About Us
PARTNERS
Amarah Sedreddine represents and counsels a wide variety of organizations, including both public charities and private foundations, as well as mission-driven for-profit businesses, at all stages of development and operation. She provides comprehensive legal counsel and strategic guidance to her clients, advising on a wide range of tax, regulatory, governance, employment and general corporate and transactional matters. She is informed in this work by her extensive expertise advising nonprofit organizations developed over the course of her career in the public sector. Prior to her work as a founding partner of Sedreddine & Whoriskey, LLP, Amarah served as outside corporate counsel to Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, a philanthropic organization that administers over $200 million annually in grantmaking, worldwide, as special counsel and assistant general counsel at the Vera Institute of Justice, and as associate general counsel at The New York Community Trust. She commenced her legal career in private practice at Morrison & Foerster, LLP and Mann Legal Group, LLC, where she focused her work on tax-exempt organizations.
Amarah graduated from Princeton University in 1998 and New York University School of Law in 2004, and returned to NYU Law in 2012 to serve as co-faculty of its Business Law and Transactions Clinic, supervising the work of third-year law students providing pro bono legal services to tax-exempt organizations. In January of 2023, after serving as co-chair of the New York City Bar Association’s Nonprofit Organizations Committee from 2019-2022, Amarah was invited to chair Nonprofit New York’s Government Relations Council, in which capacity she engages with law- and policymakers on matters of relevance to the nonprofit sector. She also lectures frequently on topics related to her practice. Amarah is admitted to practice in New York.
Susan Whoriskey has served as legal advisor to a variety of nonprofit organizations, including both public charities and private foundations, as well as mission-driven for-profit businesses. In her longstanding private practice, first as a solo practitioner and now as a partner of Sedreddine & Whoriskey, Susan offers clients the benefit of her broad range of experience on a diverse scope of subject matter, including corporate formation and recognition, preservation and conversion of tax status, establishing corporate governance and compliance practices, corporate dissolution and the distribution of assets, application of donor restrictions, misuse of corporate assets, and the use of alternative funding streams, including earned income and program related investments. She started her career as an associate at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, after serving as a law clerk to the Hon. Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum, a federal district court judge in the S.D.N.Y.
Susan graduated summa cum laude from Yale College in 1989, and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1993. Susan is admitted to practice in New York.
Yael Fuchs believes that a culture of good governance is integral to an organization’s ability to accomplish its important work, and she is committed to assisting organizations in creating and fostering the practices that form that culture – from strong policies and procedures, to effective training programs and responses to crisis. Before joining Sedreddine & Whoriskey, Yael served as the Co-Section Chief of the Charities Bureau Enforcement Section, where she oversaw the efforts of the Charities Bureau to investigate and litigate violations of New York laws governing not-for-profits. Yael also worked with the sector to improve compliance and governance. In her decade-plus role as a charities regulator, Yael led such notable matters as the investigation and litigation against the Trump Foundation, which resulted in the dissolution of the Foundation, admissions of breaches of fiduciary duty and court-awarded damages of $2 million, which were distributed to other charities; leading the Bureau’s oversight of charitable fundraising in the wake of disasters; and successful mediation of long-running litigation between two charities that resulted in the conservation of an architecturally significant property and major savings of legal fees.
Yael also served as the President of the National Association of State Charities Officials from 2019 through 2022, an adjunct professor at the Cardozo School of Law from 2015-2018, and is widely recognized as a nationwide leader in the field of charities regulation, speaking frequently on state charities regulation and good governance. Yael graduated summa cum laude from Washington University in 1998, and from Columbia University School of Law in 2005. She started her career as an associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP. She is admitted to practice in New York.
