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SIPA Faculty
Elaine Gail Suchman
Law School
Adjunct Lecturer of International and Public Affairs
Phone: 212-854-3213
gs2166@columbia.edu
Biography:
Prof. Gail Suchman has over twenty-five years of experience in all facets of environmental and energy law and policy, and is currently in private practice. In addition to teaching at SIPA, she also teaches at Columbia Law School and is Senior Legal Advisor to the Urban Design Lab for Sustainable Development at Columbia's Earth Institute.
Gail began her legal career as an enforcement attorney at the United States Environmental Protection Agency, Region V, in Chicago. She spent over ten years as an Assistant Attorney General in the Environmental Protection Bureau at the New York State Attorney General's Office and served for three years as Regional Director for the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. For six years, as Senior Environmental Counsel for New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, Gail represented low-income communities in litigation and transactional matters involving environmental protection, land use and community economic development, and co-authored Brownfields Basics: A Guide to Rebuilding Our Communities. In 2003, Gail was invited to South Africa to advise the government on legislative, regulatory and enforcement matters. Gail received her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University in Environmental Sciences & Engineering and her law degree from Boston College. She sits on the Executive Committee of the New York State Bar Association's Environmental Law Section, is Legislative Liaison for the Energy Committee of the New York City Bar Association, and chaired the Environmental Subcommittee of the City Bar Association's Special Task Force on World Trade Center Redevelopment. She is also on the Board of Directors of Environmental Advocates of New York and the Law Committee of the Municipal Arts Society. Gail is a member of the Mayor's Task Force on Energy and the Department of Environmental Conservation's Environmental Justice Advisory Group. In 2000, she received the Wasserstein Public Interest Law Award from Harvard Law School and, in 2003, was designated a Senior Specialist by the Fulbright Scholarship Board and Council for International Exchange of Scholars.