Robyn is an attorney for the law firm of Thompson Hine. She is a member of Thompson Hine’s Executive Committee, as well as the former Cleveland office Partner-in-Charge, and the former chair of the firm’s Diversity & Inclusion Initiative. She is a partner in the firm’s Real Estate, Construction and Corporate Transactions & Securities practice groups. She focuses her practice on commercial real estate acquisitions and sales, development, financing, leasing
and corporate transactions. Robyn regularly represents and advises real estate investment trusts (REITs), real estate investment funds, public and private real estate development companies, commercial lenders, retailers and other corporations. The coordination of complex transactions, including ground-up development deals and multi-site, multi-state acquisitions and divestitures, are her forte. Her practice has a particular focus on shopping center deals, urban redevelopment projects, manufacturing plant development, hospitality projects and public-private-partnership (P3) transactions. Her practice also focuses on counseling corporations on real estate strategies, dispositions of environmentally contaminated assets, facilities management and domestic sourcing and procurement transactions.
In 1995, Robyn clerked for Justice Albie Sachs on the Constitutional Court of South Africa. From 1991 to 1992, she was a Benjamin Trustman Traveling Fellow in South Africa, where she worked for Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Robyn is currently a member of the board of directors for The City Club of Cleveland, the Diversity Center of Northeast Ohio, the Codrington Foundation, and the Cleveland Foundation African American Philanthropy Committee. She has also served on the boards of Karamu House, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland Housing Network, the George Gund Foundation and the Sherwick Fund. She is a graduate of Cleveland Bridge Builders and Leadership Cleveland. Robyn is also a member of the Cleveland Bar Association and was named a 2018 Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyer, a YWCA Woman of Achievement, Savoy Magazine 100 Most Influential Black Lawyers and a member of Inside Business Power 100 List. She is a member of the LINKS, Inc., a Crain’s Cleveland Business Woman of Note, and a Del de Windt Leadership Award for Civic Engagement, of The First Tee of Cleveland. Robyn was also named a Super Lawyer by the Ohio Super Lawyer Magazine, winner of the Ohio Leadership Excellence Award from the National Diversity Council, a member of Kaleidoscope Magazine’s 40/40 Club.
Robyn is a lifelong resident of the City of Shaker Heights, a graduate of Harvard College and Yale School of . Law. Robyn is married to Bert Smyers and is a mother of three.