Board Member and Co-Founder Risa Kaufman is the director of US Human Rights at the Center for Reproductive Rights, where she leads the Center’s efforts to integrate international human rights norms and strategies to protect and promote the full range of reproductive rights in the United States. She is also a lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School and teaches a seminar on U.S. human rights advocacy. Prior to joining the Center, Risa was the executive director of the Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute, where she developed and advanced international human rights norms and strategies in the United States, provided overall management for the Institute’s activities and operations, and supervised students in the Human Rights Clinic. Risa has extensive experience in public interest litigation, advocacy, and legal education with a special focus on women’s rights, poverty law, and access to justice. She previously engaged in impact litigation and policy initiatives as associate counsel at the Community Service Society of New York, as a Gibbons Fellow in Public Interest and Constitutional Law at the law firm of Gibbons, P.C., and as a Skadden Fellow at NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund (now Legal Momentum). Risa holds a J.D. from New York University School of Law, where she was a Root-Tilden-Snow scholar. She clerked for Judge Ira DeMent in the U.S. District Court in Montgomery, Alabama, and holds a B.A. from Tulane University.
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