International Consultant, former FBI Executive

Lauren Anderson, an internationally recognized Consultant and former FBI Executive, is a National Security and Crisis Management expert. As the first woman to lead the FBI’s office in the American Embassy in Paris, France, she directed the FBI’s engagement with, and operations in, 24 countries, 22 of which were in Africa. She worked with Department of Justice attorneys and the State Department to negotiate an unprecedented agreement between the United States and Rwanda to allow for the prosecution, in the US, of Rwandan citizens responsible for acts of terrorism against US and other citizens.

Journalist

Lauren Wolfe is an award-winning journalist who has written for publications from The Atlantic to The Guardian. She is the director of WMC’s Women Under Siege, a project on sexualized violence in conflict originated by Gloria Steinem at the Women’s Media Center. She serves on the advisory committee of the Nobel Women’s Initiative’s International Campaign to Stop Rape & Gender Violence in Conflict.

Washington Director

Sarah Holewinski is executive director of Center for Civilians in Conflict, leading the organization’s efforts to make warring parties more responsible for their actions to civilians before, during, and after armed conflict. Prior to joining the Center in 2006, Holewinski consulted for Human Rights Watch and the Clinton Foundation HIV-AIDS initiative in Rwanda. She is a frequent commentator on civilian protection issues in publications counting The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and The Washington Post. She was also named in the top 100 Most Influential People in Armed Violence Reduction by Action on Armed Violence (AOAV).

Vice President of Programs

Shalini Nataraj is the Director of Advocacy and Partnerships at the Global Fund for Women. Nataraj is also a founder of the Alliance for Secularism and Democracy in South Asia and worked to promote human rights and democracy in Rwanda, Burundi and neighboring countries following the Rwandan genocide with human rights and policy advocacy groups in the region and the US. She has spoken extensively on issues of human rights, particularly on the need for a gendered approach to rights.

Director

Jessica Neuwirth is one of the founders and Honorary President of Equality Now. She has also worked in the United Nations Office of Legal Affairs and as Director of the New York Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. She served as a special consultant on sexual violence to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda for the Akayesu and Musema judgments, and worked again for the ICTR on the Media judgment. As Special Advisor on Sexual Violence to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2010, she organized the UN high-level panel on reparations for victims of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Chief Executive Officer

Jacqueline Novogratz is the founder and CEO of Acumen Fund, a non-profit global venture fund that uses entrepreneurial approaches to solve the problems of global poverty. Acumen Fund currently manages more than $30 million in investments in South Asia and Eastern/Southern Africa, all focused on delivering affordable healthcare, water, housing and energy to the poor. Prior to Acumen Fund, Jacqueline founded Duterimbere, a micro-finance institution in Rwanda.

Executive Director

Hadar Harris is the Executive Director of the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at American University Washington College of Law. She is an international human rights attorney and specializes in issues of civil and political rights, gender equality, prevention and punishment of genocide, and domestic implementation of international norms.

Contributing Editor

Helena Cobban is a veteran writer, researcher, and program organizer on global affairs. She is author of Amnesty after Atrocity?: Healing Nations after Genocide and War Crimes and The Moral Architecture of World Peace: Nobel Laureates Discuss our Global Future. Ms. Cobban has published widely in print media on three continents and has considerable experience in broadcast media as a reporter for ABC News and the BBC in the 1970s and as a guest on many leading radio and broadcast discussion shows in the U.S. She speaks French and Arabic.

Adjunct professor

Belinda Cooper is a Senior Fellow at the World Policy Institute and an adjunct professor at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs. Cooper, an expert on human rights and international and transitional justice, is the editor of “War Crimes: The Legacy of Nuremberg,” which explores the interconnections between the Nuremberg tribunal and today’s international criminal courts. Her family background--she is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor--contributed to Cooper’s expertise in the areas of historical memory and “transitional justice,” including tribunals, truth commissions, and other methods of coming to terms with past violence or dictatorship.

Motivational Speaker & Author

Consolee Nishimwe is an author and motivational speaker, and a survivor of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. She went through the horrors of genocide at the age of 14 when she and her family were forced to leave their home in Rubengera, Kibuye and go into hiding when the genocide started. Unfortunately, during the course of the 3 month long genocide, her father and three young brothers were murdered along with many other close relatives. Today, Consolee is a committed speaker about genocide and sexual violence and is an advocate for survivors like herself who suffered physical and emotional torture. In 2012, Consolee released her memoir Tested to the Limit: A Genocide Survivor’s Story of Pain, Resilience and Hope.

Founder & Executive Director

Eugenie Mukeshimana is the founder and executive director of the Genocide Survivors Support Network, a charitable organization with a mission to help genocide survivors rebuild their lives and to educate communities about the crime of genocide. She was a young adult and 8 months pregnant when the genocide broke in Rwanda in 1994. She is a frequent panelist and lecturer on genocide-related issues such as justice and forgiveness, gender-based violence, memorialization and preservation of history, trauma and grief management, education and advocacy.

CEO & Co-founder

Elizabeth Dearborn-Hughes is the CEO & Co-founder of the Akilah Institute for Women, a college with campuses in Rwanda and Burundi that connects young women to economic opportunity. Elizabeth moved to Rwanda in 2006 and co-founded the nonprofit Amani Africa to provide scholarships to street children, support an orphanage in Kigali, and organize reconciliation and conflict resolution conferences for genocide survivors. After working with business and civil society leaders to analyze the training needs of the Rwandan private sector, Elizabeth and her husband, Dave Hughes, founded Akilah in 2010 to provide market-relevant education and career development to promising young female leaders. Newsweek and The Daily Beast recognized Elizabeth as one of the 125 Women of Impact. Forbes has recognized Elizabeth as one of the World’s Most Influential Female Social Entrepreneurs.

Journalist and Author

Nathalie Blaquiere has just completed a two-year term as Communications Specialist to the chief of the UN in Rwanda. Prior to that she was for four years the Country and Programme Director for Internews Rwanda, a media development NGO that has been active in Rwanda for a decade. In both these roles she has worked to build the capacity of the Rwandan media on a national scale. Nathalie contributed to the writing of Rwanda's media law during the national dialogues in 2009-2011 and has advocated with the Rwandan government on behalf of journalists in public and private fora.