Carole Ann Spink • United States of America

Carole Ann Spink is a legal scholar, law professor, and former international employment law partner with more than two decades of experience. She is an Assistant Professor of Law at Barry University’s Dwayne O. Andreas School of Law, where she teaches Contracts, Business Organizations, and Employment Law. Her professional background includes partnership roles at Baker McKenzie and McDermott Will & McDermott (Now McDermott Will ^ Schulte), where she handled cross-border employment aspects of mergers and acquisitions. She earned a J.D. with High Honors from Chicago-Kent College of Law and an M.Sc. in International Relations from the London School of Economics.

Carole Spink began her higher education at the University of Central Florida, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in English in 1992. During this time, she was inducted into Sigma Tau Delta and served as an Academic Peer Advisor in the School of Communications.

She continued her legal education at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Chicago-Kent College of Law, receiving her Juris Doctor degree in 1997 with High Honors and ranking ninth in a class of 335 students. She was elected to the Order of the Coif and recognized as a Kent Legal Scholar. While in law school, she served as a Notes and Comments Editor for the Chicago-Kent Law Review and completed a judicial externship in the summer of 1995 with a United States District Court judge in the Northern District of Illinois. In 2003, she earned a Master of Science degree in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Her legal career began in Chicago at Jones Day, first as a Summer Associate in 1996 and then as an Associate from 1997 to 1999. She joined Baker McKenzie in 1999, returned in September 2006, and became a Partner in January 2011. From 2011 to 2019, she helped lead the firm’s North America Global Employment and Labor Law practice and served as North America Editor for The Global Employer.

Spink remained active in pro bono and social impact work, including leading a major international project supporting women’s empowerment in Nepal, which received the 2010 Corporate Pro Bono Partner Award from the Pro Bono Institute.

In 2019, she joined McDermott Will & McDermott as a Partner, later serving as Co-Chair of the firm’s COVID-19 Task Force and founding author of its Pandemic Resource Center.

She transitioned to academia in August 2024 as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Barry University and was appointed Assistant Professor of Law in August 2025. She previously taught at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law from August 2004 to May 2006. Admitted to practice in Illinois in 1997 and Florida in 2022, Carole Ann Spink continues to focus on domestic and cross-border employment law.