Mary Noel
Pepys ’78

Mary Noel Pepys has significant years of legal experience in the private and public sectors. Since 1993 she has worked as an international rule of law attorney helping emerging democracies develop justice systems that ensure the basic principles concerning the protection of citizens’ human rights, equal treatment of all individuals before the law, and a predictable legal structure with fair, transparent and effective government institutions, are established. Pepys has worked in over 45 countries, lived five years in former communist countries and two years in Afghanistan where she served as the Justice Advisor at the U.S. Embassy.

Previously, from 1984 to 1993, she worked at Heller, Ehrman, White and McAuliffe and later at her own law firm as a land use attorney. From 1982 to 1984, she served in Rome, Italy as a legal officer for the Multinational Force and Observers, the international peacekeeping force in the Sinai, which oversees the security arrangements of the 1978 Camp David Peace Accords. Prior to that, Pepys worked in Washington, D.C. for Ambassador Daniel J. Terra at the Department of State and for Congressman Henry S. Reuss, Chairman of the Committee on Banking, Finance, and Urban Affairs. She served as a law clerk to Justice Thomas A. Caldecott, Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal. Pepys earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of California Hastings College of the Law.