Cheryl Packwood is a visiting assistant professor of law at Albany Law School where she is teaching International Business Transactions and Public international Law.  She is completing research on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and its application to her varried experiences in Cote d’Ivoire.  

She was the Overseas Representative for the Government of Bermuda and Director of the Representative Office in Washington, D.C. She was responsible for the Americas and Asia with a mandate to build out the foreign commercial and trade component of Bermuda’s foreign representation abroad.  Ms. Packwood was the former CEO and Deputy Chairman of Business Bermuda, where for more than six years she was at the forefront of developing the marketing and business development strategy globally for Bermuda and the financial services sector.  As spokesperson and ambassador for business, Ms. Packwood represented the financial services sector and business before Ambassadors, governors of central banks, government ministers and officials worldwide.  She traveled with the Premier of Bermuda and its ministers routinely on trade missions and business development tours. Ms. Packwood maintained and broadened US and UK/European business for the jurisdiction in key sectors including, asset management, trusts, insurance and reinsurance, together with new business development in Islamic Finance, the Middle East and Gulf and Asia. Prior to joining Business Bermuda, Ms. Packwood held senior positions as the General Manager of Digicel Bermuda and the Director of Legal, Enforcement and International Affairs at the Bermuda Monetary Authority.

Ms. Packwood has extensive international experience having worked in Africa and North America.  She held senior positions with Western Wireless International where she was the Managing Director of Cora, SA in Cote d’Ivoire.  As the first woman managing director of a cellular telphone company on the African Continent, she was at the forefront of developing GSM cellular telephonie in Africa.  Before joining Western Wireless, Ms. Packwood built a thriving legal practice at N’Goan, Asman et Associés in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire in international commercial and financial law as well as telecommunications and oil and gas.

She currently sits on the board of CG Coralisle Group International, an international insurance company headquartered in Bermuda with offices through the Carribean.  She served for eight years on the Rhodes Scholarship Board in Bermuda.  She was a founding member of the Bermuda chapter of the International Women’s Forum and currently is a member of the Washington, D.C. chapter.  She has given numerous speeches in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Europe and the Americas on topics, including women’s rights, international financial centers, doing business in Africa and historical topics involving Bermuda and the United States.

Ms. Packwood graduated from Yale University with a Bachelors Cum Laude and then Harvard Law School with a Juris Doctorate with honors on her third year thesis. She finished her LLm in Banking and Finance from Boston University School of Law in May 2023 with a 4.02 cumulative average. She is married with three sons and a newly adopted shelter cat.