Focus: Law
Priya Pillai
Priya Pillai is an international lawyer with over two decades of experience, globally recognized for deep legal expertise in international law and advocacy to effect change. Priya leads the Asia Justice Coalition, focused on international justice and accountability, helming it since inception. The coalition has been key to efforts to hold the Burmese military accountable by supporting legal proceedings in international and domestic courts. Under her leadership, a new multi-year program to enhance leadership of women in international law across Asian jurisdictions has commenced, intended to dismantle systemic barriers. Previously, Priya worked at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia on trials in the Balkans, and on global humanitarian issues at…
More Information
Rayhan Asat
Rayhan Asat is an Uyghur human rights attorney. A graduate of Harvard Law School and former anti-corruption attorney at a major U.S. law firm, Rayhan specializes in international human rights law and compliance with best business practices. Her legal and policy work centers around enforcing international human rights norms, civil liberties, curtailing forced labor, and promoting corporate accountability. She advised the World Bank and OECD to design Human-Centered Business Integrity Principles. She works with civil society, diplomats, lawmakers, and businesses to address human rights concerns, especially the atrocities in Xinjiang including her own brother Ekpar Asat’s enforced disappearance. She has been featured in various media outlets including The New York…
More Information
Igor Shevchenko
Igor Shevchenko has played a major role in bringing the rule of law to Ukraine by founding and leading the Ukrainian Bar Association from 2002 till 2007. He is also the founder and former managing partner of Shevchenko Didkovskiy & Partners, the leading law firm in Ukraine (rebranded as Asters in 2008). Igor left his legal practice in 2008 to concentrate on politics and civil service. In 2014-2015 he served as a Minister of Environment and Natural Resources of Ukraine and was a presidential candidate in 2019 elections. He currently leads Successful Ukraine political party and heads the Institute for State Efficiency, a think tank conducting research on world’s best practices of public governance for further use in Ukraine and promoting meritocracy as the most efficient way…
More Information
Tinatin "Tina" Khidasheli
Tinatin "Tina" Khidasheli serves as a chairperson for a Georgian think tank, Civic IDEA. Previously, she was Minister of Defense for the country of Georgia, the first female in that post. She also previously served as a member of the Georgian Parliament. In 2010 she was elected to and served on the City Council in Tbilisi, Georgia and as a member of the Budget Committee. As one of the leaders of the opposition Republican Party, she strove to eradicate state corruption in Georgia, while fighting for human rights, democratic reforms and respect for the constitution and laws of Georgia. She was involved in numerous independent anti-corruption investigation projects, supporting journalists…
More Information
Joaquín Jácome-Diez
Joaquín Jácome-Diez is a Panamanian lawyer and a senior partner at Jácome & Jácome where he practices international law and foreign direct investment and corporate law. Previously, as Minister of Trade and Industry for the Republic of Panama (1999- 2004), he negotiated on a Free Trade Agreement with the United States and successfully shepherded the first four rounds of talks. During his tenure in office, Joaquín was also responsible for the negotiation of trade agreements with several other Central American countries, as well as Taiwan and Singapore. He led trade delegations to the United States, Latin America, Europe, and Asia, and represented Panama in international trade negotiations before the World…
More Information
Idayat Hassan
Idayat Hassan is Director of the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), an Abuja based policy advocacy and research organization with a focus on deepening democracy and development in West Africa. Her interests span democracy, peace and security, transitional justice, and ICT4D in West Africa. As the Director of the CDD, she oversaw CDD's rise from not being ranked in 2013 to 16th out of 94 think tanks in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to the 2019 University of Pennsylvania Global Go To Think Tank Index Report. Under her leadership, CDD became a mover in the civic tech space. She has subsequently strengthened CDD's position as a civic tech leader with a…
More Information
Tali Farhadian Weinstein
Tali Farhadian Weinstein is the General Counsel of the Kings County District Attorney’s Office (Brooklyn). In that capacity, she oversees the office’s Appeals Bureau, Post-Conviction Justice Bureau, Civil Litigation Bureau, and Law Enforcement Accountability Bureau, leads several reform initiatives of the District Attorney’s Justice 2020 plan, and counsels the District Attorney of an agency comprised of 1,200 employees. She is also an Adjunct Professor of Law and Adjunct Professor of Clinical Law at NYU Law School, where she teaches “Criminal Justice Reform and the District Attorney” and was previously a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Center on the Administration of Criminal Law. Tali served in the United States Department of…
More Information
Mehmet Gürcan Daimagüler
Dr. Mehmet Gürcan Daimagüler is a German-Turkish human rights and policy adviser lawyer based in Berlin and Bonn. Mehmet is also one of the leading political and cultural activists on German-Turkish issues and was the first German of Turkish descent to be elected to the national board of a German political party, the Free Democratic Party. An outspoken advocate for human rights in Germany, he founded the first political advocacy group for Turkish immigrants in Germany in 1994. He also spearheads inter-religious dialogue in Germany, bridging, in particular, the Muslim-Jewish divide. As a co-plaintiff, he represented several relatives of victims of a neo-Nazi terrorist cell (the National Socialist Underground) at…
More Information
Jake Sullivan
Jake Sullivan is the national security advisor to President Joseph R. Biden, a visiting lecturer in law at Yale Law School, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Jake served in the Obama administration as national security adviser to Vice President Joe Biden and director of policy planning at the U.S. Department of State, as well as deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He was the senior policy adviser on Secretary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and previously served as deputy policy director on Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential primary campaign and as a member of the debate preparation team for Barack Obama’s…
More Information
Mara Redlich Revkin
Mara Redlich Revkin is a political scientist and legal scholar conducting empirical research on legal systems during and after conflict with a regional focus on the Middle East. Currently, she is the National Security Law Fellow at the Georgetown University Law Center. Her research and teaching interests are in the areas of criminal law and procedure, international law, human rights, and transitional justice. She has conducted fieldwork in Iraq, Egypt, Turkey, Lebanon, and Oman using qualitative and quantitative research methods including large-scale household surveys, interviews, and event data based on newspapers and social media posts. Her current research aims to contribute to the development of evidence-based strategies for strengthening rule…
More Information