Samantha R. Duncan

Samantha Duncan is a member of Ogletree Deakins’ Cross-Border Practice Group, which provides labor and employment advice to U.S.-based clients with operations around the world.

Drawing on her extensive experience advising global organizations through expansions, reorganizations, and reductions in force, Samantha provides pragmatic, business-focused guidance that is tailored to each client’s unique risk tolerance. She counsels on the full lifecycle of building, maintaining, and reshaping global workforces, with a particular focus on incorporating both local legal requirements and business priorities into workforce decision-making. Samantha also advises on investigation planning and execution, multi-jurisdictional fact development, and the crafting of targeted communications and effective remedial actions.

Before joining Ogletree Deakins, Samantha served as in-house counsel for several U.S. government agencies, including the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for Global Media. In her prior roles, she advised on employment issues arising across multiple jurisdictions in Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America in support of embassies, news bureaus, and other foreign offices. She also supervised a team of labor and employment litigators and assisted her clients with navigating complex cultural and cross-border issues within their diverse global workforces.

In addition to her cross-border experience, Samantha is a skilled litigator; she has represented employers in federal court, before congressional committees, in labor arbitrations, and before administrative agencies like the National Labor Relations Board, the Federal Labor Relations Authority, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Merit Systems Protection Board. Despite her litigation success, Samantha emphasizes preventative legal counsel when it serves the client’s objectives, and she has helped clients avoid litigation through strategic advice on workplace investigations and responses to government inquiries. Finally, Samantha has substantial traditional labor experience that includes advising on collective-bargaining-agreement negotiations, administration, and interpretation, as well as union elections, strikes, unfair-labor-practice charges, and grievances.

Samantha is an active member of the Association of Croatian American Professionals and, in her spare time, advances the best interests of abused and neglected children in the Virginia foster care system by volunteering as a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) with Fairfax CASA.