Margaret Ellen Roggensack is a recognized expert on business and human rights with extensive experience in designing and leading multistakeholder engagement strategy and initiatives. As the former Senior Advisor for Business and Human Rights at Human Rights First, Professor Roggensack led work on internet freedom, labor rights, natural resources and security and multistakeholder engagement and accountability mechanisms to address the human rights impacts of global business operations. Prior to her work at Human Rights First, Professor Roggensack practiced law with Hogan and Hartson, chairing the firm’s Latin America Practice Group. During Professor Roggensack’s nearly 20 year career in private legal practice, she counseled clients on bilateral and multilateral trade agreements and sector specific arrangements; represented private sector interests in World Trade Organization dispute settlement proceedings, and played leadership roles in industry task force and coalition efforts, helping to found and lead multi-stakeholder coalitions on international trade and investment, tax and health care policy initiatives at the federal and state level.
Professor Roggensack has served as an advisor to numerous private and quasi- governmental organizations on democratic transition, rule of law, and economic recovery initiatives, and U.S. policy toward Latin America. She is a member of the board of the Due Process of Law Foundation, past president of the Washington Foreign Law Society, and Past Vice President of the Board of the Washington Office on Latin America. She is a founding board member of the Packard Center for ALS Research and a member of the Board of Advisors of the Center for Disaster and Refugee Response at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.
