Following my stint in federal service, I sought new learnings and experiences and found a home in the adjacent field of philanthropy, first at the Ford Foundation. Working at an institution that is well-aligned with my aspirations for social justice, I learned how a mature and well-honed private foundation with deeply considered best practices operates. I developed an appreciation for the role of private giving in creating positive change, and the important place of legacy philanthropies within the ecosystem. As a generalist, I was involved in all general counsel matters other than employment law, and I also put my old corporate transactional experience to use in helping document the foundation’s endowment and impact investments.

My next full-time position was at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, an extremely dynamic and in some ways still nascent west-coast philanthropy, very different from Ford. Taking the job, I was fulfilling two professional fantasies–working in science and on the west coast (albeit remotely). As exempt organizations counsel, I helped manage tax law issues arising from the Initiative’s complex and dynamic operations spanning multiple entities, as well as structured and negotiated cutting-edge biology and AI projects with domestic and overseas research institutions. The tax issues were often more complicated and specialized than those at Ford, and I learned what it can be like to have living donors whose focus may change over time.

The 2024 U.S. Presidential election has resulted in a lot of changes in the United States and the world. So many values that I hold dear are in jeopardy. Recognizing that my deepest personal beliefs and professional goals could be better aligned, I left CZI to launch my own law practice in the Fall of 2025.

After a longer-than-expected stint at the law firm of Cleary Gottlieb in New York and Hong Kong doing capital markets, work for governments, and some mergers and acquisitions, I served for six years as a foreign service attorney at the U.S. Agency for International Development (R.I.P.) in Washington, Islamabad, Delhi, and Kathmandu.  As general counsel to USAID Missions overseas, I helped structure and negotiate billions of dollars in U.S. foreign assistance, also overseeing compliance and overseas giving and operations issues.  Serving in these countries, understanding U.S. and local political and legal contexts, and meeting grantee staff and beneficiaries in situ gave me special insight into the complex process of grantmaking and implementing grant projects, at both small and large scales. In my first year I was excited to participate in the White House process leading to President Obama’s Memorandum on International Initiatives to Advance the Human Rights of LGBT Persons, which I then helped implement at USAID.