Biography
Xiaoyu Zhang is an Adjunct Professor and the Director of Partnerships of Vermont Law School. Her research focuses on comparative environmental law in the area of environmental public interest litigation, natural resources damages, watershed protection, and environmental impact assessment. For programmatic work, Xiaoyu is actively involved in promoting judicial exchanges and cooperative programs on environmental rule of law and environmental public interest litigation between the judiciaries and governmental organs of China and the United States.
As the Director of Partnerships, she is responsible for cultivating and maintaining partnerships between Vermont Law School and other educational institutions, corporations, NGOs, and governmental organizations within the U.S. and worldwide, with the aim to create and deploy partner engagement strategy to market, fit complement and maximize existing academic expertise and the mission of VLS. Before she took this position, she used to work as the assistant director of the U.S.-Asia Partnerships of Environmental Law at Vermont Law School, where her duties including developing and overseeing legal programs and cooperation activities with Chinese governmental, judiciary, educational, and NGO partners. She also used to work as the lawyer for ClientEarth Beijing office doing studies and managing projects on China’s environmental governance, procuratorial environmental public interest litigation, and watershed protection.
Before she stepped into environmental law field, she has 6 years of experience as the legal counsel for one of China’s largest state-owned mining company in Beijing, and as a corporate lawyer at an international law firm based in Hongkong.
She holds Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of English Literature from Beijing Foreign Studies University, an LL.M. from NYU Law School, and an LL.M. from Vermont Law School. She is also a registered attorney in New York State.