Suzanne Goldberg is the Herbert and Doris Wechsler Clinical Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. She is one of the country’s foremost experts on gender and sexuality law and a leading advocate and attorney for the LGBTQ+ community. She co-founded the Law School’s Center for Gender and Sexuality Law and established Columbia Law School’s Sexuality and Gender Law Clinic when she joined the faculty in 2006. From April 2024 to January 2025, Goldberg served in the U.S. Department of State as senior advisor to the undersecretary for civilian security, democracy, and human rights. Prior to that, she served as senior advisor and legal expert to the special envoy to advance the human rights of LGBTQI+ persons at the U.S. Department of State. She began her federal service in January 2021 as a deputy assistant secretary in the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education.

Goldberg launched her career as an advocate at Lambda Legal, the country’s first and largest legal organization focused on achieving full equality for LGBTQ+ people. While at Lambda, she worked on immigration, employment discrimination, and family law matters as well as two cases that became cornerstone gay rights victories at the U.S. Supreme Court: Lawrence v. Texas, the landmark decision that struck down Texas’s sodomy law, and Romer v. Evans, which overturned an anti-gay Colorado constitutional amendment. She has continued this advocacy as a professor at Columbia, filing briefs in nearly every marriage equality case in the United States. Goldberg holds a JD from Harvard University.