Susan Pascocello is a seasoned executive and leader with over 30 years of professional experience in both private and public sectors, including 25 years focused on international development. She has global experience on how organizations navigate geopolitical environments and craft solutions to identify and address risks. Her experience has enabled her to develop skills relating to operating in complex countries, as well as governance, regulatory and environmental issues. She has a reputation for operational excellence and innovative strategic thinking, demonstrating the highest levels of commitment to all she undertakes and the people she serves.
Susan is currently the General Counsel of Chemonics International, Inc., a consulting company with 6,000 employees and operations in over 100 countries focused on sustainable development. As a primary advisor to the CEO and the Board of Directors, she applies well-honed corporate governance acumen and innovative strategies that effectively steer the Company through anti-terrorism, OFAC and UN sanctions regimes; organizational restructurings and diverse acquisitions ($25 million); and impactful climate financings ($250 mil) to achieve its bold growth strategy. Susan transformed corporate governance at Chemonics by better delineating the Board’s role vis-à-vis management. She manages a legal budget of over $6 million.
As the General Counsel (Acting) for four years during her time as senior Deputy General Counsel at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), she provided integral legal counsel across five USAID administrators and two presidential administrations. She oversaw all legal matters affecting USAID’s 10,000 global employees and an annual appropriation of over $40 billion. She led more than 130 attorneys located in Washington, D.C. and nearly 40 missions worldwide, provided legal advice that forwarded USAID’s mission and priorities, and enabled USAID to achieve major U.S. government programmatic goals. As an innovator, she structured novel implementing mechanisms for USAID’s ground-breaking Global Development Lab and groundbreaking public-private partnerships, including the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis & Malaria.
Susan has in-depth experience in risk and crisis management due to the fluid operating environments and crisis situations arising where her clients operate. As USAID General Counsel (Acting), she established and led the Agency’s initiative to address the existential threat of sexual misconduct in the international development sector. She brought together diverse parties to develop concrete actions to address sexual misconduct, including new regulatory requirements for partners regarding monitoring, training, reporting and reference checks.
Susan excels at creating innovative approaches to address intractable issues. In 2019 at Georgetown Law, she launched the Law of International Development Initiative, a unique public-private partnership that served as a hub for innovative solutions to international development challenges and worked to train development law leaders. At USAID, she was selected from the U.S. government Senior Executive Service cadre to serve on the White House Advisory Group on the Reform of the SES and co-chaired the Retention and Development Subcommittee. She led the Subcommittee to develop recommendations that she presented to President Obama, including streamlining the SES application process to attract private sector executives, requiring percentages of SESers detailed to the private sector, and updating professional development plans to facilitate and enable succession planning.
With considerable non-profit Board experience and training, Susan is a member of the Governance Committee of the Coalition for Racial & Ethnic Equity in Development after working to establish it as a nonprofit. She also recruited a new Executive Director during her Board service for the Alzheimer’s Association of the National Capital Area.
Susan has received numerous high-profile awards during her career including the DC Bar’s 2022 Rosenberg Award for Excellence in Government Service. She earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia and her Juris Doctor degree with honors from Georgetown University Law Center. She continues to serve as an adjunct professor and member of the Law Alumni Board at Georgetown Law.