Matthew Cohen

Cohen is a retired member of the U.S. Senior Foreign Service with over 16 years of service at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). He lived and worked eight years overseas as legal counsel in Nairobi, Kenya and Lima, Peru. From 2018 to 2021, Cohen served as USAID's deputy general counsel--the agency's most senior career attorney--where he led a team of 130 attorneys and collaborated closely with both the Trump and Biden administrations, as well as Congress. From 2021 to 2025, he served as a director in Israel, responsible for designing and implementing a $1.2 billion U.S. Government development program in the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza; in addition to a $500 million Israel-Palestinian peace initiative. At Aleshire and Wynder, Cohen represents numerous public agencies throughout California in both litigation and transactional matters; leveraging his extensive international and government experience to provide strategic counsel on complex legal issues.