Based in Northern California, Ms. Welch is available to serve in any locale. She has served as an arbitrator in nearly 400 disputes over the last twenty + years, ranging from relatively small amounts in controversy to multi-million dollar bet-your-company disputes, both domestic and international. She has served as a mediator in a variety of disputes, including those at an early stage and those subsequent to an arbitration award or court judgment. Ms. Welch also has served as a discovery referee in complex arbitrations, particularly those entailing extensive e-discovery. She was recently selected by the parties to oversee the settlement of over 200 individual arbitrations, and to provide an advisory opinion to a federal district court on the adequacy of a class settlement for opt-outs. Ms. Welch has been an attorney for over thirty-five years.  

Ms. Welch is a Northern California Super Lawyer in the field of Alternative Dispute Resolution. She has been included in the 2022, 2023, and 2024 Editions of “Best Lawyers in America®” for Arbitration. She was named in “Who’s Who Legal 2022” as one of the leading practitioners in commercial mediation. Acquisition International Global named her Best in Commercial Arbitration in Northern California for 2018. She was also named by the National Law Journal as a 2018 ADR Champion.

Ms. Welch is known for her managerial as well as substantive expertise in arbitration, her ability to efficiently yet fairly manage and decide cases, and her evaluative approach to mediation as well as her ability to listen to and talk to all parties.

Her approach is to ensure fairness to both sides while remaining decisive, to conduct the process attentively and efficiently, and to follow and apply the law. As a former commercial litigator and in-house lawyer, she knows that arbitration can too quickly become an expensive process that fails to deliver what the parties bargained for. However, properly managed arbitration is not only faster and less expensive than litigation, it provides the parties with confidentiality.

Since 2002, Ms. Welch has served on the commercial, large and complex case, and employment panels of the American Arbitration Association. She is also a panelist with the International Centre for Dispute Resolution. She is a member of the CPR Panel of Distinguished Neutrals, serving on its General Counsel, San Francisco ADR, Employment Disputes-West and Banking, Accounting and Financial Services panels.  She is a member of AAA's mediation panel.

Prior to becoming a neutral, Ms. Welch served as the General Counsel of Robertson Stephens, a San Francisco-based investment bank, and prior to that, practiced as a litigator focusing on business, employment and securities matters. She was the founding executive director of the Berkeley Center for Law, Business and the Economy at the University of California's Berkeley Law School.   

Ms. Welch is also a Fellow of the College of Commercial Arbitrators, where she is the President, serving on the Executive Committee. Ms. Welch is the immediate past-President of CalArb, a non-profit organization formed to support, promote, and advance international arbitration in California. She is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and an elected Fellow of the American Bar Foundation.

Ms. Welch is the past co-chair of the ABA's Dispute Resolution Section's Arbitration Committee.  Previously, she served as the Chair of the State Bar of California's Standing Committee on Alternative Dispute Resolution and currently serves on the California Lawyers’ Association ADR Committee.  She also is a member of the Silicon Valley Arbitration and Mediation Center. She was the co-chair of the ABA’s Dispute Resolution Section’s 2018, 2019 and 2020 Arbitration Training Institutes.