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Board

Imad Sabi
Chair
Senior Program Officer, Education Support Program, Open Society Foundations (OSF)
 
Imad Sabi works for the Open Society Foundations'  Education Program.  Prior to this, he worked for ten years at Oxfam Novib's Global Programs Department in the Netherlands, supporting an extensive network of global civil society actors.  He previously served as Senior Program Officer for Emergencies in Africa and the Middle East for the Dutch development agency ICCO and has worked in Central Asia as a consultant.  He has been active over many years in the right to education movement, serving on the Board of the Global Campaign for Education, and is a Founding Board member of the Arab Campaign for Education for All.  He currently represents the private foundations constituency on the Board of the Global Partnership for Education, where he also serves on the Grants and Performance Committee, having represented civil society on the same committee for four years.  Imad is a member of the Board of the Bank Information Center (BIC).  Previously he was a member of the International Council of the World Social Forum and a founding member of the Board of Engaged Donors for Global Equity (EDGE).
 
 
Karin Lissakers
Vice-Chair
Former President,  Revenue Watch Institute

Karin Lissakers was founding president of the Revenue Watch Institute, a nonprofit organization that promotes the transparent, accountable and effective management of oil, gas and mining revenues to help countries realize the full economic benefit of their natural resource wealth.  She served as US executive director on the board of the International Monetary Fund from 1993 to 2001 and as deputy director of the Policy Planning Staff of the US State Department. She was also staff director of the economic policy subcommittee of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. She has also held senior posts in academia and several think tanks, as well as advising George Soros on issues of globalization. She is a former senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and headed the International Business and Banking Program at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. Her research and writing have focused on the interplay of international business and US foreign policy. She is the author of 'Banks, Borrowers and the Establishment 'about the 1980s international debt crisis. Her articles have appeared in Foreign Policy, the Journal of International Affairs, The New York Times, the Washington Post and other publications. 
 
 
John T Green
Treasurer and Secretary
Former Professor of Professional Practice/Nonprofit Management, The New School
 
 
John has over thirty years of senior financial management experience in education and nonprofit organizations, including the New York City Department of Education (Deputy Executive Director of Budget Operations and Executive Director of the Office of Charter Schools), City University of New York (Assistant University Budget Director) and Human Rights Watch (Director of Operations). Most recently he served as the Associate Dean of the Milano School  and Vice Dean of The Schools of Public Engagement at The New School. He was a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in Cote d’Ivoire and has served on the board of directors at Gay Men’s Health Crisis (New York), the Betty Ford Center (California) and Isabella Geriatric Center (New York). John is a graduate of Maryknoll College (Illinois) and has an MA from Columbia University in higher education administration. 
 
 
Lilian Gonçalves-Ho-Kang-You
Former State Councillor for the Council of State, Netherlands
 
Lilian Gonçalves-Ho-Kang-You is a former State Councillor at the Raad van State, The Hague. She is a member of the Netherlands Financial Investments board and vice-chair of the supervisory board of Radboud University and Radboudumc University Medical Centre. Ms. Goncalves-Ho-Kang-You is also a member of the committee to provide individual compensation to Holocaust survivors transported by the Netherlands national railroad and Chair of the advisory commission to government on policy regarding Dutch colonial collections. She is chair of  the Stichting Juridische Samenwerking Nederland Suriname, a foundation that promotes democracy and rule of law in Suriname.
 
 
Roshmi Goswami 
Feminist, Human Rights Activist and Researcher
 
Roshmi Goswami is a  feminist, human rights activist with decades of work on women’s rights especially pioneering work on women in armed conflict situations using the CEDAW framework. She was a Program Officer with the Ford Foundation, New Delhi office for several years supporting cutting edge work on women’s rights in India, Sri Lanka and Nepal and regional women’s human rights networks in the Asia Pacific region. Associated with several human rights and feminist organizations she  is the present  Co-Chair of South Asians for Human Rights (SAHR), a South Asian human rights platform conceived and founded by some of the most eminent human rights defenders of the region. Roshmi was also a Governing  Board member of  the US based Urgent Action Fund, which supports women human rights defenders across the world,  founder and Board Member of Urgent Action Fund-Asia Pacific, Advisory Board member of LSE’s UKRI GCRF Gender, Justice & Security Hub, core group member of the South Asia feminist network – SANGAT, founding member of the National Alliance of Women (NAWO). She  is presently based in North East India and  an  independent researcher and consultant on  women ‘s human rights , gender justice, peace and conflict transformation. She has  been  involved in work  on  sexual violence in conflict zones, with women ex combatants in Nepal and  North East India and is presently part of a research project on the gendered dimensions of violent extremism.
 
 
Miloon Kothari 
Independent Expert on Human Rights and Social Policy
Senior Advisor, MIT Displacement Research Action Network (DRAN)

Based in New Delhi, India, Miloon Kothari is an independent expert on human rights and social policy. He served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing from 2000 to 2008, and Founder and Executive Director of the Housing and Land Rights Network (HLRN), India from 1999 to 2013. He was also co-founder and convenor of the Working Group on Human Rights in India and the UN (WGHR) from 2009 to 2014. He is the President of UPR Info, the Geneva-based organization which provides capacity-building for more effective use of the UN Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR). Mr Kothari was appointed Dr Martin Luther King Visiting Scholar at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2013. From 2013 to 2015, he guided the development of the MIT Displacement Research and Action Network (DRAN), and taught graduate courses at the MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning.
 
 
Joe Oloka-Onyango 
Professor of Law, Human Rights & Peace Centre (HURIPEC), School of Law, Makerere University
 
J. Oloka-Onyango is a Professor of Law at the Human Rights & Peace Centre (HURIPEC), School of Law, Makerere University, and has taught at various schools including Harvard, Oxford, Cape Town, NYU and the United Nations University in Tokyo, Japan.  He has been a member and former chair of several local, regional and international human rights organizations and was the Special Rapporteur on Globalization and Human Rights of the United Nations (UN), Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights from 1998 to 2002. Mr Oloka-Onyango is actively involved in the struggle against sexual bigotry and minority victimization and was the lead petitioner in the successful challenge to the Anti-Homosexuality Act in Uganda. His most recent publications are “Debating Love, Human Rights and Identity Politics in East Africa: The Case of Kenya and Uganda” (2015) and When Courts do Politics: Public Interest Law and Litigation in East Africa (2017).
 
 
Rosa Pavanelli 
General Secretary, Public Services International
 
Rosa Pavanelli has been General Secretary of the global union federation Public Services International (PSI) since 2012. PSI represents 20 million public services workers in 150 countries, championing human rights, advocating for social justice and promoting universal access to quality public services. Ms. Pavanelli is currently Chair of the Council of Global Unions and in March 2016 was nominated as Commissioner on the UN Secretary-General's High-Level Commission on Health Employment and Economic Growth (UN ComHEEG), representing the trade union movement, health workers and public services. She is also a member of the United Nations High-level Experts and Leaders Panel on Water and Disasters and of the Cornell University International Labour Relations Worker Institute Advisory Council. She also collaborates closely with the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT).
 
Crystal Simeoni
Director, Nawi - Afrifem Macroeconomics Collective
 
Crystal Simeoni has 10 years of experience working on macro-level inequalities. She currently works on women’s rights and macroeconomic policy at continental and global policy spaces. She champions for and works with women at all levels to be able to influence, analyze, deconstruct and reconstruct macroeconomic policy decision making through an intersectional Pan African
Feminist lens. She is currently an Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity.
 
Carla García Zendejas
Director People, Land & Resources, Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL)
 
Carla García Zendejas is an environmental and human rights attorney from Mexico with more than twenty years of experience. As Director for the People, Land & Resources Program at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) she leads legal strategies and campaigns to strengthen law and policy in development finance institutions, international treaty bodies and trade agreements to ensure the protection of human rights and the environment and to achieve corporate accountability. Carla accompanies communities in seeking remedy through their litigation and complaints at accountability mechanisms and international arbitral tribunals. While serving as Senior Officer for Human Rights & Extractive Industries at the Due Process of Law Foundation she trained indigenous communities across the Andean Region on their right to free, prior and informed consent. She was co-founder and staff attorney at the first public interest law organization in Tijuana, Mexico providing free legal services to women workers in the maquiladora industry. During her early work, Carla led broad environmental justice campaigns on the U.S.-Mexico border and was instrumental in founding organizations which promoted sustainable energy infrastructure, water quality, government transparency and accountability. As a Fulbright Scholar, she earned an LL.M. from the Washington College of Law at American University.
 
 

 

Advisory Council

Philip Alston
UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights

Geoff Budlender 
Constitutional and Human Rights Lawyer

Manuel José Cepeda
Jurist, Universidad de los Andes

Sakiko Fukuda-Parr 
Professor of International Affairs at the New School, New York

Paulina Garzon
Director, China-Latin America Sustainable Investments Initiative

Richard Goldstone 
Honorary President, Human Rights Institute of the International Bar Association

Chris Jochnick 
Chief Executive Officer, Landesa
CESR co-founder

Irene Khan
Director-General, International Development Law Organization
 
Elizabeth McCormack 
Adviser, Rockefeller Family & Associates
 
Carin Norberg
Former Director, Nordic Africa Institute
 
Roger Normand
Founder and Executive Director, Justice Trust
CESR co-founder
 

Alicia Ely Yamin
Senior Fellow at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, and Senior Advisor on Human Rights, Partners in Health

Sarah Zaidi
CESR co-founder