Christel Y. Tham is a member of the firm’s International Dispute Resolution Group and Special Situations team in New York. Her practice focuses on public international law, international arbitration, and international litigation.
Ms. Tham first joined Debevoise in 2014. From 2018 to 2021, she was Legal Counsel at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. At the PCA, Ms. Tham acted as Tribunal Secretary to, and supported, tribunals in inter-State, treaty, and contract arbitrations involving States, and handled appointing authority requests under the UNCITRAL and PCA rules.
Ms. Tham has represented clients in international commercial and investment arbitrations administered by major arbitral institutions, including the ICC, ICSID, LCIA, in addition to ad hoc arbitrations governed by the UNCITRAL Rules.
Ms. Tham serves as a rapporteur to the ICCA Panel of Experts to Develop a Paris Agreement Conciliation Annex as well as the ICCA-ASIL Task Force on Damages in International Arbitration and participated in the UNCITRAL Working Group III sessions on ISDS reform.
Ms. Tham holds a J.D. from New York University of School of Law in 2014, where she was an Articles Editor on the NYU Journal of International Law and Politics, a Fellow in the International Law and Human Rights Program, and an active member of the Philip C. Jessup International Moot Court Competition team. She received her B.S.F.S., magna cum laude, in International Political Economy, from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in 2009.
Ms. Tham is a member of the Bar of New York. She is fluent in Mandarin and conversational in French.