Aaronson Susan

Susan Aaronson is Associate Research Professor at the George Washington University Graduate School of Business and the Elliott School of International Affairs. She is also the 2009-2010 Policy Research Scholar at GWU. Aaronson is affiliated with the Institute for International Economic Policy and the Institute for Corporate Responsibility. Until July 2006 she was Senior Fellow and Director of Globalization Studies at the Kenan Institute, the Washington branch of the Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina. (The Washington office is now closed)

Aaronson is a frequent speaker on public understanding of globalisation
issues. She was a regular commentator on “All Things Considered” in 1994-1995, “Marketplace” from 1995-1998, and “Morning Edition”, 1998-2001. She has also appeared on CNN, the BBC, and PBS to discuss trade and globalisation issues. She is the author of six books and numerous articles on trade, investment, global corporate social responsibility, accountability, business and human rights and other globalisation issues. Her books include “Trade Imbalance: The Struggle to Weigh Human Rights in Trade Policymaking” (Cambridge U Press, 2007), “Trade and the American Dream” and “Taking Trade to the Streets: The Lost History of Public Efforts to Shape Globalization”. Aaronson has also written two primers on trade: “Trade is Everybody’s Business” for high school students and “Are there Trade Offs When Americans Trade?” for adults. These books relate trade to citizens’ daily lives and their many roles as citizens, producers, consumers and friends of the earth.

Aaronson received her doctorate in economic history from Johns Hopkins University and a Master of International Affairs from Columbia University. She has also been a Guest Scholar in Economics at the Brookings Institution (1995-1999).

Aaronson serves on the Advisory Board for Business-Human Rights and has been a pro-bono advisor to the UN Special Representative on Transnational Corporations and Human Rights, and the Congressional Human Rights Caucus. In recent years Aaronson has consulted for the ILO, the World Bank, Free the Slaves, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, the Stanley foundation, several corporations and the governments of Canada, Belgium and the Netherlands, among others.