Page, Susan Denise, 1964-

Susan Denise Page (born 1964) is an American diplomat, lawyer, and academic. She notably served as U.S. Ambassador to South Sudan (2011-2014).

A 1982 alumnae of Homewood-Flossmoor High School in Flossmoor, Illinois, Page went on to receive an AB from the University of Michigan in 1986 and a JD from Harvard Law School in 1989. She then spent a year in Nepal on a Rotary International fellowship researching children’s and women’s rights issues. Page worked briefly as a lawyer in private practice and then began her career at the State Department in 1991, working on arms deals as an attorney-adviser for politico-military affairs in the Office of the Legal Adviser.

Page served as a Foreign Service Officer from 1993 to 2001, working as a regional legal adviser for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Kenya (1993-1995) and Botswana (1995-1998) and as a political officer in Rwanda from 1999 to 2001. Later, she was senior legal adviser and chief of the Justice and Human Rights Unit for the United Nations Development Programme in Rwanda.

From 2002 to 2005, Page was the legal advisor to the Intergovernmental Authority on Development Secretariat for Peace in the Sudan. This was followed by her assignment as director of the Rule of Law and Judicial System Advisory Unit at the UN Peace Support Mission to the Sudan (2005-2007). Prior to her nomination, Page was Regional Director for Southern and East Africa at the National Democratic Institute and then Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of African Affairs.

As the first U.S. Ambassador to South Sudan, Page played a crucial role in navigating the instability and eventual eruption of civil war in the country and providing foreign policy options for change. After her ambassadorship, she went on to serve as chargé d’affaires to the U.S. Mission to the African Union and Acting Permanent Representative to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. Appointed to the position on October 19, 2011, Page presented her credentials on December 8 and left post on August 23, 2014.

In 2017, Page was appointed assistant secretary general and special representative of the UN Secretary General for the UN Peacekeeping Mission for Justice Support in Haiti. Prior to that assignment, she served as deputy special representative of the secretary-general responsible for the rule of law at the predecessor mission in Haiti. In 2018, the UN Secretary General appointed Page as his special advisor on rule of law, Global Focal Point (GFP) Review Implementation. After briefly working for the Stevenson Group as a senior consultant in Washington, DC, Page served as a Visiting Professor at the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame for the 2019-2020 academic year. In June 2020, the University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy announced Page was joining their staff as a Professor of Practice in International Diplomacy and would be helping to build the Weiser Diplomacy Center. She also will serve as a Professor from Practice at the Unbiversity of Michigan Law School.

Page and her husband, Damien Coulibaly, have one son.