Cheryl Mills is Senior Vice President and Secretary of New York University. As Secretary of the University, she is the principal liaison to the University Board of Trustees.

Mills served as Deputy Counsel to President Clinton, where she supervised 35 attorneys and staff. She gained national prominence for her defense of President Clinton during the 1999 Senate impeachment trial.

Mills' legal experience also includes serving as Associate Counsel to the President, as Deputy General Counsel of the Clinton/Gore Transition Planning Foundation, and as an associate at the Washington, D.C. law firm of Hogan and Hartson, where she represented various school districts seeking to implement the promises of Brown v. Board of Education.

From 1999-2001, Mills was Senior Vice President for Corporate Policy and Public Programming at Oxygen Media.

From 1990-1999, Mills co-founded and worked with DCWorks, a non-profit organization devoted to the academic enrichment and interpersonal development of underprivileged high school students of color. In 1999, DCWorks merged with the SeeForever Foundation in support of the Maya Angelou Public Charter School. In presenting her with the 1999 Susan B. Anthony Achievement Award, President Clinton described her as "[a]n eloquent and effective champion of equality in education, she has opened the doors of higher education for under-privileged youth."

Mills serves on the Boards of the SeeForever Foundation, National Partnership for Women and Families, the Leadership Conference for Civil Rights Education Fund, the Jackie Robinson Foundation, the Center for American Progress and the William J. Clinton Presidential Library Foundation. She also serves on the Board of Directors of Cendant Corporation.

Mills received her B.A. (1987) from the University of Virginia and her J.D. (1990) from Stanford Law School, where she was elected to the Stanford Law Review.