Samantha Franks is an associate at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, LLC. There, she specializes in international trade, including sanctions designations, export controls, and national security law. She has served as a pro bono attorney for the Human Trafficking Institute, where she advised on matters of best practices for forced labor prevention abroad, and she currently serves on the working group for the Department of Health and Human Services Office on Trafficking in Persons.

Sam is a two-time Fulbright grantee to the United Kingdom. In 2014, she was selected for the undergraduate UK Summer Institute at Bristol University, where she studied the history of the transatlantic slave trade. In 2016-2017, she obtained her master’s at Durham University as a Fulbright postgraduate fellow. She obtained a law degree from the University of Michigan Law School, a Master of Science in International Conflict Prevention from Durham University, and degrees in English and Political Science from the University of Missouri.