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International Women's Human Rights Clinic Alumni
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IWHRC Alumni Many former IWHRC staff and clinic student advocates have pursued careers in international human rights and women’s rights. Still many more remain engaged in the field through pro bono projects, professional bar activities, teaching, op-ed and scholarly writing. We are proud to feature the achievements and interests of our alumnae and alumni. If you would like your bio added to this website, please email us at iwhrc@law.georgetown.edu.
Johanna Bond Johanna Bond’s human rights experience includes substantial travel and collaboration with non-governmental organizations around the world, including attending the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing and being selected as a Senior Fulbright Scholar to conduct research in Uganda and Tanzania. Her research, fact-finding documentation work, and publications have addressed issues including: women’s rights in Africa; domestic violence in Nepal, Cambodia, Ghana, Poland, Bulgaria and Macedonia; sexual harassment in Poland and Bulgaria; maternal mortality as a human rights issue in Uganda and Mexico; trafficking in women; and a variety of issues concerning the United Nations treaty mechanisms. Johanna Bond served as an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Wyoming, where she taught classes in international human rights law, gender and the law, and alternative dispute resolution. She also directed the law school’s externship program. Johanna Bond is now an associate professor of law with the Washington and Lee School of Law in Virginia.
Tzili Mor During her time with the Clinic, Tzili focused on women’s human rights in the areas of HIV/AIDS, housing, property, land, and inheritance, sex-discriminatory customary laws, and gender-based violence. She supervised student-led legal research and fact investigations on the impact of sex and race discriminatory laws in Swaziland, Namibia, South Africa, Ghana, Guyana, Kenya, and the United States. Tzili Mor has extensive experience with UN mechanisms and has engaged in local and international human rights, gender, and rule of law projects conducted in several regions of the world, including with Amnesty International’s Secretariat in London, American Bar Association Central European and Eurasian Legal Initiative (ABA CEELI) based in Central Asia, Mossawa Center in Haifa, the International Program of the Center for Reproductive Rights, and the with Advancing Human Rights Committee of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).
Tamar Ezer While in law school, Tamar served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Human Rights Journal; after law school, she clerked for Justice Dorit Beinisch of the Supreme Court of Israel and Judge Robert Sweet of the Southern District of New York. She received a Fulbright Fellowship to investigate the status of children in Israel and their right to protection under Israeli law. As Teaching Fellow in the Clinic, she supervised student work with partners in the Philippines, Nigeria, Swaziland, and Uganda. Tamar is currently Program Officer in the Law and Health Initiative of the Open Society Institute’s Public Health Program, where she works on international health and human rights issues, including HIV/AIDS and patient care and in East and Southern Africa and the former Soviet Union.
Nancy Kaymar Stafford After practicing with the law firm of Piper Rudnick, Nancy Kaymar Stafford received her Master of Laws in International and Comparative at Georgetown before coming to work in the Clinic. She has worked extensively in the international human rights field, particularly focusing on women's rights issues, including field work in Hong Kong, Ghana, Uganda and Tanzania. She is a member of the New York Bar and the U.S. Supreme Court Bar, and is co-chair of the ABA's Subcommittee on the Rights of Women. She is currently working in the Feminism and Legal Theory Project at Emory University Law School where she also teaches a seminar on topics in religion and international women’s human rights.
Former Clinic Student Advocates Ginna Anderson Ginna Anderson participated in the International Women’s Human Rights Clinic as a 2L in the fall of 2007. She drafted an appellate brief on the constitutional and human rights implications of customary Namibian divorce laws which discriminated against women and placed them at higher risk of contracting HIV from within their marriages. She was later able to intern for the Legal Assistance Centre (LAC), the Clinic’s Namibian partner on the ground, and assist in drafting and submitting a supplementary letter on the experiences of rural, black women in Namibia to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) on behalf of both the Clinic and the LAC. Upon graduation, she clerked for the Honourable Thad Heartfield, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Texas, and is currently a Georgetown Women in Law and Public Policy Fellow for both the International Community of Women Living with HIV and AIDS (ICW Global) and the Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE). She continues to work as an HIV and human rights attorney whose area of expertise includes gender equity, human rights in the health care setting, such as the right to make informed choices about care and treatment, the right to access care in a non-judgmental and completely confidential setting, and the right to enjoy the full spectrum of sexual and reproductive health rights, regardless of one’s sex or sero-status.
Nancy Chi Cantalupo Nancy Chi Cantalupo is an Abraham L. Freedman Fellow at Temple University Beasley School of Law. She was previously Assistant Dean for Clinical Programs at Georgetown University Law Center. Prior to her Assistant Deanship, she combined teaching and administration as Associate Director of the International Legal Studies Program at American University’s Washington College of Law and practiced administrative law with the firm of Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP. She has developed and taught three courses on international women’s human right: “Rule of Law Promotion & Civil Society in China” (an experiential learning course) at Georgetown Law, “International Human Rights of Women” at George Washington University Law School, and “Gender and Global Laws” for Georgetown University’s Women’s and Gender Studies Program. She has also served on the board of the Asian/Pacific-Islander Domestic Violence Resource Project, chaired the board of D.C. Law Students in Court from 2007-2010, and acted as “Faculty Counsel” for student complainants in school disciplinary proceedings involving student-on-student sexual assault and relationship violence. As a student in Georgetown’s International Women's Human Rights Clinic, Ms. Cantalupo worked with a team of students, faculty, and alumnae to conduct a fact-finding mission on domestic violence in Ghana. The report from that mission was subsequently published by The Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law [see Nancy Cantalupo, Lisa Vollendorf Martin, Kay Pak and Sue Shin, Domestic Violence in Ghana: The Open Secret, Geo. J. Gender & L., 531-598 (2006)]. Before and while studying for her Juris Doctorate degree, Ms. Cantalupo was the founding director of the Georgetown University Women's Center- the only university office exclusively devoted to advocating for women students, faculty, and staff on issues such as violence against women, sex discrimination, and women’s health. She received her J.D. cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center and her B.S.F.S. magna cum laude from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. Her publications include “Burying Our Heads in the Sand: Lack of Knowledge, Knowledge Avoidance and the Persistent Problem of Campus Peer Sexual Violence” (forthcoming in the Loyola University Chicago Law Journal, Vol. 43, No. 1, 2011), Campus Violence: Understanding the Extraordinary through the Ordinary, 35 J.C. & U.L. 613 (2009). She is currently writing on theories of third-party, institutional responsibility for private gender-based violence, as exemplified by the “school responsibility” sexual harassment theory of Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 and the international human rights theory of “state responsibility” for violence against women.
Elizabeth Ludwin King Elizabeth Ludwin King is currently an LL.M. candidate at The Fletcher School, studying public international law with a focus on transitional justice and international criminal law. She spent the past three years as the Assistant Director of Boston College's Center for Human Rights and International Justice. In that capacity she engaged in research related to refugees, deportees, and international criminal tribunals. Ms. King has also worked for the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Costa Rica, Human Rights Watch/Americas, and she has done field work on domestic violence in Tanzania. Ms. King has counseled the government of Afghanistan on several issues, including its responsibilities with regards to the International Criminal Court. She has also assisted the American Bar Association in its efforts to monitor the implementation of its detention standards for immigration detainees. Ms. King's current research interests include the relationship between sovereignty and global justice, specifically with regards to international criminal tribunals and post-conflict reconstruction. Ms. King graduated from Duke University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Comparative Area Studies and Spanish/Latin American Studies, and a J.D. degree from Georgetown University.
Lisa Vollendorf Martin Lisa Vollendorf Martin studied domestic violence in Ghana during her semester as a Clinic student and co-wrote a human rights report based on factfinding conducted in collaboration with partner NGO, Law and Advocacy for Women in Africa – Ghana Alumnae, Inc. She returned the next year to supervise students conducting human rights factfinding in Uganda. Lisa now co-teaches the Families and the Law Clinic at Columbus School of Law, Catholic University of America, where she supervises students providing legal services to survivors of domestic violence. Before coming to Catholic University, Lisa was a Staff Attorney and Co-Manager of the Teen Dating Violence Program at Women Empowered Against Violence (WEAVE), which provides a range of legal, counseling, economic and educational services to survivors of domestic violence in Washington, D.C., and a litigation associate at Arent Fox PLLC.
Meghan Rhoad Meghan Rhoad is the United States researcher for the Women's Rights Division at Human Rights Watch (HRW), which she joined in November 2007. She is the author of “Detained and Dismissed: Women’s Struggles to Obtain Health Care in United States Immigration Detention,” a March 2009 Human Rights Watch report documenting dozens of instances in which women’s health concerns went unaddressed by immigration detention facility medical staff, or were addressed only after considerable delays. Before coming to HRW, she was a Women's Law & Public Policy fellow at the National Women's Law Center in Washington, D.C., where she researched federal judicial nominations and analyzed policy developments affecting the economic security of low-income women and their families. Her previous work includes international advocacy projects using the human rights framework to address issues such as reproductive health and gender discrimination. She is a graduate of Harvard University and Georgetown University Law Center. While a student with the clinic, she was part of a team that prepared a brief for Uganda’s Constitutional Court challenging a discriminatory inheritance law.
Paula Skedsvold Paula Skedsvold received a Ph.D in Experimental Psychology in 1993, and a J.D. in May 2005. As a law student at Georgetown, her favorite experience was participating in the International Women’s Human Rights Clinic where she prepared a legal brief for Uganda’s Constitutional Court to challenge discriminatory marriage laws. In Spring 2006, she served as a legal supervisor for the Clinic’s human rights fact-finding investigation in Swaziland. Prior to attending law school, she was a Science Policy Analyst with the National Institute of Health’s Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research. Before joining NIH, Ms. Skedsvold was an American Psychological Association Congressional Science fellow and worked in the offices of Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi and Congressman John Lewis. While on Capitol Hill, she focused on legislation relating to women’s health, HIV/AIDS, environmental justice, and appropriations. She has also served as Scientist in the Public Interest for the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues and as Policy Analyst for The Council of State Governments – Midwestern Office. Ms. Skedsvold currently serves as Executive Director of the Federation of Behavioral, Psychological, and Cognitive Sciences and the Foundation for the Advancement of Behavioral and Brain Sciences.
Jolynn Shoemaker Jolynn Shoemaker is the Executive Director of Women in International Security (WIIS) at the Center for Peace and Security Studies (CPASS) at Georgetown University. Previously, she handled international law and policy issues for the Initiative for Inclusive Security, an initiative of Hunt Alternatives Fund. She served as Country Director in the U.S. Department of Defense, Office of the Secretary of Defense, International Security Policy (Eurasia), where she focused on the Western Balkans region. She was a Presidential Management Fellow (PMF) from 2000-2002. During that time, she was the Regional Advisor for Southern and East Africa at the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, Office of Country Reports and Asylum Affairs. She completed two rotational assignments working as an attorney in the U.S. Department of Defense, General Counsel’s Office for International Affairs. She has published articles and chapters on women and armed conflict, legal reform in post-conflict situations, human rights, and women in peacekeeping. She is a member of the New York Bar. Ms. Shoemaker has a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center, an M.A. from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Security Studies, and a B.A. from University of California, San Diego.
Helki Spidle Helki Spidle has been an Associate Legal Advisor in the Human Rights Law Division, Department of Homeland Security of the Office of Principal Legal Advisor since June 2007. As an Associate Legal Advisor, Ms. Spidle provides legal advice to field attorneys, special agents, other government agencies, and international bodies, on the investigation, litigation, criminal prosecution, and removal of persecutors and human rights abusers from the United States. Ms. Spidle's portfolio includes Central and West Africa. From 2005-2007 Ms. Spidle was a Presidential Management Fellow at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Asylum Division. At USCIS, Ms. Spidle interviewed asylum applicants at the Miami Asylum Office, researched the Americas for the USCIS Resource Information Center (RIC), tracked asylum fraud patterns in the Miami area, and interviewed Burmese refugees at the Mae Sot refugee camp in Thailand. As a law student, in 2005 she was part of a team of four students who researched and authored a country report for the International Women's Human Rights Clinic on Female Genital Mutilation in Uganda. She served in the Peace Corps in Wawaya, Guinea from 1999 to 2001. Ms. Spidle received her B.A. in International Relations from Wellesley College in 1999 where she studied resistance movements, and her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center.
Rachel Taylor Rachel Taylor is the Deputy Director of Georgetown Law's Human Rights Institute, where she is responsible for helping to develop and manage all of the Institute's programs and initiatives. With the Institute's Faculty Director, she organizes and implements major human rights conferences and discussions between human rights leaders and government decision-makers. She also works with students undertaking human rights advocacy projects, advises students pursuing human rights careers, and coordinates a speaker series on human rights topics. In addition, Ms. Taylor is an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown Law, where she teaches a course on Contemporary Issues in Human Rights. Previously, Ms. Taylor was Special Projects Coordinator for the international human rights organization Global Rights, where she was responsible for writing speeches, policy statements, and substantive human rights reports; conducting advocacy outreach; and coordinating human rights panels and other events. She has written about human rights and international law for the United Nations, the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, the Open Society Initiative for West Africa, and World Press Review. She has also co-authored an academic article about the UN Security Council's efforts to protect human rights and a book chapter about the establishment of a tribunal to try Cambodia's Khmer Rouge leaders. While in law school, she participated in the International Women's Human Rights Clinic project focusing on domestic violence in Poland, and, after graduation, accompanied the clinic on its fact-finding trip to Ghana. She is a 2002 graduate of Georgetown Law.
Micah Thorner After practicing law at the large multinational firm, DLA Piper, Micah Thorner assumed the role of Legal Officer at the Hague Conference on Private International Law’s International Centre for Judicial Studies and Technical Assistance, an organization based in the Hague with the goal of creating a mutual understanding of legal cultures, building legal and administrative capacity and reinforcing the rule of law and good governance throughout the world. The technical assistance provided by the Centre focuses on issues that affect the daily lives of millions of people around the world such as international family law, intercountry adoption of children and legal co-operation in transnational legal proceedings. Now Acting Director of the Centre, Ms. Thorner works with Hague Conference experts to provide training seminars for judges, other government officials and legal practitioners; assists States with the implementation and operation of the Hague Conventions; and oversees compliance with the global rules and regulations applicable to the supplemental financial support received by both the Centre and the Hague Conference.
Revised Sept 8, 2011 (LdL) |
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