Natela Shenon is a founding shareholder and the Managing Partner of Grant Shenon Almaraz, where she also leads the firm's transactional practice.

She built the firm on a simple belief: business owners deserve a lawyer who treats their company like it matters, because to them it is everything. Natela works with founders, business owners, executives, and investors at the moments that define their companies. Buying a business. Selling one. Bringing in a partner. Raising capital. Structuring a joint venture. Closing a complex real estate deal. Writing the agreements that decide who owns what, and what happens when things change.

Many of her clients rely on her as outside general counsel, a trusted advisor on strategy, risk, governance, and the decisions that don't come with an obvious answer. Her clients range from individuals and small business owners to startups and publicly traded companies.

What sets her apart isn't the paperwork. It's judgment.

Natela reads people and dynamics quickly, a skill rooted in her background in psychology and sharpened by years at the negotiating table. She sees where a deal is heading three moves before it gets there. She knows where to push and where to hold, which issues will matter in two years and which ones won't, and how to keep a deal moving without losing sight of what her client actually needs.

When a dispute can't be avoided, she and the firm's litigation team are ready for it.

Her career gave her every side of the table. She spent her first five years after law school at a boutique business litigation firm, learning how deals fall apart and what it costs when they do. She then went in-house at an oil and gas company, handling complex transactional work from the client's side. She knows what it's like to be the business, not just advise it.

From there she opened her own practice, Shenon Law. In April 2021, Shenon Law merged with Alpert Barr & Grant to form Grant | Shenon, which has since grown into Grant Shenon Almaraz.

As Managing Partner, Natela runs the business of the firm day to day: its strategy, its people, its growth, and its systems. When a client is weighing growth, partners, equity, or an eventual sale, she isn't advising from the outside. She makes those same decisions every day.

She practices the way she runs her own business. She is direct and practical, and she is personally invested. Clients work with her, not a rotating cast of associates, and many of those relationships have lasted for years.

Her measure of success is simple. Her clients are better off because they called her.Natela earned her Juris Doctor and a Master of Dispute Resolution from Pepperdine University School of Law, along with a Certificate in Entrepreneurship and the Law. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles. She has been practicing law since 2008.

Outside the office, Natela is a wife, a mom to two girls, an avid reader, and a lifelong seeker. She is endlessly curious about people, ideas, and what makes a life meaningful, and she travels, reads, and stays active in pursuit of all three. She is always learning and always growing, and she brings that same depth and curiosity to every client and every deal.