Senior Vice President, Programs and Operations
EARTHDAY.ORG
Susan Bass is an environmental and public interest attorney and executive with several decades of experience in capacity-building, protection of natural resources, clean energy, civic participation, promotion of human rights, and advancement of women, both in the United States and abroad.
Susan is currently the Senior Vice President of Programs and Operations at EARTHDAY.ORG where she has worked since 2005. EARTHDAY.ORG is a non-profit organization whose mission is to diversify, educate and activate the environmental movement worldwide. It is the world’s largest recruiter to the environmental movement, working with more than 150,000 partners in over 192 countries to drive positive action for the planet. As a member of the organization’s senior management team, Susan devotes her time to strategic planning, project management, policy and legal analysis, capacity-building, fundraising, grassroots organizing and coalition building, strategic communications messaging, and creating private-public partnerships. She also serves as in-house general counsel and manages pro bono counsel relationships on legal issues with a wide variety of external entities.
Prior to joining EARTHDAY.ORG, she served as Director of the Inter-American Program at the Environmental Law Institute for 16 years where she presented educational workshops and events for judges, prosecutors, congressional representatives and citizen activists in over a dozen countries in the region, produced research and policy reports on cutting-edge sustainable development issues and supervised a Visiting Scholars program. Earlier in her career she worked for Simpson, Thacher & Bartlet, LLP in New York and Dow, Lohnes & Albertson in Washington, D.C., specializing in corporate, banking and securities law.
She worked as a volunteer attorney with the International Human Rights Law Group,
receiving a Pro Bono Service Award in honor of her efforts and interned with the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe. She graduated cum laude with a JD from Georgetown University Law Center, served on the Georgetown Law Journal and graduated cum laude with a BA in History from Yale University.
Susan and her husband Bill have restored and reside part time in a historic farmhouse in Calvert County on the banks of the Patuxent River and are the parents of three adult children.