Susan Kling Finston works with clients ranging from start-ups to Fortune-100 companies on legal, transactional, policy and "doing business" issues relating to the innovative life sciences.

Services include:

• Advice on strategic partnering, with benchmarks including successful matchmaking between a leading Pakistani company and a Fortune-500 pharmaceutical company
  
  

• Capacity building/technical assistance on issues including biotechnology, intellectual property (IP), technology transfer, capacity building, and trade policy for BRICs and other emerging markets, companies, governments and non-government organizations (NGOs)
  
  

• Briefings, case studies and related resources on technology transfer and innovation under the auspices of BayhDole25, a non-governmental organization registered as a 501(c)(3) non-profit with the U.S. Government.

From 2005 through 2009, she served as founding Executive Director of the Access and Benefit Sharing Alliance (ABSA), an advocacy organization representing innovative companies in multilateral negotiations related to genetic resources and traditional knowledge through mutually beneficial Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) policies. In addition, she has been working with biotechnology pioneer Dr. Ananda M. Chakrabarty to establish Amrita Therapeutics, a start-up biotech company which recently received a two-year grant from the Indian Department of Biotechnology (DBT) to support collaborative research to develop promiscuous cancer therapies from microorganisms.

From 2000 - 2005, Susan led the international research-based pharmaceutical industry’s multi-year advocacy on patent reform in India and other emerging markets as Associate Vice President for Intellectual Property, Middle East, Africa and South Asian Affairs at PhRMA. She worked closely with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to ensure their successful entry into the WTO, and served as a cleared advisor on international IPR and related trade issues to the U.S. Government.

From 1986 through 1999, Susan worked for the U.S. Government, including 11 years in the U.S. Foreign Service, with assignments in London, Tel Aviv and Manila, where she specialized in intellectual property, trade and development issues. She served in the judicial branch of the U.S. Government for two years as a Motions Clerk at the federal Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

Susan graduated from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, with a joint J.D./M.P.P. degree and holds a B.S. in Philosophy from the University of Michigan Honors College. She lives with her family in Washington, D.C.