Hani Khalil

About Hani Khalil

Alignment is a principle you apply every day, more than a goal you achieve, and you get to alignment by putting it into action, leading with transparency, adapting, then delivering. I bring this practice to everything I do: as an attorney, a teacher, a writer, and a board leader. I began my career at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP in corporate M&A, performing due diligence across a wide range of industries, and building a solid foundation in transactional rigor, analytic precision, and complex deal structures. After a number of years in this space, I transitioned into a firmwide role supporting S&C’s global contract and outside counsel guideline negotiation process. As one half of a two-person team, I steward the firm’s operational and reputational risk footprint, leveraging partner subject matter expertise and tracking evolving compliance issues - from AI usage to diversity reporting - to ensure that every contractual engagement reflects firm requirements, client expectations, and evolving legal and regulatory regimes. I manage up systems that allow the firm to navigate friction nimbly, preserving clarity and operational integrity, and mitigating risk exposure, across the organization: a true S&C generalist, in the very best sense of the term. As Chair of the New York Public Radio Community Advisory Board I led a transformation of our geographic and demographic profile, redefining our listener conversations around community, cohort, and unmet needs, and integrating our mission into NYPR’s broader hyperlocal-forward strategy. As a Director of the Montauk Club I was responsible for restoring trust to our most critical external stakeholder relationship, after near foreclosure, and returning the Club to financial stability post-pandemic. At The Writers Studio, where I studied under Pulitzer Prize winner Philip Schultz, I approach teaching as a method of guided self-insight towards getting students to ask a completely different set of questions about themselves when they set out to write. There is no such thing as \"nailing it” in this framework, only opportunities to uncover the stakes of your own material, go fearlessly to where the heat is, and discover the language that helps take you there. My own criticism and prose have been published in CultureBot, Baraza, Muftah, Arab Stages, Epiphany, and Anomaly. I have volunteered my time as a monitor for lawyers in crisis with the New York City Bar Association Lawyers Assistance Program, a submissions reviewer for Bellevue Literary Review, and a voter protector in the State of Georgia for every election since 2020.

Experience

1. Assistant Manager - Global Contracts and Client Compliance

   Sullivan & Cromwell LLP

   Jan 2024 — Present · New York, NY, US

   Generalist Attorney responsible for facilitating review and execution of every vendor engagement of the firm, globally, across every department. Working with outside counsel, insurance consultant, subject matter experts, partners, and business leads to minimize or mitigate firm risk exposure in every contractual engagement, across all departments and business engagements of the firm. Archive and track vendor precedents to ensure previously negotiated terms carry from one vendor engagement to the next. Assist Client Compliance process with tracking of key terms and finalizing outside counsel guidelines for every client relationship of firm.

Education

• University of Wisconsin-Madison

  Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), International Relations and Affairs

  1996 — 2000

• The American University in Cairo

  non-degree, Study Abroad (focus in Arabic and Development Studies)

  1998 — 1999

• Rutgers Law School

  JD

  2002 — 2005

• Middlebury College

  N/D, Intensive Arabic

  2010 — 2010