Susan Chase is a visiting clinical assistant professor of law in the Community Enterprise Clinic at the University of Michigan. She has more than 25 years of experience addressing social injustices as an attorney in the Community Development Project of the Legal Aid Society in New York City, where she represented entrepreneurs, religious entities, and community organizations seeking to improve and empower disenfranchised and marginalized communities.

Chase has extensive experience in affordable housing policy, financing and development, corporate law, and nonprofit law. Before joining Michigan Law, she taught the Nonprofit and Small Business Law Clinic at New York Law School. Her academic research agenda focuses on spatial displacement and the racial wealth gap.  

She developed and implemented Women Empowered for Success, a financial literacy program for women in public housing, and Leadership Lunch, an inclusive leadership training program for Legal Aid staff. She also co-founded a fundraising organization to support the last Catholic elementary school in Harlem.

As an advocate for equitable development and community sustainability, Chase was chosen as one of America’s Leaders of Change by the National Urban Fellows, was a United Way Senior Fellow in Nonprofit Management at The Marxe School of International and Public Affairs, and currently serves as a representative on the United Nations Economic and Social Council.  
 

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Education

  • Howard University, BS, microbiology
  • University of Texas at Austin, JD

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