April Miller Boise, an in-house leader who co-founded the Black General Counsel 2025 Initiative, has joined Eaton Corp. as the global power management company's general counsel and executive vice president. 

Boise arrives at Eaton in the wake of its $920 million acquisition of the Souriau-Sunbank Connection Technologies business of TransDigm Group Inc. The French company makes electrical products for the aerospace, defense, industrial, energy and transport industries.

She succeeds Heath Monesmith, who took the reins of Eaton's multinational legal department about two years ago. He was promoted to president and chief operating officer in July 2019, according to his LinkedIn profile. 

As the company's new top lawyer, Boise will advise Eaton's executive management team and board of directors while leading the firm's legal department from her base in Cleveland. The company announced her hiring Tuesday. 

Based in Dublin, Eaton has more than 100,000 employees globally and reported $21.6 billion in sales in 2018. 

Boise most recently served as senior vice president, chief legal officer and corporate secretary for Meritor Inc. in Troy, Michigan. The company is a global supplier of axles, brakes, suspension parts and other products for the commercial vehicle and industrial markets. 

As a member of Meritor's executive leadership team, Boise was "a trusted advisor actively engaged in all aspects of the company's business including developing and implementing strategic initiatives through investment in emerging technologies, mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures and other adjacencies," according to her LinkedIn profile. 

She added that she was responsible for global "legal, compliance, and corporate governance matters and enterprise-wide risk management."

Attempts to speak with Boise were not immediately successful. She and former AkzoNobel general counsel Ernest Tuckett, now senior counsel at Thompson Hine, created Black GC 2025 in 2017 to increase the number of black general counsel in Fortune 1000 companies. 

Boise said in an earlier statement that the "program has resonated with people … because we are working to cultivate substantive conversations and relationships among black lawyers and to drive clear, very tangible goals to help move the needle in the C-suite." 

As an in-house counsel, Boise also has served as head of global mergers and acquisitions and corporate secretary at Avintiv, which makes infection-prevention materials; and as general counsel, corporate secretary and chief privacy officer at Veyance Technologies Inc., which makes hydraulic hoses and other industrial products.  

After graduating from the University of Chicago Law School in 1994, Boise began her legal career as an associate at Blackwell Sanders. She later joined Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton as a corporate transactions lawyer before moving to Thompson Hine, where she served as a managing partner and as a member of the firm's executive committee. 

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