Meghna provides overall strategic leadership and ensures the effective governance and management of CESR. She is an international human rights lawyer and an expert on economic, social, and cultural rights. Meghna has a track-record of enabling various organizations to develop new and innovative areas of research, investigation and advocacy which have resulted in impactful national, regional, and global campaigns. Meghna has spent over two decades working with communities to challenge the impact of unjust economic policies across a wide array of issues. This experience is key to ensuring that CESR can have the greatest impact, connect local struggles with their systemic causes, and build collective power for a Rights-Based Economy. Before joining CESR, Meghna was employed at NGOs and academic centers in India, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. She worked at Amnesty International for over a decade, including as the Director of Global Issues and Head of Economic, Social and Cultural rights. She has also been an expert consultant for various organisations and her recent work has focused on the climate crisis and energy/just transition. She is a qualified Indian lawyer who holds a BA LLB (Hons) degree from the National Law School of India University, Bangalore, and BCL and MPhil in Law degrees from the University of Oxford, where she was a Radhakrishnan Chevening Scholar. She is a Fellow of the Nottingham Human Rights Law Centre.

Allison leads on the design and implementation of CESR’s organizational strategy. This includes building effective systems and processes; developing strategic partnerships; and fostering a culture of learning across the organization. Her work supporting rights claiming through innovative research and creative advocacy equips her with valuable experience to transform CESR’s goals into concrete objectives and actionable plans. Allison first joined CESR in 2010 as a research fellow, working on a joint project with the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights. In previous positions, she worked with the Australian Human Rights Commission in Sydney and the National Institutions Unit of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva. Allison is a Senior Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity. She holds an MSc in Inequalities and Social Science from the London School of Economics, LLM from Columbia University Law School, and BA/LLB from the University of New South Wales.

Saswati oversees and provides strategic direction on CESR’s financial health, operational infrastructure, and the implementation of our Embodying Equity and Justice strategy, ensuring CESR’s values are reflected in all aspects of organizational culture and practice. Her background in Business Administration, Women’s Studies, and executive leadership allows us to rely on solid infrastructure to strengthen our work, expand our reach, and embody our values. Before joining CESR, Saswati worked with Red Hook Initiative and the NYC Alliance Against Sexual Assault. She holds an MS in Women’s Studies and an MBA from the University of Massachusetts, and is a certified nonprofit accounting professional.

Maria oversees CESR’s programmatic work and team and leads our collaborative efforts to advance a Rights-Based Economy. Her experience of working over the last fifteen years on the right to education, privatization, and tax justice in various countries is invaluable for our efforts to build bridges between movements and groups working on human rights, economic and climate justice. Before joining our team, Maria coordinated the Tax and Education Alliance, a partnership of international and regional tax justice and education constituencies. The Alliance aims to make a transformative breakthrough in the domestic financing of public education through progressive tax reforms and builds members’ capacities to undertake collaborative research and advocacy. Maria has previously worked for ActionAid International, the Right to Education Project, Human Rights Watch, and the Universities of London (Birkbeck) Roehampton, and Bielefeld. She holds a Ph.D. in Education and Human Development from Bielefeld University, an MSc in Human Rights from the London School of Economics,  an LLM in Fundamental Rights from Universidad Carlos III, and a Diploma in Education from UC Berkeley.

Mahinour coordinates CESR’s work in South West Asia and North Africa. Her work focuses on fostering partnerships and expanding the toolkit of methods shared among the human rights, economic justice, and environmental justice communities and she contributes to CESR’s work on global economic governance. Her previous experience working at different human rights organizations in Egypt, doing national and international research and advocacy on debt, development, and environmental justice, among others, aids us in creating strong strategic alliances in the region. Before joining CESR, Mahinour worked as a Senior Programs & Research Officer at the Law & Society Research Unit at American University Cairo, where she helped build the Unit's strategy and oversaw the implementation of its work on law, society, and human rights in post-revolutionary Egypt. She holds a BA in political science and an MA in international human rights law from the same university.

María Emilia coordinates the Principles and Guidelines Initiative, part of our work on human rights and fiscal policy in Latin America. Her previous experience working in strategic litigation and budget analysis for social, cultural, and economic rights, allowed CESR to co-create a compendium of principles that summarize the human rights’ standards applicable to fiscal policy around the globe. Prior to joining CESR, she worked for ACIJ in Argentina, and has also worked as a consultant for different public institutions and NGOs, on matters of transparency, accountability, and economic and social rights. María Emilia holds a law degree from University of La Plata, and postgraduate degrees in Constitutional Democracy (University of Genoa) and Administrative Law (University of Buenos Aires). She also graduated from Columbia Law School’s LLM., where she was a Human Rights Fellow & Fulbright Scholar.

Alina’s focus is on deepening and expanding CESR’s engagement on environmental and climate justice issues. She helps to align our efforts for a Rights-Based Economy and better global economic governance with climate justice perspectives and principles, building bridges with partners and allies in the field. Her experience in advocacy, feminist participatory action research, and indigenous people’s rights facilitate CESR’s efforts to shed light on the interconnectedness of the climate and human rights crises. Before joining CESR, she worked with Public Services International (PSI) in Nepal. Alina holds a MA in Governance, Politics, and Public Policy from the University of Sheffield and an MA in Sociology from Tribhuvan University in Nepal.

Rafael leads our work on global economic governance. This includes our research and advocacy to advance human rights-based global tax and sovereign debt reforms. He has an extensive research trajectory at the grassroots and policy level, documenting the effects of political, socioeconomic and environmental policies on peasant, indigenous, and urban collectives. His experience as a social anthropologist working with local communities and movements to research the impact of natural resource governance, environmental, energy and tax policies, and extractive industries in the Andean region is invaluable for our work. Rafael is able to link people’s lived experiences of inequalities with international agendas around tax, debt, climate and development. Before joining our team, Rafael worked for the Group of Analysis for Development, a leading Think Tank based in Lima, and the NGO consortium Propuesta Ciudadana. He holds a BSc in Anthropology from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru and an MSc in Inequalities and Social Science from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is an Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity.

Ohene provides research and advocacy support across several CESR projects, with a particular focus on embedding human rights into agendas for economic transformation and strengthening our collaborative work around assessing rights fulfillment. Ohene’s background in law, journalism and his knowledge of critical race theory and intersectionality boost our efforts to transform current narratives around the economy and dismantle the inequalities that sustain them. Before joining CESR, Ohene was a Law Clerk at South Africa’s Constitutional Court and a fellow at Sonke Gender Justice where he engaged in advocacy related to gender-based violence drafting releases, making parliamentary submissions, engaging in strategic litigation, and facilitating workshops. He also worked as a writer for Ground Up (a news website that covers stories on human rights and social justice issues in South Africa). He is a qualified attorney from the University of Cape Town (2013) and recently completed an LLM at UCLA with specializations in Public Interest Law and Policy and Critical Race Studies.

Auska manages the narratives and messages by which CESR communicates its work around the globe. Her previous experience in creating communication strategies for social and political reforms in Latin America strengthens CESR’s mission to envision a new economic system through the power of stories. Before joining us, Auska served as general coordinator and communications manager at the NGO Ciudadanía Inteligente, she worked as a researcher on journalism and media practices for Universidad Católica de Valparaíso and TVN, and as a reporter at Radio Cooperativa. She holds an MPhil in Sociology of Media and Culture from the University of Cambridge, an MSc in Democracy and Comparative Politics from University College London, and a BA in Journalism (Universidad Católica de Chile).

Mariana creates narratives and outputs that bridge the gap between economic policy and human rights in Latin America, for the Initiative for Human Rights in Fiscal Policy (which CESR coordinates). Her previous experience in media and strategic communications for human rights issues boosts CESR's efforts to tell compelling stories that can drive systemic change. Before joining us, Mariana worked at the newspapers El Espectador and El Tiempo in Colombia, and also with our allies at Dejusticia. Mariana specialized in social communication, with a focus on communication for development and international journalism, at Universidad de La Sabana (Bogotá), and she’s currently pursuing a master’s in Public Health at Universidad de Los Andes.

Rebecca manages CESR’s development plan, constantly strengthening our fundraising efforts, and plays a key role in the implementation of our monitoring, learning, and evaluation framework. She received a Bachelor's degree from SUNY Albany, where she majored in Sociology and minored in English, and a Master's degree in Sociology from the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Brooklyn College, where her studies focused on gender.