General Counsel and Secretary

Michele S. Warman serves as General Counsel and Secretary of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.  Ms. Warman oversees the legal affairs and grantmaking activities at the Foundation.  She works closely with the Foundation’s president, Board of Trustees, and staff in the day-to-day management of the Foundation and in setting overall direction.

Ms. Warman received a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1988, where she was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.  She received an A.B. from Princeton University in 1982, where she received the M. Taylor Pyne Honor Prize, the university’s highest undergraduate distinction, and a B.A. from the University of Oxford in 1985, which she attended as a Rhodes Scholar.

Before joining the 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, D.C. Circuit.  At Davis Polk, Ms. Warman represented Fortune 500 companies in litigation matters, and advised corporate boards on management and legal issues.  Ms. Warman also provided pro bono representation for civil rights groups in amici briefs before the U.S. Supreme Court, and for indigent clients in contract and other disputes.  Ms. Warman was honored as one of New York’s Outstanding Women of the Bar by the New York County Lawyers’ Association in 2004.

Ms. Warman is a member of Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public & International Affairs’ Advisory Council, where she has also served on the Committee on Academic Programs and the Executive Committee of the Alumni Council.  She serves on the Rhodes Scholarship selection committee in New York.  Ms. Warman is admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court, S.D.N.Y., E.D.N.Y, New York, Massachusetts, and Washington, DC Bars.