Rhonda S. Binda

Profile

Rhonda Binda is the Firm's Senior Governmental Relations Liaison, and heads our Government Relations Practice.  She draws upon her years of government service to assist the Firm’s clients in finding creative solutions for their issues.  Rhonda works with our clients and the other lawyers in the Firm to identify legislative and regulatory solutions to client issues, and to implement them in a cost-effective and expeditious manner.

Rhonda has a long and distinguished history of public service, most recently having launched and served in the Obama Administration as Deputy Director for the US Department of State’s Global Intergovernmental Affairs Division in the Office of the Secretary Hillary Clinton. During her years at the Department, she worked with mayors, governors and other local government officials in countries such as India, China, Russia, Brazil, South Africa, and Nigeria, to connect them to their counterparts in the U.S. to build the capacity of local leaders. Her focus has been in identifying where best practices can be shared to strengthen and deepen bilateral relations in the areas of economic development, education, energy, and the environment. She collaborated with the United Nations and multilateral organizations like the OECD, APEC, ASEAN and PIF, and banks including the Export-Import Bank, TDA, OPIC, IDB, AFDB, ADB and the World Bank, on state and local projects specifically related to infrastructure.

Prior to that, she was Special Assistant to the Director of the White House Office of Public Liaison under President Bill Clinton and was a Legislative Assistant for the Senate Committee on the Judiciary for Chairman Senator Pat Leahy.

In between her tours with the Government, Rhonda practiced with law firm Alston & Bird, LLP, in its Global Corporate Strategies Group.

Rhonda received her Juris Doctor from the Georgetown University Law Center, and her Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Public Policy from Duke University, with a minor in African-American studies.  She was also a Lord Rothermere Scholar at New College, Oxford University.

She is admitted to practice in New York and the District of Columbia.