Melinda Campos
United States Agency for International Development
2021 fellow
Ms. Campos is an accomplished attorney, leader, and international law expert with over 16 years of experience.
Ms. Campos joins us from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) where she serves as an Attorney-Advisor in the Office of the General Counsel and provides legal support for the agency’s Relief, Response and Resilience operations across the world.
Prior to joining USAID, Ms. Campos served as an Assistant Regional Counsel and a Deployable Field Counsel for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) where she provided legal guidance to FEMA’s command staff during response and recovery operations during federally-declared disasters and emergencies across the country.
Ms. Campos also had the opportunity to complete a successful detail assignment as Deputy Legal Adviser/Ethics Advisor to the Executive Office of the President’s National Security Council (NSC) where she provided ethics and administration support to NSC leadership and 400 staff.
Prior to joining the federal government, Ms. Campos spent 6 years in Afghanistan serving as a Lead Justice Advisor for the U.S. Department of State-International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Bureau’s Justice Sector Support Program (JSSP) and the Justice Center in Parwan’s National Security Court where she provided rule of law training, managed international teams of lawyers, and collaborated with foreign government counterparts on case management operations. In addition to her international work, Ms. Campos served as a Public Defender for the State of Wisconsin for four years.
She earned her J.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School and her B.A. in Law & Society from American University.
As a WHLDP Fellow, Ms. Campos is assigned to the Sharing Quality Services/New Pay CAP Goal, which is establishing the new federal payroll system.
