Our Team
Staff
Janet Benshoof, Esq.
President and Founder
Janet Benshoof is an internationally recognized human rights lawyer who has established landmark legal precedents on women's reproductive and equality rights, the right to free expression, freedom of religion, and gender crimes in transitional justice law. Ms. Benshoof has litigated in courts in over forty states and in the United States Supreme Court. As President of the Global Justice Center, Ms. Benshoof is currently developing new legal tools to implement gender equality, focusing on transitional democracies and enforcing criminal accountability during conflict. Ms. Benshoof has been selected by the National Law Journal as one of the "100 Most Influential Lawyers in America", and is the recipient of numerous awards including the prestigious MacArthur Foundation fellowship in recognition of her singular contributions to advancing women's legal rights.
Ms. Benshoof graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of Minnesota and received her Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School. As Director of the American Civil Liberties Reproductive Freedom Project, for fifteen years she spearheaded national litigation focusing on shaping Supreme Court jurisprudence on gender equality and reproductive choice. In 1992 Ms. Benshoof founded the first international human rights organization specializing in reproductive choice and equality, now the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR). In the organization's first ten years, under Ms. Benshoof's leadership, CRR obtained consultative status to the UN, established legal projects in over 40 countries, and won major class action constitutional cases in the United States Supreme Court.
Ms. Benshoof lectures at law schools and universities globally and has taught human rights law at Bard College and Harvard Law School. Ms. Benshoof is an international law advisor to several Burmese exile groups and is currently working on a project to refer the military in Burma to the International Criminal Court. Since 2005 Ms. Benshoof has conducted three human rights law trainings in Iraq, including a historic three-day training on gender rights and international law for Iraqi women leaders and the Judges of the Iraqi High Tribunal. This training resulted in the first legal decision by a high court in the Middle East according women rights under international law. In the precedential Anfal decision the Iraqi High Tribunal adopted the gender crimes standards of the International Criminal Court and held the officials directing the genocide guilty of rape as an element of genocide, crimes against humanity, and torture. Ms. Benshoof is also advising women from Burma and Kudistan, Iraq, on constitution drafting and writing a book on the exclusion of women in Burma from political leadership from 1886 to the present.
Ms. Benshoof has published numerous articles in the Harvard Law Review, The Journal of the American Medical Association, The New York University Journal of International Law and Policy, the Law Ka Nat, a Journal of The Burma Lawyers' Council, among other respected publications. She has appeared on the BBC, CBS evening news, Good Morning America, ABC evening news, Nightline, and McNeil /Lehr. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and served on its Burma Task Force.
Gina Cohen
Staff Attorney
Gina Cohen has recently joined the Global Justice Center serving as Special Counsel. Ms. Cohen's expertise is in large scale litigation and she has practiced in commercial and community law including major cases dealing with asylum seekers in Australia. She has also managed a series of educational programs for Aboriginal students aimed at bridging the gap between the theory and practice of law. In her short time at the GJC, she has been involved in lobbying the members of the United Nations Security Council to refer Burma to the ICC. Ms. Cohen graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa with a B.A majoring in law and English literature. She then undertook her J.D at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia before relocating to New York.
McKensey Smith
Development and Communications Associate
McKensey Smith currently serves as the Development and Communications Associate at the Global Justice Center. Prior to joining the GJC, Ms. Smith worked in the marketing department of an international law firm. Ms. Smith graduated from New York University with a B.A. in International Relations and Spanish. Her senior thesis focused on the effectiveness of foreign aid allocated by the United States and the U.N. to countries to alleviate HIV/AIDS. She studied for a semester in Madrid and spent a summer on an archaeology dig in Cyprus. A native Seattleite, Ms. Smith currently resides in New York.
Phyu Phyu Sann
Burma Researcher
Phyu Phyu Sann joined the Global Justice Center as a research intern in the fall of 2006. She has earned her Master of Arts in Intercultural Service, Leadership, and Management Program at the School for International Training (SIT) in Brattleboro, Vermont. Prior to her studies at SIT, Ms. Sann worked as a coordinator for the food security working group of the NGO Circle in Burma and as community mobilizer. She has also worked in the field of social economic and project related research for local and international Non-Governmental Organizations in Burma. Ms. Sann received her MBA from the Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand and her BA from Yangon University with a concentration in International Relations. She was also a Recipient of the Fujitsu Asia Pacific Scholarship for Intercultural Management Program in the Japan American Institute of Management Sciences, Honolulu, Hawaii. Ms. Sann is a native of Rakhine (Arakan), in the western part of Burma.
Tracy Vris
Interim Assistant to the President
Tracy Vris joins the Global Justice Center as the Interim Assistant to the President. Ms. Vris graduated from Pitzer College, a member of the Claremont Colleges, with a B.A. in International Relations with a special focus on Latin American studies and Spanish. Prior to joining the GJC, Ms. Vris has worked on Capitol Hill as well as for a human rights advocacy organization. Ms. Vris recently relocated to New York City from Washington, D.C.
Francess Issa
Sierra Leone Legal Expert
Francess Issa is a lawyer from Sierra Leone, who is currently working with the Global Justice Center as a Law fellow, carrying out extensive legal research on human rights issues in Africa and working on projects relating to the implementation of international law in the domestic legal systems in Africa. She also worked for the Center for Civil and Human Rights. She graduated from the University of Sierra Leone with an LLb Hons. Ms Issa worked in Sierra Leone as Legal Assistant for the Kallon Defence Team of the RUF Trial at the UN. International Tribunal for war crimes in Sierra Leone, the Special Court for Sierra Leone. During this period (2006 - 2008), in fulfilling her passion for advocating for justice for women, Ms. Issa became a member of Legal Assistance for Women Yearning for Equality Rights and Social Justice (L.A.W.Y.E.R.S). As a member, she was involved in increasing women's awareness to human rights issues, providing free legal representation to impoverished women and was also engaged in advocating for the enactment of laws that protect women, as well as the repeal of discriminatory laws against women. Due to her commitment to the organization, she became the Secretary General in 2007 and participated in the drafting of the three most important pieces of legislation in Sierra Leone that protect women against discriminatory cultural practices: the three 'Gender Acts' namely the Domestic violence Act; the Intestate Succession Act and the Customary Marriage Act. In 2009, Ms. Issa graduated with a Masters Degree in International Human Rights Law (L.L.M. International Human Rights) from the University of Notre Dame Law School, Indiana.
Law Fellows
Seher Khawaja
Kristina Kallas
Interns
Melanie Claassen
Alyssa Scott
Deanna Licata
Adrienne Fricke
Africa Consultant
Adrienne Fricke is a human rights consultant specializing in the Middle East and Africa. In 2006-07, she was a Clinical Advocacy Fellow at Harvard Law School's Human Rights Program, where she supervised law students providing assistance to lawyers and human rights activists all over the world. Adrienne recently returned from eastern Chad, where she evaluated the viability of a women's health research initiative for Physicians for Human Rights.
Abby Goldberg
Consultant
Abby Goldberg was part of the founding team of the GJC. She has been involved in all aspects of establishing this new organization and fostering its growth, focusing particularly on organizational development, fundraising and communications. Prior to joining the GJC, Ms. Goldberg organized educational programs and advocacy on U.S. Latin American policy for various Washington, DC organizations, including the Hispanic Council on International Relations, the United Nations Association of the National Capital Area, and the Center for International Policy.
Faythallegra Coleman
Assistant to the President
Faythallegra Coleman is the assistant to the President of the Global Justice Center. A native of Harlem, New York, Ms. Coleman graduated from Wesleyan University with a B.F.A. in film and anthropology. Ms. Coleman has been awarded several grants to produce short films. While her focus is on narrative filmmaking, her work at the Global Justice Center has sparked an interest in documenting human rights issues around the world. Faythallegra was a finalist for the 2004 Sundance Writer's Lab and in the spring of 2005 she completed the Revlon Intern Mentor Program at New York Women in Film and Television. During the summer of 2005 Faythallegra starred in 5 Takes Europe, a Discovery Networks program about 5 young American filmmakers backpacking through Europe. Her short narrative film, Dirty Clothes, received an honorable mention at the 2006 Women of Color Film Festival in New York City. In the spring of 2006 Faythallegra was commissioned to make a short film in Holland for the publishing giant, CondeNast. This film, titled Damsko, is currently being screened in an online film festival. Her most recent narrative short film, Life Sucks, is currently in post-production.
Special thanks to Debbie Sharnak and Keya Advani for all of their work in creating this website.
Board of Directors
Anne Firth Murray
Board Chair
Anne Firth Murray currently serves as the Board President of the Global Justice Center. Ms. Murray joins the Global Justice Center with an impressive breadth of knowledge and experience in human rights advocacy. A New Zealander, she was educated at the University of California and New York University in economics, political science, and public administration, with a focus on international health policy and women's reproductive health. For the past twenty-five years, she has worked in the field of philanthropy. From 1978 to the end of 1987, she directed the environment and international population programs of the Hewlett Foundation in California. She is the Founding President of The Global Fund for Women and is currently a Consulting Professor in Human Biology at Stanford University.
Ms. Murray serves on several boards and councils of non-profit organizations, including the African Women's Development Fund, Commonweal, GRACE (a group working on HIV/AIDS in East Africa), Hesperian Foundation, and UNNITI (a women's foundation in India). She is the recipient of many awards and honors for her work on women's health and philanthropy, and in 2005 she was nominated as one of a group of 1,000 women for the Nobel Peace Prize. Her recent books are: Paradigm Found: Leading and Managing for Positive Change and From Outrage to Courage: Women Taking Action for Health and Justice.
Steve Toben
Vice-Chair
Steve Toben is the president of the Flora Family Foundation in Menlo Park, which supports the philanthropic activities of the descendants of Bill Hewlett, co-founder of the Hewlett-Packard Company. Interests of the Flora Family Foundation include international development, the environment, K-12 education, and arts, culture and humanities. Before coming to the Flora Family Foundation in 2000, Mr. Toben served nine years as a program officer at the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation where he directed the Foundation's programs on environment and conflict resolution. In 2001 he received a Peacemaker/Peacebuilder Award from the National Peace Foundation in Washington for his decade of work in international conflict resolution. He is a past chair of the Management Committee of the Environmental Grantmakers Association and a founding member of the Peace and Security Funders Group.
Mr. Toben serves on several nonprofit boards of directors and advisory councils, including the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation in New York, Legacy Works in Palo Alto, and the Great Valley Center in Modesto. He is a former member of the Portola Valley Planning Commission and was elected to the Portola Valley Town Council in November 2003. In 2005, Mr. Toben was elected as Mayor of Portola Valley and began his term in 2006. Mr. Toben is a graduate of the Yale Law School and the University of North Carolina, where he was a Morehead Scholar.
Tamara Quinn
Secretary and Treasurer
Tamara Quinn holds Bachelors Degrees in Accounting and Mathematics, as well as a Masters of Business Administration. She attended the American School and the Al-Mustansiryah University in Baghdad, Iraq and Murray State University, University of Evansville, and University of Phoenix in the U.S.
Ms. Quinn is the founder and Executive Director of Generation Iraq, an NGO established to provide opportunity, education, and motivation to the youth in Iraq. With Generation Iraq, Tamara has expanded the School Partners Program, where she also served as Director. The mission of Generation Iraq is to bring optimism and hope to the young people of Iraq and it is Tamara's belief that this is a key factor, over the next 15 years, to allow Iraq to develop and assume a respected position in the world community.
Tamara is a member, co-founder, and Director of the Women's Alliance for a Democratic Iraq (WAFDI), an NGO that aims to help Iraqi women. In that capacity she has also been involved in democratic development and ensuring women's voice in the Iraqi transitional justice process. She is also a founding board member of the Global Justice Center.
A 20 year veteran of the energy industry in Tennessee, Ms. Quinn is an experienced businesswoman, though in recent years she has focused her efforts primarily on Iraq and specifically, the effort to bring human rights and equality to the women and children of Iraq. Ms. Quinn has returned to Baghdad several times over the past few years, including as a member of the Iraqi Reconstruction and Development Council. She has also worked with the U.S. Department of Defense to help tutor and prepare National Guard troops and their families, in advance of their deployment to Iraq. She has been part of several speaking tours and media projects, talking about women's issues in Iraq.
Janet Benshoof
Board Member
President and Founder of the Global Justice Center. Bio found here