Emily Holland is a member of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett’s Sustainability & ESG Practice, based in the Washington D.C. office, and a five-time Chambers recognized practitioner in Global Business & Human Rights Law (including 2025). She advises the world’s leading business organizations, including financial institutions, private equity firms, public and private corporations and civil society organizations, on novel and complex issues arising from an emerging area of law and regulation, competing stakeholder mandates, and evolving business priorities that impact their ability to compete strategically, shockproof business against disruptions and create long-term value. Her work covers matters relating to ESG and impact investing, sustainable finance debt offerings and credit facilities, securities offerings, mergers and acquisitions, disclosure and reporting, and ESG-related litigation. Emily has extensive experience advising on human rights matters across governance, due diligence, supply chain management, crisis management and remediation, including compliance with trade controls and disclosure and due diligence laws that prohibit certain human rights-related behavior.

In 2024, Emily was appointed to a U.S. State Department-led Federal Advisory Committee on Responsible Business Conduct Subcommittee on U.S. National Action Plan implementation. Prior to joining Simpson Thacher, Emily helped to found or scale-up leading global Sustainability & ESG and Business & Human Rights practices at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and White & Case. She participates in various sustainability and human rights-focused professional associations and is a thought leader on Sustainability & ESG and Business & Human Rights issues. In 2011, Emily co-authored a book on the experience of child soldiers in Liberia and a Liberian woman who became their champion, which was endorsed by Gloria Steinem. Before her career in law, Emily worked in the humanitarian space (writing, shooting and producing content in-country on s humanitarian organization’s efforts to assist refugees and internally displaced peoples across Africa) and in television news (CNN, ABC).

Emily received her J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley – School of Law in 2012, where she wrote for the California Law Review among other journals and interned for California Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno and in the US State Department’s Office of Policy Planning. She received her B.A., magna cum laude, from Princeton University in 2001. She is admitted to practice in New York and the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.