Michele S. Warman

Board Vice Chair and Chair Elect. Experienced Practitioner in Residence, Columbia Law School

Michele S. Warman currently serves as experienced practitioner in residence for the Davis Polk Leadership Initiative at Columbia Law School. Previously, Ms. Warman served as executive vice president, chief operating officer, general counsel, and secretary of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She led the foundation’s overall operations and legal affairs, including finance, grant management, and human resources, and was secretary to the Board of Trustees. Ms. Warman worked closely with the foundation’s president, board, and staff in the day-to-day management of the foundation and in setting overall direction. Ms. Warman received a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University in 1982, where she received the M. Taylor Pyne Honor Prize, the university’s highest undergraduate distinction; a master’s degree from the University of Oxford, which she attended as a Rhodes Scholar; and a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School in 1988, where she was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. Prior to joining the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 1999, Ms. Warman was an associate at the law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell and a law clerk at the U.S. Court of Appeals, DC Circuit. At Davis Polk, she represented Fortune 500 companies in litigation and investigative matters and provided counsel to corporate boards. In her pro bono practice, she represented civil rights groups in amici briefs before the U.S. Supreme Court and indigent clients in litigation disputes. Ms. Warman has been honored as one of New York’s Outstanding Women of the Bar by the New York County Lawyers’ Association. Ms. Warman is a board member of Princeton University’s Center for Jewish Life, and a past member of Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public & International Affairs’ Advisory Council and Princeton’s Alumni Council’s Executive Committee and Committee on Academic Programs. She serves on a variety of fellowship selection panels, including the Rhodes Scholarship, Schwarzman Scholars, and Schmidt Science Fellows, and on the Rhodes Development Committee. Ms. Warman is admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Southern District of New York, Eastern District of New York, New York, Massachusetts, and Washington, DC, Bars.