Sara Ponessa was named executive vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary in June 2025. She first joined FMC in 2012 as senior business counsel to the Alkali, Peroxygens, and Lithium divisions, and multiple corporate functions. In 2018, she was appointed as the first general counsel and secretary of Livent, managing the company’s initial public offering and its 2019 spinoff from FMC. At Livent, Sara oversaw the successful merger between Livent and Allkem which created Arcadium Lithium, where she served as general counsel and secretary. Prior to FMC, Sara held senior counsel positions for AstraZeneca and Wilmington Trust. She also served as Wilmington Trust’s vice president, risk management and compliance section manager. Earlier in her career, she practiced corporate law at Saul Ewing and was a judicial clerk for the New Jersey Supreme Court.
She earned two Bachelor of Arts degrees in Political Science and Spanish from Rutgers College and her juris doctorate degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where she served as a senior editor of the Penn Law Review. Sara is a member of the Board of Directors of Habitat for Humanity Philadelphia.
