Deborah Enix-Ross is Senior Advisor to the International Dispute Resolution Group and a member of the firm’s Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Council.
Prior to joining the firm, Ms. Enix-Ross served as a Senior Legal Officer and Head of the External Relations and Information Section of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Arbitration and Mediation Center in Geneva, Switzerland. Before joining WIPO, Ms. Enix-Ross was the Director of International Litigation for the Dispute Analysis and Corporate Recovery Services Group (DA&CR) of Price Waterhouse, and, before that, served, for seven years, as the American representative to the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) International Court of Arbitration.
The U.S. Departments of Commerce and State appointed Ms. Enix-Ross as one of the original eight U.S. members of the trilateral NAFTA Advisory Committee on Private Commercial Disputes. She is a member of the Advisory Committee of the New York Law School Alternative Dispute Resolution Skills Program. She is also a former member of the Advisory Board of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration, the ADR Advisory Board of the International Law Institute, and the Board of Directors of the American Arbitration Association.
Ms. Enix-Ross is President of the American Bar Association (ABA). She is a past Chair of the ABA House of Delegates and a former Chair of the ABA Center for Human Rights and Chair of the Center’s Business and Human Rights Project. She is also a former Chair of the ABA Section of International Law, where she was the Goal IX Officer and co-founded the Women’s Interest Network (WIN). As the WIN Chair, Ms. Enix-Ross was instrumental in working with the International Bar Association to create their Women’s Interest Group (WIG). Ms. Enix-Ross participated in the inaugural meeting of WIG. During her tenure as Chair of the International Law Section, she led an International Legal Exchange (ILEX) delegation to Ghana (where she delivered an address commemorating the country’s 50th anniversary of independence), Liberia and Sierra Leone. Ms. Enix-Ross is a Vice President of the World Justice Project, a former Chair of the ABA’s Section Officers Conference, and a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation. She is a former Vice Chair of the International Bar Association (IBA) Bar Issues Commission and a past ABA representative to the IBA.
Ms. Enix-Ross was named on the 2022 Forbes 50 Over 50: Impact list. She is recognized for being “a change maker who uses her empathy, insight and savvy to make the world a better, more equitable place.”
Ms. Enix-Ross joined the firm in 2002. She received her J.D. from the University of Miami School of Law in 1981, a Diploma in Comparative Law from the Parker School of Foreign and Comparative Law of Columbia University in 1989 and a Certificate in International Law from the London School of Economics in 1979.