corporate and FDA and healthcare practice areas.”
Jeanna advises a broad range of healthcare entities and private equity-backed providers on mergers, acquisitions, strategic alliances, joint ventures and affiliations, and provider alignment and clinical integration, as well as general corporate and regulatory matters. Prior to joining Morgan Lewis, Jeanna was a shareholder at Polsinelli, and previously had served as a law clerk in the Office of the Illinois Attorney General’s Health Care Bureau, Consumer Protection Division, and as a judicial extern at the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
“Healthcare clients today need more than creative and effective transactional support—they need regulatory foresight built into every stage of a deal,” said Michele L. Buenafe, leader of the firm’s FDA and healthcare practice. “We’re thrilled to welcome Jeanna, whose unique ability to integrate compliance strategy into complex transactions and corporate governance matters will further strengthen our healthcare platform and enhance our ability to deliver holistic, future-focused counsel.”
Jeanna’s addition to Morgan Lewis’s Chicago office complements a roster of partners who have come on board over the last year at that office, including labor and employment litigator Jill S. Vorobiev; insurance recovery litigator Emily E. Garrison; technology transactions partner Marina G. Aronchik; and financial services litigator Stacie Hartman. Jeanna also joins an FDA and healthcare team that includes partners with senior-level experience at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)—among them former Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General senior lawyer Howard Young, Maarika L. Kimbrell, former director of the Office of New Drug Policy at FDA, and Ariel Z. Seeley, former associate director for regulatory documents and special projects at the Office of Policy at the FDA Center for Devices and Radiological Health.