Who We Are
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.
Andrea Friedman
Vice President and Senior Counsel
Andrea Friedman is a human rights lawyer with a focus on international law and women's rights. As Counsel at the Global Justice Center, Ms. Friedman works with women leaders in transitional democracies to enforce the international legal guarantees for women's political and legal rights. Her current work at the GJC is focused primarily on advocating for women's inclusion in the political process and constitution drafting within the exiled community of Burma, as well as advancing women's rights through the judiciary and legal reform in Iraq. Her article, "Using the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women to Advocate for the Political Rights of Women in a Democratic Burma", was published in the Summer 2005 issue in the Harvard Journal of Law and Gender. She has also been invited to speak as an expert on legal and judicial reform.
Previously, Ms. Friedman was the Program Manager of the Women and Public Policy Program (WAPPP) at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where she worked on domestic and international women's rights, including coordinating research and events on women in international development, women's health, combating sex trafficking and women's political participation. While at WAPPP, she helped to coordinate the first Women Waging Peace Colloquium, which brought together over 100 women from areas of conflict, and provided them with skills and advocacy training as well a forum for the exchange of ideas and strategies.
In addition, Ms. Friedman has worked as a legal intern in Senator Edward Kennedy's Judiciary Office, researching constitutional and immigration questions, developing materials on federal hate crimes legislation and evaluating judicial nominations. She has also worked as a legal intern in the office of the Legal Counsel for the Democratic National Convention Committee and in the corporate and litigation departments at Bingham McCutchen, LLP in Boston. Ms. Friedman was selected to attend the Democratic National Convention in 2000 as a member of the credentials committee and has worked on numerous local, state and national political campaigns.
Ms. Friedman holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a B.A. summa cum laude in Political Science from Tufts University. She was the founder and first president of Harvard Law Students for Choice at Harvard, served as President of the Tufts Community Union Senate, and was chosen to give the Wendell Phillips Commencement Address at Tufts. She currently resides in New York City.
Abby Goldberg
Director of Development and Communications
Abby Goldberg currently serves as the Director of Development and Communications at the Global Justice Center. As part of the founding team, 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. She created programs for UN Week in Washington; a policy day at the U.S. Capitol with Congressmen, Cuban Americans and academics on the travel ban to Cuba; and numerous other policy programs and cultural events. Ms. Goldberg has worked extensively with NGOs in Central and South America, the United States, Europe, and South East Asia and she has been a featured speaker on NGOs and international advocacy at the NYU School of Continuing and Professional Studies, the Bard Program on Globalization and International Affairs, and for human rights organizations in Colombia. She is also a co-founder of All Day Buffet, a new NGO working to raise awareness and funding among urban youth in the U.S. about domestic and international human rights and social justice issues.
Ms. Goldberg graduated from American University's School of International Service with a B.A. in International Studies, and a concentration in Latin America and Foreign Policy. As an undergraduate, she also studied for a semester at the University of Havana, Cuba. A native San Franciscan, Ms. Goldberg currently resides in New York City.
Zulma Miranda
Special Counsel
Zulma Miranda is a human rights lawyer with expertise in international women's rights. As Special Legal Counsel, she founded the Special Initiative on Gender, Non-Impunity And International Law (SIGNAL), which seeks to ensure that transitional justice processes in Colombia are implemented in conformance with international law requiring gender parity. Ms. Miranda works closely with women leaders in Latin America and provides legal advice and technical expertise in the form of legal trainings for nonprofit law organizations, judges, prosecutors and parliamentarians on international legal advances in gender jurisprudence to ensure that disarmament, demobilization and reintegration processes conform to the spirit and intent of international law.
Prior to joining GJC, Ms. Miranda was a consultant with the International Women's Human Rights Clinic where she co-authored a guide on the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Ms. Miranda was involved in preparing a Shadow Report to the Committee against Torture on behalf of Chilean women detailing restrictive abortion laws in Chile as a violation of the right to health and as justiciable torture. Additionally, she collaborated on an Amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court emphasizing the essential contribution of the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) to the goal of ending impunity for gross violations of women's human rights. In 2003, Ms. Miranda was selected as a recipient of the Charles H. Revson Foundation Fellowship, which allowed her to work at Equality Now. As a Fellow, she researched, documented and analyzed laws, policies and practices that affect the rights of girls and women migrant workers in Lebanon and Bahrain.
Ms. Miranda also works closely with the Burma Project at the GJC and has been involved with the exiled community of Burma since 2002. At the Burma Lawyer's Council, she taught international human rights law at what is today the "Peace and Law Academy" and worked on various projects to advance the rights of Burmese refugees along the Thai-Burma border. She spent time at the No Poe refugee camp and published an article "Seeking Justice for Previous Human Rights Abuses and Democratic Transition in Burma" in the Legal Issues on Burma Journal (LawKa Pala) in 2002.
Ms. Miranda holds a J.D. from the City University of New York School of Law, where she was the founder and president of the Women's Rights Project and a Rockefeller Fellow Participant at the Center for the Study of Women and Society. She is a graduate of St. John's University and holds a B.A. and M.A. in Political Science and International Law and Diplomacy. Ms. Miranda has traveled extensively throughout the Americas, India and Asia. She is a native Colombian of Lebanese heritage and is fluent in Spanish and currently studying Arabic. Ms. Miranda is also admitted to practice in New York and the U.S. District Court Southern and Eastern Districts.
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.
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.
Phyu Phyu Sann
Burma Researcher
Phyu Phyu Sann joined the Global Justice Center as a research intern in the fall of 2006. She is a candidate of the 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.
Emily Kenney
Legal Assistant to the Vice President
Emily Kenney currently serves as the Legal Assistant to the Vice President at the Global Justice Center. Prior to joining the GJC, Ms. Kenney worked at the International Center for Transitional Justice Cape Town, South Africa office and the Boston Consortium for Gender, Security and Human Rights. Ms. Kenney graduated summa cum laude from Tufts University with a B.A. in International Relations and German. In 2007 she completed a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship to the University of Cape Town to earn an M.Phil in Justice and Transformation Studies. Her Masters thesis focused on Sierra Leonean women ex-combatants and their exclusion from peacebuilding efforts there.
Adrienne Fricke
Africa Legal Advisor
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. In 2007, she led a research mission to Sudan on behalf of Refugees International to assess the impact of Sudanese laws on access to justice for rape survivors. Adrienne was a member of the Coalition for International Justice’s Atrocities Documentation Team, for whom she traveled to refugee camps in eastern Chad to take witness statements from Darfuri refugees, focusing on the killing of civilians, rape and other sexual violence, and the destruction of villages. In addition to her J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, she holds an M.A. in Near Eastern Studies from New York University and a B.A. in African Studies from Yale University. Adrienne is fluent in Arabic and French.
Special thanks to Debbie Sharnak and Keya Advani for all of their work in creating this website.
Board of Directors
Anne Firth Murray
Board President
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.
Janet Benshoof
Vice-President
President and Founder of the Global Justice Center. Bio found here
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.
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.