New York, New York, United States
The Critical Incident Response Section (CIRS) of the Disciplinary Accountability Service (DAS) sits within the Administrative Law Division (ALD) in the Office of Human Resources, Department of Management Strategy, Policy and Compliance (DMSPC/OHR). Within CIRS, I handle a wide range of multi-discipline, highly complex, and often sensitive and/or conflicting legal matters involving issues relating to international, public, private, and administrative law, in order to address critical issues that can have serious reputational risks and/or other risks adversely impacting the Organization’s core values and norms (“critical incidents”). Within that remit, I focus on conducting the disciplinary accountability process, leading in the most serious misconduct cases to the dismissal of UN staff members. Further, I act as legal counsel representing the Organization in major disciplinary appeals of disciplinary decisions before the United Nations Dispute Tribunal (UNDT). In addition, I provide legal advice to Senior Officials on diverse substantive and procedural questions of considerable complexity, which may include those related to administration and management, peacekeeping and other operational matters, separately administered programmes and funds, etc.
Within De Brauw, I focused on complex, cross-border disputes, and litigated such disputes in domestic and international courts and tribunals.
At the University of Groningen, I lectured on European Union law. In addition, I conducted my Ph.D. research on comparative and private international law. I was nominated for law teacher of the year in 2009.
At the International Law Association, I worked on the private international law aspects of human rights litigation. This work served to inform the mandate of Professor John Ruggie, UN Special Representative on business and human rights.
At BIICL, I worked on several European Commission-funded comparative legal research projects. In addition, I set up the Herbert Smith Seminar Series in Private International Law.