Eleanor Lumsden

Eleanor Lumsden is a California attorney, Emerita law professor in business, and Visiting Professor at Tulane University School of Law. With over a decade of teaching experience, she teaches Privacy in the Digital Age; Law, Bias, and Professional Identity; Torts; and Technology, Business & Human Rights in the Emerging World.

As a PhD Candidate in Law at the NOVA School of Law in Lisbon, Portugal, Lumsden has not only served as a guest professor but also become a member of two esteemed research centers—the NOVA Centre for Business, Human Rights and the Environment and CEDIS, the Center on Law and Society. Her international experience, combined with her degrees from New York University and Princeton University, gives her a unique global perspective that enriches her academic and professional endeavors. She also graduated from the Emma Willard School in Troy, New York.

She moved to California in 1998, where she spent a year working for The Junior Statesmen Foundation as the Urban Expansion Program Director. She began her legal career with a judicial clerkship with a federal judge in the United States District Court in the Southern District of California. Then, she practiced corporate law at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP in San Francisco. Before entering legal academia, she worked in development at Stanford Law School.

As a scholar, Lumsden's research at the intersection of business, technology, and social justice is driven by her deep passion for financial inclusion. Major themes in her work include migration, globalization, and dislocation. A Fulbright Scholar, her work has been featured by BBC World News and USA Today. As an entrepreneur and consultant, she provides practical insights to law firms and law schools on inclusion, leadership development, and effective communication. Jamaican by birth, a New Yorker at heart, and Californian by adoption, Lumsden now calls Portugal home.