Susan Pascocello is the General Counsel, Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer and Corporate Secretary of Chemonics International, Inc. She has been with Chemonics since May 2022. An international development executive and lawyer, Susan brings over 30 years of progressive private and public sector legal experience, including over 25 years working in different aspects of sustainable development.
Susan served as USAID's General Counsel (Acting) for four years during her time as Deputy General Counsel (2012-2019) and provided integral legal counsel across five USAID Administrators and Acting Administrators and two presidential administrations. At the time, Ms. Pascocello oversaw all legal matters affecting USAID’s 12,000 global employees and an annual appropriation of more than $30 billion. She led over 130 attorneys located in Washington, D.C. and nearly 40 missions around the world, provided legal advice that forwarded USAID’s mission and priorities, and enabled USAID to achieve major U.S. Government programmatic goals.
In 2019, Ms. Pascocello launched the Law of International Development Initiative (LIDI) at the O’Neill Institute at Georgetown University Law Center. LIDI was a unique public-private partnership that served as an intellectual and practical hub for innovative solutions to development challenges and worked to mentor and train the next generations of development law leaders. Ms. Pascocello continues to be an Adjunct Faculty member at Georgetown Law.
Before joining USAID, Susan was in the Office of International Affairs at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and practiced at the international law firms of Dechert LLP and Curtis, Mallet-Prevost.
Susan serves on the boards of the Society for International Development, the Virginia Hospital Center Foundation and the Georgetown Law Alumni Board. She has a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center and a B.A. from the University of Virginia.