Susan Hassan is a trusted partner and strategic advisor to boards of directors, C-Suite executives, and entrepreneurs building some of the most notable companies in the financial services, energy, biotech, consumer products, and technology sectors. Susan specializes in navigating complex business challenges, leading and executing strategic transactions, and addressing complex corporate governance and regulatory matters. She brings together deep transactional M&A expertise, coupled with extensive private equity and venture capital investment experience.
Susan recently founded Sea Dune Partners to provide capital and strategic advice to early stage companies in a variety of sectors. Prior to founding Sea Dune Partners, Susan was a partner with Valor Equity Partners, a private equity firm with over $4 billion under management, focusing on tech-enabled growth companies, including SpaceX, Addepar, Brightloom, Fooda, and Manduka. In addition to leading firm-wide management and strategic planning, Susan focused on investment prospect generation, structuring, and execution, and served on portfolio company boards and the firm’s investment committee.
Prior to joining Valor, Susan was a corporate partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP. During her nearly 20-year career with Skadden, she specialized in mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance and strategic advice matters for Fortune 500, middlemarket, emerging growth, and family-controlled companies. Susan’s clients included CME Group, Sara Lee Corporation, Amicus Therapeutics, WEC Energy Group, and various S.C. Johnson Family Companies. Susan served as a hiring partner in the Chicago office, where she focused in particular on firm efforts to foster diversity and inclusion.
Susan has served as an invited lecturer on corporate transactions at Harvard Law School and the University of Chicago Law School. In 2009, the Aspen Institute named Susan a Henry Crown Fellow. She is a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.
Susan currently serves on the Board of Directors of CARE. Susan formerly served on the Board of Trustees of Equality Now, where she chaired the Board of Directors. She has also served on the boards of directors of The Clean Energy Trust, where she served as Lead Director, and the Women’s Sports Foundation. Susan served a Mayoral appointed board member of the Chicago Public Library. She is a member of the Economic Club of Chicago and a former board member and member of The Chicago Network. Susan received a B.A. from the University of Michigan and a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School. She is fluent in Arabic.