Profile

Nathalie Bernasconi-Osterwalder, LL.M. (Georgetown University Law School), is a senior international lawyer and heads the Economic Law & Policy Programme of the International Institute on Sustainable Development (IISD). In this role, she oversees IISD's work on Investment; Sustainable Public Procurement and Infrastructure Finance; and Voluntary Sustainability Standards. She works with developing country governments across Africa, Asia and Latin America in relation to bilateral and regional investment treaty negotiations, investor-state contracts, model investment treaties and foreign investment laws. Ms Bernasconi has extensive legal, policy, and training experience in the area of international trade, investment, sustainable development, human rights, international environmental law and arbitration.

She previously worked as an attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law in Washington and Geneva, where she also managed the office. Earlier, she was a fellow at the International Institute of International Economic Law at Georgetown University Law Center where she worked with Professors Edith Brown Weiss and John H. Jackson. For several years Ms Bernasconi worked in Hanoi, Vietnam, for a legal reform project of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and for the Australian law firm Phillips Fox. In Switzerland Ms. Bernasconi is admitted to the Bar of Basel and has worked for the Justice Department, Berne, in the Section for International Law.