Professor Deborah Burand, Director of the International Transactions Clinic, brings to the ITC nearly 25 years experience in cross-border transactions, bank regulation, and microfinance. In addition to her teaching responsibilities, she recently was appointed Topic Leader for Finance for this year's Clinton Global Initiative (2009).

Burand has divided her career to date nearly equally among the microfinance sector, the U.S. government, and private practice. Prior to joining the faculty, Burand worked for seven years in the microfinance sector. Most recently she served as the Executive Vice President, Strategic Services, of Grameen Foundation (a global microfinance network). Burand also is a co-founder and prior President of Women Advancing Microfinance (WAM) International.  She also sits on the investment committee of a $75 million microfinance investment fund managed by Deutsche Bank, and on the Advisory Council of MicroVest, a specialized fund investing in microfinance.

Prior to entering the microfinance sector, Burand held several senior internationally-focused positions in the U.S. government. She worked at the Federal Reserve Board from 1989-1994 as a senior attorney in the international banking section of the Federal Reserve Board’s legal division, and at the U.S. Treasury Department from 1998-2001, first as the senior attorney/adviser for international monetary matters, and then in a policy position as the senior adviser for international financial matters.

She also worked for nearly seven years as an international corporate attorney at Shearman & Sterling, a law firm in New York. During her time at Shearman & Sterling, Burand provided pro bono support to Conservation International as it transacted the world’s first debt-for-nature exchange. She also represented bank advisory committees in restructuring the sovereign debt of Brazil, Peru and Vietnam, among others.

In 1993-1994 Burand was an International Affairs Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations.  During her fellowship she was seconded to the International Monetary Fund and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.  She now is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.  She also is a member of the bars of New York and the District of Columbia.

Professor Timothy L. Dickinson '79 is a Business Law Faculty Fellow at Michigan Law, and longtime international transactional lawyer.

Dickinson is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker LLP. He graduated from the University of Michigan law school in 1979 after completing his B.A. in 1975. Professor Dickinson also studied at the Hague Academy of International Law in the Netherlands and L'Université d'Aix-Marseille in France and spent a brief period as an extern in the Office of the Legal Adviser of the Department of State. Following Law School, he earned his LL.M. as a Jervey Fellow at Columbia University, after which he worked in the Legal Service of the Commission of the European Communities in Brussels, Belgium. Dickinson then returned to Washington, D.C., where he practiced with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher for the next fifteen years. He was the Partner-in-Charge of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s Brussels office from 1990 to 1992. Prior to joining Paul Hastings, Mr. Dickinson co-founded a boutique firm in Washington, D.C., serving global clients in the areas of FCPA and Political Risk insurance defense.

Dickinson was an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center from 1983 to 1993, where he taught European Law and International Commercial Transactions. He is currently an adjunct professor at the University of Michigan Law School where he teaches Transnational Law and International Commercial Transactions, and also serves on the Board of the Center for International and Comparative Law. After chairing the ABA Committees on European Law and Foreign Claims, Dickinson served as the chair of the ABA Section of International Law and Practice in 1997-1998. He has been a member of the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law and is currently on the Advisory Board of the International Law Institute and the ABA’s Asia Law Initiative Council. Dickinson also chairs the ABA’s worldwide technical legal assistance activities with the United Nations Development Programme.

Dickinson has been involved in a wide variety of technical legal assistance projects. Through the International Human Rights Law Group, he participated in the development and implementation of the initial election process in Bulgaria in 1990; he and Robert Stein, executive director of the ABA, were the first official ABA delegation to visit Vietnam and work with the Vietnam Lawyers Association; while chair of the Section, Dickinson and then-president Jerome Shestak led a delegation from the ABA to the People’s Republic of China that eventually led to the conclusion of a Memorandum of Understanding between the ABA and the All China Lawyers Association; finally, Dickinson was involved extensively in the ABA’s programs in Cambodia from 1993 to 1998, relating to assistance to the Parliament, the Ministries of Justice and Commerce, and the Cambodian Bar Association. He continues to be involved with a number of programs in ASEAN countries. 

Adjunct Professor Jennifer Drogula is a corporate attorney with experience handling cross-border transactions in more than twenty five countries.  She worked in private practice for almost twenty years, most recently as a partner in the Corporate Department of Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale and Dorr LLP.  She has advised clients in transnational business transactions including mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, venture capital and private equity investments and debt financings. She has also advised fund managers and investors in connection with investment fund formation and operation.  She also has experience in technology transactions, including the licensing and acquisition of intellectual property.  Drogula's pro bono work has included representing social business enterprises, including microfinance institutions.

Drogula is on the Board of Directors of the Grameen Foundation USA, a not-for-profit that fights poverty, principally through support of microfinance and technology solutions.  She taught a course on social business enterprise at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in 2008.  She received her B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin and her J.D. and LL.M. from Duke University School of Law.  She also is a member of the bars of the District of Columbia and New York.

Carl Valenstein, '83, is a domestic and international corporate attorney.  He is currently a partner with the Washington, D.C. law firm Bingham McCutchen LLP.  He focuses on domestic and international corporate and securities, mergers and acquisitions, project development, and asset finance covering a wide range of industries and geographical regions.  He has particular experience in the life sciences, telecom/electronics and cruise line industries and has worked extensively in Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and China.  In addition, he advises clients on international risk management, including compliance with foreign investment review (Exon-Florio), export control and sanctions, anti-money laundering, anti-boycott and anti-corruption (FCPA) laws and regulations.  He has been involved in a number of internal investigations, enforcement cases and dispute resolution proceedings relating to his transactional and regulatory practice.  For many years, he has provided legal services on a pro bono basis to a variety of microfinance institutions and has taught seminars on international transactions and dispute resolution at the International Law Institute and the University of Michigan School of Law.  Carl is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese and conversant in French and Italian.