Focus: Law
Zhao Zhong
Zhao Zhong is the founder and director of Green Camel Bell, a grass-root environmental NGO in Northwest China. At the local level, he conducts a range of programs and projects focusing on environmental education, water pollution monitoring, and community-based eco-agriculture and sustainable development. At the national level, he promotes and researches public participation in environmental decision-making and provides training and mentorship to grassroots partners. At the global level, he bridges Chinese overseas energy and forest investors and impacted communities of host countries promoting responsible green investment. From 2015-16, as a Hubert H. Humphrey fellow, Zhong completed a year of course work and professional affiliation at the University of California, Davis…
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Getachew Mengisitie Alemu
Getachew Mengisitie Alemu is an intellectual property (IP) consultant and lends his expertise to a wide range of countries and organizations. He has worked in over 20 countries implementing IP projects supported by the European Commission, the World Bank, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), UNDP, and UNECA working with professionals in multicultural and multiethnic environments. He drafted the national IP policies, development plans and laws of a number of African countries, and he has implemented projects aimed at demonstrating the use of IP as a tool for development. These include branding of Ethiopian Fine Coffees and Ugandan Vanilla with the aim of changing marketing position of growers and small traders…
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Maria "Masha" Lisitsyna
Maria "Masha" Lisitsyna is a Senior Managing Legal Officer for Criminal Justice at the Open Society Justice Initiative. She focuses on criminal justice reforms as well as litigation and advocacy on improving protection from torture in Eurasia, Latin America, and South and Southeast Asia. Previously, Maria was a researcher for Human Rights Watch, working on civil and political rights in Turkmenistan and the rights of migrant workers in Russia and Kazakhstan. She is the founder and former president of the Youth Human Rights Group, a prominent Kyrgyz NGO specializing in human rights monitoring and education. In 2005, she served as a member of Kyrgyzstan’s Constitutional Council, the body convened to…
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Sergey Lagodinsky
Sergey Lagodinsky is a German Member of the European Parliament in the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance. He chairs the EU-Turkey Delegation and is a member of the Legal Affairs and Civil Liberties/Home Affairs committees. Until June 2019 he was the Head of European Union and North America Division of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, an independent political organization affiliated with Germany's Green Party. Prior to joining the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Sergey Lagodinsky worked as a lawyer for Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP. From 2003 to 2008, he served as Program Director, later as Advisor, to the Board for the Berlin Office of the American Jewish Committee. His expertise lies in transatlantic…
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Michael Kalisa
Michael Kalisa is a Rwandan lawyer and transitional justice expert. Over the last twenty years, Michael has worked to restore the rule of law in post-conflict countries across sub-Saharan Africa. Repatriating immediately after the Tutsi Genocide of 1994, Michael worked as a Special Assistant to the Prosecutor General of Rwanda, contributing to the rebuilding of criminal legal infrastructure and developing mechanisms to protect the rights of all citizens, including genocide victims and perpetrators. At the international level, Michael served five years on the prosecutorial team of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. He is currently working as a Legal Specialist with the American Bar Association- Rule of Law…
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Courtney Hostetler
Courtney Hostetler is Counsel at Free Speech for People, an organization working to fight big money and unchecked corporate power in politics. She was previously a legal fellow with the ACLU of Massachusetts, working on school-to-prison pipeline issues and the criminalization of school discipline. Courtney graduated from Yale Law School in 2011 and afterwards clerked for Judge James Dennis of the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. While at Yale, she participated in human rights fact-finding missions in Tanzania and Senegal and worked on U.S. prison reform projects. Prior to attending to law school, she managed the Close Up Foundation's national youth voting program and worked as a…
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Kanbar Hossein-Bor
Kanbar Hossein-Bor is a senior British diplomat and international lawyer currently serving as Deputy High Commissioner for the UK in Bangladesh. He has held a number of posts, both as a lawyer and diplomat, including in the Netherlands as the head of international law team and UK agent to International Court of Justice, Iraq as the head of the human rights team, Libya, and Liberia, where he was briefly deployed as Head of Mission during the Ebola crisis. Kanbar has successfully led UK delegations in multilateral conferences and meetings, including in Vienna, Geneva, Kampala, and New York. He has also led and facilitated working groups in the International Criminal Court…
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Ahmad "Rafay" Alam
Ahmad “Rafay” Alam is a Pakistani environmental lawyer and activist. In 2013, after over a decade of practicing corporate and constitutional law, Rafay co-founded Saleem, Alam & Co., a firm that specializes in the energy, water, natural resources, and urban infrastructure sectors. As one of Pakistan's leading environment lawyers, Rafay regularly advises the federal and provincial governments, the World Bank, ADB, IFC and a number of INGOs on issues of policy and strategy in these sectors, and he provides corporate clients strategic sustainability insights.  Familiar with how government functions in Pakistan, Rafay has served as Chairman of the Board of two public sector utilities: the Lahore Electric Supply Company…
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Ilir Dugolli
Ilir Dugolli currently serves as Ambassador of Kosovo to the United States, having previously served as Ambassador of Kosovo to Turkey. Following Kosovo's independence, he was among the first group of diplomats charged with establishing Kosovo's diplomatic missions. He previously held ambassadorships to Pakistan, Jordan, Afghanistan, Sweden, and Belgium. He has also served as Director for NATO and Security Policies at the Kosovo's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Ilir has been involved with a number of civil society initiatives, including as president of the board for the Project on Ethnic Relations – Kosovo, as co-founder of KIPRED (Kosovar Institute for Policy Research and Development), and as co-founder of D4D (Democracy for…
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Karina Dashko
Karina Dashko is a leading corporate governance expert representing a new generation of Russians committed to building a country based on the rule of law, market economies, and good governance. She is currently Director for Corporate Affairs at T Plus, one of Russia's largest energy asset management companies. Previously Karina worked as Director for Corporate Issues at Integrated Energy Systems, Corporate Governance Director in UC RUSAL, the world’s largest aluminum and alumina producer, and was formerly head of the law department and chief compliance officer for VimpelCom, one of Russia’s leading providers of wireless telecommunications services. Karina has worked with the state Duma to develop programs for disclosing corporate information…
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