Cheryl Mills served as Chief of Staff to Secretary Hillary Clinton and Counselor to the U.S. Department of State, where she managed the foreign policy and operational priorities for the $55 billion agency that employs more than 20,000 officials across 180 countries. She supervised key policy areas of importance to the Secretary, including the Administration’s $3.5 billion interagency global hunger and food security initiative and its diplomacy and development efforts in Haiti, including $1.25 billion in post-earthquake investment. In Haiti, Mills structured and led the implementation of an $800M public-private partnership in northern Haiti, resulting in the development of one of the largest industrial parks in the Caribbean with an anchor tenant on track to deliver 20,000 by 2016.
Prior to joining the Department, Mills served as Senior Vice President for Administration and Operations and as General Counsel at New York University, one of the nation’s largest private universities with a $2.2 billion dollar annual operating budget and more than 50,000 students attending 18 schools and colleges in New York City and around the world in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and South America. During her tenure, Mills convened strategic partners and negotiated the structure, framework, terms and conditions for the University’s campus in the United Arab Emirates—one the first full degree-granting American campuses abroad.
Mills came to New York to join Oxygen Media, a cable and internet start-up, where she served as Senior Vice President for Corporate Policy and Public Programming. She previously worked in Washington, D.C., where she served as Deputy Counsel to the President at the White House. Prior to joining the White House as Associate Counsel to the President, she served as an associate at the law firm of Hogan and Hartson, where she represented school districts seeking to implement the promises of Brown v. Board of Education.
Mills received her Juris Doctor degree from Stanford Law School, where she was elected to the Stanford Law Review. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Virginia, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa.
Over the course of her career, Mills has served on the boards of Orion Power and Cendant (corporate) as well as the National Partnership for Women and Families, Leadership Conference for Civil Rights Education Fund, Jackie Robinson Foundation, Center for American Progress, SeeForever Foundation and the William J. Clinton Presidential Library Foundation (not-for-profit).
