The Honorable Manisha Singh is founder and principal of Sunstone Strategy Group. She serves on the Board of Trustees of the University of Florida Levin College of Law, the Board of Advisors of the American Foreign Policy Council and as a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue University. She most recently served at the U.S. State Department as the Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs. She was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the first woman in history to lead the bureau.
While Assistant Secretary, she served for a period concurrently as Acting Under Secretary for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment. Her prior experience in the executive branch was serving as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for trade policy. She began her public service roles on Capitol Hill. She served as Deputy Chief Counsel, and later Senior Professional Staff to the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
Prior to public service, Manisha practiced at law firms including Reed Smith and Squire Sanders & Dempsey. She also worked as an Executive Director at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. She was the President's Nominee to be U.S. Ambassador to the OECD in 2020. She received the Outstanding Alumni Public Service Award from the University of Florida College of Law, the Champion Women Award from Independent Women's Forum, the Distinguished Travel Champion Award from the U.S. Travel Association and a Meritorious Honor Award from the U.S. State Department. Manisha earned a B.A. with honors from the University of Miami in 1991 at the age of 19 and a J.D. from the University of Florida Levin College of Law in 1994. She studied at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands and she earned an LLM in International Legal Studies at the American University Washington College of Law in 1996. She passed the bar exam at age 22 and she has been admitted to practice in Florida, Washington D.C. and Pennsylvania. She has a TS/SCI security clearance. She speaks fluent Hindi and conversational Spanish.