Penelope Andrews
John Marshall Harlan II Professor Director, Racial Justice Project New York Law School
Karl E. Klare
George J. & Kathleen Waters Matthews Distinguished University Professor Northeastern University School of Law
Tel: +1 (202) 240-1550
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Teresa Clarke
Chair & CEO, Africa.com LLC, Fortune 500 Board Director, Former Managing Director, Goldman Sachs
Teresa Clarke is the Chair & CEO of Africa.com LLC, a digital media company showcasing Africa-related business, news, and cultural content. Previously, Teresa became the first African-American woman promoted to managing director in Goldman Sachs’ investment banking division, where she led corporate finance and M&A transactions in the industrials sector.
Teresa serves on the boards of two Fortune 500 companies: American Tower (NYSE: AMT), a global leader in wireless communications infrastructure, and Gallagher (NYSE: AJG), a global insurance brokerage active in 56 countries.
She chairs the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, the Friends of the Legal Resources Centre of South Africa, and the Student Sponsorship Program of South Africa. Teresa also serves on the Africa Advisory Board of Human Rights Watch and the advisory board of the Harvard Center for African Studies. Appointed by the White House, Teresa served on the President’s Advisory Council on Doing Business in Africa.
Her work intersects with technology through her role with D^3, a Harvard Business School think tank focused on AI and business. She authored, directed, and produced the documentary Africa Straight Up and delivered the TED Talk Bridging the African Diaspora Divide.
She holds an A.B. in economics, cum laude, from Harvard College, and both an M.B.A. and J.D. from Harvard University.
Robert A. Robertson
Partner, Dechert LLP, Former Counselor, Securities & Exchange Commission, Lecturer in Law, USC Gould School of Law
Robert A. Robertson is a financial services partner in Dechert LLP’s Los Angeles office. With more than 30 years of legal experience, he represents clients in the areas of investment management, corporate and securities law, regulatory investigations and SEC defense. He regularly counsels investment advisers, mutual funds, closed-end funds, boards of directors, insurance companies and institutional investors. Mr. Robertson served as an attorney with the Securities and Exchange Commission from 1990 through 1997, where his most recent position was counselor to Commissioner Isaac C. Hunt, Jr. He is a frequent lecturer and has written a treatise on fund governance and numerous articles on securities law topics. Mr. Robertson is also a Lecturer-in-Law at the USC Gould School of Law, where he teaches securities regulation, and mergers & acquisitions. Prior to joining Dechert, Mr. Robertson was in private practice in New York City. He also served as an attorney with the Office of the Counsel to the President at The White House during the George H.W. Bush Administration. Mr. Robertson received his BA from Claremont McKenna College, MBA from Loyola Marymount University, and his JD from UCLA School of Law.
President, Schneidman and Associates International, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, African Affairs
Advisor, Office of the US Trade Representative
Witney Schneidman has nearly 40 years of experience working across Sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing on his experience in the State Department, the World Bank, think tanks and his own consulting practice, Dr. Schneidman, a non-lawyer, has advised energy, technology, consumer and health companies, among others, on projects in more than 30 African countries. He has also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African affairs, and on the Africa advisory committees in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and at the U.S. Export-Import Bank. Dr. Schneidman provides strategic advice on the varied political, economic, social and regulatory issues that are critical to companies’ success in Africa. This includes issues related to Corporate Social Responsibility, compliance, market entry and risk mitigation. He played a leading role in the passage and recent reauthorization of the African Growth and Opportunity Act and was a delegate to the Global Entrepreneurship Summit co-hosted by President Obama during his visit to Kenya. Dr. Schneidman chairs Covington’s Africa Practice Group and is a senior member of the firm’s Public Policy Practice Group, the International Strategy Group and the International Trade and Finance Group.
Former Senior Vice President
Capital Research & Management
Attorney
Paul F Roye is a former Director and Senior Vice President of Capital Research and Management Company. He joined the firm in May 2005. Previously, he was Director of the Division of Investment Management at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. During his tenure, he received the Chairman’s Award of Excellence, the highest honor that can be bestowed upon an SEC Staff member. Prior to becoming Director, he was a partner at the Dechert law firm, where he was a member of the firm’s financial services, investment management and corporate securities practice group. He serves on the Investor Advisory Committee of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and serves on the Boards of the FINRA Investor Education Foundation and SEC Alumni Association. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the University of Michigan Law School.
Managing Director, Deloitte & Touche
Marcus Bardopoulos is a Managing Director at Deloitte with over 27 years of auditing and advisory experience. A fifth-generation South African, Marcus spent the first 20 years of his career with Deloitte South Africa before relocating to the firm’s Boston office in 2018. Over his career, Marcus has served Fortune 500 companies, mature private companies, private-equity owned companies, and high-growth start-ups, across the technology, manufacturing, retail, construction, mining and real estate industries. Notable internal leadership positions held by Marcus during his tenure at Deloitte include the New England Construction Growth Leader, and regional Growth Leader and regional Staff Partner within Deloitte South Africa.
Marcus is a registered CPA with the state of Massachusetts, and holds a US Masters Degree equivalent in accounting, with a Bachelor of Commerce (Honors) in accounting.
Senior Counsel
Intercontinental Exchange
Catherine first volunteered as an intern with the Legal Resources Centre (LRC) in Durban while in law school in 2011. Her passion for social justice led her to return as a volunteer with LRC Durban in 2015 and 2016, during the time she was living in South Africa with her husband.
Since 2018, Catherine has built her career as corporate counsel with Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange. At ICE, she has worked both as a transactional attorney and a privacy specialist, handling complex legal matters across multiple domains.
Currently, Catherine serves as Senior Counsel for ICE’s Privacy and AI Governance team, based in New York. In this role, she focuses on privacy compliance, data protection, and the evolving legal frameworks surrounding artificial intelligence. Her expertise bridges transactional law and emerging technology, contributing to responsible AI practices and ensuring privacy governance aligns with regulatory standards.
Catherine’s professional journey reflects her commitment to impactful legal work, blending corporate experience with a passion for human rights and public service.
Steven and Maureen Klinsky Visiting Professor of Practice for Leadership and Progress>br> Former President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF)
Sherrilyn Ifill is a civil rights lawyer and scholar. From 2013-2022, she served as the President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), the nation’s premier civil rights law organization fighting for racial justice and equality. She most recently served as a Senior Fellow at the Ford Foundation. In 2024 Ifill will become the inaugural Vernon L. Jordan Chair in Civil Rights at Howard Law School, where will become founding Director of the 14th Amendment Center for Law & Democracy.
Ifill began her career as a Fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union, before joining the staff of the LDF as an Assistant Counsel in 1988, where she litigated voting rights cases for five years. In 1993 Ifill left LDF to join the faculty at University of Maryland School of Law in Baltimore. Over twenty years, Ifill taught civil procedure and constitutional law to thousands of law students, and pioneered a series of law clinics, including one of the earliest law clinics in the country focused on challenging legal barriers to the reentry of ex-offenders, an environmental justice offering, and a clinic on reparations. Ifill is also a prolific scholar who has published academic articles in leading law journals, and op-eds and commentaries in leading newspapers. Her 2008 book “On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the 21st Century,” was highly acclaimed, and is credited with laying the foundation for contemporary conversations about lynching and reconciliation. A 10th anniversary edition of the book was recently released with a Foreword by Bryan Stevenson, the acclaimed lawyer and founder of the national lynching memorial in Montgomery, AL.
As the President & Director-Counsel at LDF, Ifill’s voice and analysis played a prominent role in shaping our national conversation about race and civil rights. She led the organization in groundbreaking litigation in the areas of voting rights, economic justice, and education, and took a prominent role in confronting police violence against unarmed Black people. Ifill raised the profile of LDF, growing the organization in staff, resources, and influence. Her strategic vision and counsel are highly sought after from leaders in government, business, law and academia. She continues to write scholarly articles and is currently completing a book about race and the current crisis in American democracy entitled, “Is This America?” which will be published by Penguin Press in 2024.
Ifill graduated from Vassar College with a B.A. in English and earned her J.D. from New York University School of Law. She is the recipient of numerous honorary doctorates and was named by TIME Magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the world in 2021. Ifill is a recipient of the Radcliffe Medal, the Brandeis Medal, the Thurgood Marshall Award from the American Bar Association, and The Gold Medal from the New York State Bar Association. She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2019. Ifill serves on the board of the Mellon Foundation, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Board of Trustees of New York University School of Law.
Chairman Emeritus, Human Rights Watch
Independent Director, Invesco Mutual Funds
Independent Director, Office of Finance, Federal Home Loan Bank System
Joel Motley is Chairman Emeritus of the board of Human Rights Watch. He is an independent director of Invesco Mutual Funds and an independent director of the Office of Finance of the Federal Home Loan Bank System. Joel is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and also serves on the boards of the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, Historic Hudson Valley and the Greenwall Foundation. Joel began his career in investment banking at Lazard Freres & Co. in 1985, and he was a founder of Carmona Motley Inc. in 1992. Prior to investment banking, he served as an aide to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, serving as chief of the Senator’s staff in New York City and surrounding counties. Joel joined the Senate staff after five years of a corporate law practice which he began at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett upon graduation from Harvard Law School in 1978. He graduated from Harvard College (magna cum laude) in 1974.
Chair, Impala Platinum Holdings Limited,
Board Director; Attorney
Thandi Orleyn is a founder, director, and shareholder of Peotona Group Holdings, an investment company contributing to the development of women in business and of critical skills in the economy. The first ten years of her legal practice were spent as an attorney and regional director at the Legal Resources Centre, where she focused on litigation against the apartheid state and was responsible for the training and development of candidate attorneys, paralegals, and community advice centers. Ms. Orleyn served as the National Director of the Independent Mediation Service of South Africa, where she provided strategic leadership as an accredited mediator and arbitrator at a time when South Africa was moving from an apartheid state to a democratic country. She developed people skills, structure, and systems as National Director of the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration, and she was a senior partner at the commercial law firm Routledge Modise Inc (now Hogan Lovells). Ms. Orleyn has co-authored a book entitled, Sexual Harassment in the Workplace. Her current board memberships include BP Southern Africa (Pty) Ltd (Chairperson), Tokiso Dispute Settlement (Pty) Ltd (Chairperson), Industrial Development Corporation of SA Ltd, Toyota SA (Pty) Ltd, and Toyota Financial Services (SA) Limited. She also served as a non-executive director of the South African Reserve Bank. She chairs the Legal Resources Trust, the Shanduka Trust, De Beers Fund, Ceramic Foundation, and the Fort Hare University Council. She received her secondary education at Inanda Seminary School before studying law at the University of Fort Hare and the University of South Africa.
Deirdre Stanley
Former General Counsel
of The Estée Lauder Companies
Deirdre Stanley is an independent director and a former public company Chief Legal Officer, with over 25 years of C-suite experience in complex, global organizations spanning the information technology, media and beauty sectors. Recognized as a strategic and collaborative leader, Deirdre has proven success in risk management, global legal and regulatory, mergers and acquisitions, intellectual property and crisis management. Her experience includes management of various shared service functions, including government affairs, global privacy, global security and business development.
Deirdre is a director of Consolidated Edison, Inc., where she chairs the Management Development & Compensation Committee, and of PayPal Holdings, Inc. She also is a trustee of the Hospital for Special Surgery and The Dalton School, and is a Visiting Lecturer at Yale Law School.
From 2019-2024, Deirdre served as EVP and General Counsel of The Estée Lauder Companies, a global manufacturer, marketer and retailer of prestige beauty products. From 2008-2019, she was EVP and General Counsel of Thomson Reuters, an information technology company powered by the world’s most global news agency.
David B. Wilkins
Lester Kissel Professor of Law,
Vice Dean, Global Initiatives on the Legal Profession,
Harvard Law School
Professor Wilkins is the Lester Kissel Professor of Law, Vice Dean for Global Initiatives on the Legal Profession, and Faculty Director of the Center on the Legal Profession and the Center for Lawyers and the Professional Services Industry at Harvard Law School. He is also a Senior Research Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and a Fellow of the Harvard University Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics. Professor Wilkins has written over 80 articles on the legal profession in leading scholarly journals and the popular press and is the co-author (along with his Harvard Law School colleague Andrew Kaufman) of one of the leading casebooks in the field. His current scholarly projects include Globalization, Lawyers, and Emerging Economies (where he directs over 50 researchers studying the impact of globalization on the market for legal services in rapidly developing countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe); After the JD (a ten-year nationwide longitudinal study of lawyers’ careers); The Harvard Law School Career Study (examining, among other things, differences in the experiences of male and female graduates and the careers of lawyers who do not practice law); and The New Social Engineers (charting the historical development and current experiences of black lawyers in corporate law practice). Professor Wilkins teaches several courses on lawyers including The Legal Profession, Legal Education for the Twenty-First Century, and Challenges of a General Counsel. In 2007, he co-founded Harvard Law School’s Executive Education Program, where he teaches in several courses including Leadership in Law Firms and Leadership in Corporate Counsel. Professor Wilkins has given over 40 endowed lectures at universities around the world and is a frequent speaker at professional conferences and law firm and corporate retreats. His recent academic honors include the 2012 Honorary Doctorate in Law from Stockholm University in Sweden, the 2012 Distinguished Visiting Mentor Award from Australia National University, the 2012 Genest Fellowship from Osgoode Hall Law School, the 2010 American Bar Foundation Scholar of the Year Award, the 2009 J. Clay Smith Award from Howard University School of Law, and the 2008 Order of the Coif Distinguished Visitor Fellowship. In 2012, Professor Wilkins was elected as a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Former Justice, Constitutional Court of South Africa; Board Director, Physicians for Human Rights; Board Director, Fordham University International Institute for Humanitarian Affairs
Richard J. Goldstone is a former South African judge, having served on the bench for 23 years. The last nine of those years, he was a Justice of the Constitutional Court. He is an honorary Bencher of the Inner Temple, London, and an honorary fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge. He is also an honorary member of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, an international member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an honorary life member of the International Bar Association, and Honorary President of its Human Rights Institute. He studied law at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, where he obtained a BA LLB degree with honors in 1962. From 1994 to 1996, Justice Goldstone was the chief prosecutor of the UN International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Since retiring from the bench, he has taught at a number of law schools in the United States, the Central European University in Budapest, and Oxford University. In 2021, Justice Goldstone chaired the independent Expert Review of the International Criminal Court. Together with Judge Mark Wolf and other colleagues, he created Integrity Initiatives International in 2016.
Penelope Andrews
John Marshall Harlan II Professor, Director, Racial Justice Project New York Law School
Penelope Andrews joined New York Law School in January 2019 and teaches constitutional law, torts, professional responsibility, and race and the law. She is also Director of NYLS’s Racial Justice Project. She has held visiting appointments at law schools across the U.S. and internationally and senior leadership posts, including serving as the first Black dean at the University of Cape Town Faculty of Law (2016–2018) and the first female dean of Albany Law School (2012–2015). She is an editor of the International Journal of Law in Context, the Human Rights and the Global Economy E-Journal, and the African Law E-Journal. She’s authored several books and articles focusing on comparative constitutional law, gender and racial equality, human rights, the judiciary, and legal education. She is working on a manuscript, Law, Politics and the #MeToo Movement (forthcoming 2023). Professor Andrews’ focus on the judiciary in South Africa seeks to bridge the divide between theory and practice. Her writing explores the transformation of the judiciary, particularly the appointment of female judges. She was a trainer with Judicial Institute for Africa, specializing in judicial opinion writing and communications skills. She also served as an Acting Judge of the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria for the 2018 third term and as an arbitrator in racial discrimination hearings in South Africa. She has served on law school committees and the boards of public interest and human rights organizations, including the Africa Section of Human Rights Watch and the National Center for Law and Economic Justice. She recently served a two-year term as the President of the Law and Society Association. Currently, she serves as Chair of the Board of the Institute for African Women in Law and is a member of the National University of Ireland Galway’s External Advisory Group on Gender Equality and the Advisory Committee of the South African Research Chair in Teaching and Learning at the University of Pretoria. Professor Andrews is a regular commentator in the media on South African legal issues and racial justice matters.
Diana Aviv
Founder, ourCovenant; Former CEO, Feeding America and Independent Sector
Diana Aviv, formerly CEO of the Partnership for American Democracy, for which she continues as senior advisor, now is founder and principal of Our Covenant, an initiative of Issue One where she serves as a senior advisor on election protection. Her current focus is on the conservative and religious community with respect to protecting and strengthening our democracy. She previously served as CEO of Feeding America, the largest anti-hunger organization in the United States, from 2015-2018. For twelve years, Diana was President & CEO of Independent Sector, the leadership forum for foundations, nonprofits, and corporate giving programs. In 2010, President Obama appointed her to the White House Council for Community Solutions, which mobilizes citizens, nonprofits, businesses, and government to solve community needs. Previously, Diana served as vice president for public policy and director of the Washington Action Office for the Jewish Federations of North America. She was formerly associate executive vice chair at the Jewish Council of Public Affairs, director of programs for the National Council of Jewish Women, and director of a comprehensive program to serve battered women and their families. Diana serves on several nonprofit boards and was consecutively named as one of the NonProfit Times’ Power & Influence Top 50 for over a decade. A native of South Africa, Diana graduated with a B.S.W. from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and received a master’s degree in social work at Columbia University. She formed her early passion for democracy and justice as an activist in the Anti-Apartheid movement. Diana now lives in Washington, DC with her husband Sterling.
Harvey P. Dale
University Professor, Philanthropy and the Law, New York University; Attorney
In 1986, at the request of then Dean Norman Redlich, Professor Harvey Dale, an expert in international tax law, began examining the viability of creating a program that studied the legal issues affecting nonprofit organizations. Two years of thorough research later, Professor Dale determined that such a program was indeed viable and redirected his professional efforts to establish the Program on Philanthropy and the Law at the New York University School of Law. The Program is now known as The National Center on Philanthropy and the Law.
Today, the National Center on Philanthropy and the Law explores a broad range of legal issues affecting the nation’s nonprofit sector and serves as an academic forum for an integrated examination of the legal doctrines related to the activities of charitable organizations. The Center boasts a library with the most comprehensive collection of resources ever assembled on the subject of nonprofit law. Its annual publication of student articles written on critical issues affecting nonprofit organizations is well-respected throughout the field.
After teaching international and corporate and tax law for almost two decades, Dale is now a recognized expert and leader in the field of nonprofit law, both in this country and abroad. He has advised groups in Australia, China, Mexico, Russia, the United Kingdom, and South Africa regarding legal issues affecting nonprofit organizations and the formulation of laws governing these organizations. He has also published several articles concerning, among other subjects, the rationales for tax exemption, international grantmaking, and issues surrounding unrelated business income tax.
In addition to his work as the Director of the National Center for Philanthropy and the Law, Professor Dale has served as an advisor and consultant for the Internal Revenue Service, the Exempt Organizations Tax Review, Independent Sector, and several other nonprofit organizations and government agencies. Professor Dale is Founding President of The Atlantic Philanthropies and was for approximately 20 years (until September 1, 2001) the President and CEO of the Atlantic Foundation. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and from 1996 to 2005 was a member of the Cornell University Trustees Investment Committee.
Liesl Gerntholz
Director, PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Centre
South African Human Rights Lawyer
Liesl Gerntholtz is a South African human rights lawyer who spent the early part of her career working for the South African Human Rights Commission and the Commission on Gender Equality in post-apartheid South Africa. She was the head of the HIV Litigation Unit of the AIDS Law Project and the Director of the Tshwaranang Legal Advocacy Centre. In those capacities, she led high impact, strategic litigation to advance the human rights of people living with HIV and women affected by violence. She has lived in the US since 2008, but remains committed to her South African roots, serving on the boards of several South African human rights organisations.
Between 2008 and 2020, Liesl worked for Human Rights Watch in different capacities. She was the executive director of the Women’s Rights Division for nearly ten years, overseeing research and advocacy that responded to the most critical women’s rights issues in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe and the US. She was also the Interim Deputy Executive Director for Programme, responsible for overall vision, strategy and leadership of 200 global staff working across sixteen divisions on a diverse set of human rights issues, and she also helmed the Africa Division for a year, leading the search for a new director. Most recently, she was the Chief Programme Officer for The Little Market where she led work to support opportunities for women from under-served communities to access dignified work. Liesl holds a BA (LLB) from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Karl E. Klare
George J. and Kathleen Waters Matthews Distinguished University Professor and Professor of Law; Northeastern University School of Law.
Professor Klare focuses on labor and employment law, human rights and legal theory, fields in which he has written and lectured extensively. He is considered a leading voice in the field of critical legal studies. In recent years, he has worked on numerous projects with lawyers in South Africa. He is a founder of the International Network on Transformative Employment and Labor Law (INTELL) and is currently active in the International Social and Economic Rights Project (iSERP). In 2015, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Pretoria in recognition of his leading work on critical legal theory and particularly for his scholarship on transformative constitutionalism, which, according to the University’s citation, “has precipitated in South Africa no less than a paradigm shift in post-apartheid legal thinking.”
In 1993, Professor Klare was named Matthews Distinguished University Professor, one of Northeastern’s highest honors. He has taught as a visitor at the universities of British Columbia, Michigan, Toronto and Cape Town, and held a senior Fulbright chair at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. In 1983, he was awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship.
During the 1960s, Professor Klare participated in the civil rights, antiwar and student movements. His activism now focuses on workplace issues.
Evan Lieberman
Total Professor of Political Science and Contemporary Africa; Director, MISTI
Evan Lieberman is the Total Professor of Political Science and Contemporary Africa. He conducts research in the field of comparative politics, with a focus on development and ethnic conflict in sub-Saharan Africa. He directs the Global Diversity Lab (GDL) and MIT’s global experiential learning program, MISTI. Lieberman co-coordinates the Boston-Area Working Group on African Political-Economy (BWGAPE), and is a member of the E-GAP network. Lieberman received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of “Boundaries of Contagion: How Ethnic Politics have Shaped Government Responses to AIDS” (Princeton University Press, 2009) and Race and Regionalism in the Politics of Taxation in Brazil and South Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2003), Until We Have Won Our Liberty: South Africa after Apartheid (Princeton University Press, May 2022) and has published articles in the American Political Science Review, Annual Review of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Politics & Society, Studies in Comparative International Development, and World Development. Professor Lieberman is recipient of the 2014 David Collier Mid-Career Award, the 2010 Giovanni Sartori Book prize, the 2004 Mattei Dogan book prize, the 2002 Gabriel A. Almond dissertation award; and the 2002 Mary Parker Follett article award. He was a Fulbright fellow in South Africa in 1997-98, and a Robert Wood Johnson health policy scholar at Yale University in 2000-02. Previously, he was Professor and Associate Chair in the Department of Politics at Princeton University (2002-14).
Margaret H. Marshall
Former Chief Justice Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
Margaret H. Marshall, a lifelong advocate for equality, justice, and the rule of law, will receive the 2021 Bolch Prize for the Rule of Law. Marshall helped organize student protests against apartheid as a young woman in her native South Africa before emigrating to the United States and embarking on a career as a lawyer, later becoming the first woman chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Her opinion in the groundbreaking decision in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health in 2003, which held that the Massachusetts Constitution prohibits the state from denying same-sex couples access to civil marriage, made the state the first to legalize gay marriage and laid the groundwork for a sea change in attitudes and law across the United States. Born and raised in South Africa, Marshall obtained her baccalaureate from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. While an undergraduate, she was elected president of the National Union of South African Students, a leading anti-apartheid organization at the time. Marshall came to the United States in 1968 to pursue graduate studies at Harvard. She became a U.S. citizen in 1978 and obtained a master’s degree from Harvard and a law degree from Yale. Her 2003 opinion in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health made global headlines, sparking both criticism and praise. While some states moved to bar same-sex marriage after Goodridge, public opinion began to shift in support of same-sex marriage and several other states moved to legalize it. In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court extended the right to same-sex marriage to all U.S. states and territories in Obergefell v. Hodges.Margaret H. Marshall, a lifelong advocate for equality, justice, and the rule of law, will receive the 2021 Bolch Prize for the Rule of Law. Marshall helped organize student protests against apartheid as a young woman in her native South Africa before emigrating to the United States and embarking on a career as a lawyer, later becoming the first woman chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Her opinion in the groundbreaking decision in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health in 2003, which held that the Massachusetts Constitution prohibits the state from denying same-sex couples access to civil marriage, made the state the first to legalize gay marriage and laid the groundwork for a sea change in attitudes and law across the United States. Born and raised in South Africa, Marshall obtained her baccalaureate from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. While an undergraduate, she was elected president of the National Union of South African Students, a leading anti-apartheid organization at the time. Marshall came to the United States in 1968 to pursue graduate studies at Harvard. She became a U.S. citizen in 1978 and obtained a master’s degree from Harvard and a law degree from Yale. Her 2003 opinion in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health made global headlines, sparking both criticism and praise. While some states moved to bar same-sex marriage after Goodridge, public opinion began to shift in support of same-sex marriage and several other states moved to legalize it. In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court extended the right to same-sex marriage to all U.S. states and territories in Obergefell v. Hodges.
Marco V. Masotti
Partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP
Marco V. Masotti is recognized as one of the country’s leading lawyers in the alternative asset management industry. For over 25 years, Marco has led and built the firm’s private funds team into one of the elite practices in the marketplace. He serves as Global Co-Head of the Private Funds Group and has served as a member of the firm’s Management Committee. Ranked Band 1 in Chambers, Marco is widely regarded as “one of the most exceptional lawyers in the area” for his “unparalleled experience and extraordinary reach in the fund formation space.” He is hailed as a “superstar” attorney who is “fantastic, dedicated to his clients and extremely experienced.” Marco has been recognized as a Law360 MVP in three areas, including Fund Formation, Private Equity and Asset Management. Marco has a unique profile in the marketplace as an adviser to a wide variety of investment funds, including private equity funds, credit funds, growth capital funds, hedge funds and real estate funds. Over the course of his career, he has raised billions of dollars for his clients, including: Apollo, Atlas, Avenue, Brighton Park, Centerbridge, Clearlake, EagleTree, Gamut, General Atlantic, King Street, KKR, Liberty Strategic Capital, Oak Hill, OceanSound, Roark, Sageview, Searchlight, SilverPoint, TowerBrook, Värde and Wellspring, among dozens of others. Marco is a sought-after thought leader in the alternative asset management industry. He frequently provides commentary on developments in the private funds marketplace and has been quoted extensively in the Financial Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and elsewhere, as well as providing guest commentary on television news networks, including Bloomberg Television. He has presented at numerous industry conferences. Marco is a member of the Economic Club of New York, and has served as Co-Chair of the Private Investment Funds Forum, Chair of the Private Investment Funds Subcommittee of the International Bar Association and Chair of the Private Investment Funds Committee of the New York City Bar Association. Marco is the controlling partner of the Sharks professional rugby team located in Durban, South Africa. Marco was awarded a Fulbright Placement Award upon graduating from the University of Natal School of Law.
Anthony Marx
President, The New York Public Library
Anthony W. Marx is President of The New York Public Library, the nation’s largest library system, with 88 neighborhood libraries and four scholarly research centers that receive about 17 million physical visits each year. Since joining NYPL in 2011, Marx has strengthened the Library’s role as an essential provider of educational resources and opportunities for all ages. Under his leadership, the Library has created new early literacy and after-school programs for children and teens, increased free English language classes by 500% and added citizenship support for immigrants, improved services for scholars and students who rely on the Library’s world-renowned research collections, and led several innovative digital initiatives to expand the Library’s reach. Marx has helped facilitate a series of historic milestones: the largest program of physical renovations, totaling $1 billion, the largest increase in City funding, and the best year of fundraising in the Library’s history. Under Marx, the Library has also become a national leader on bridging the digital divide through its efforts to increase access to e-books, expand computer classes and coding training, and a groundbreaking program that provides home internet access to families of low-income students. Before joining the Library, Marx served as president of Amherst College from 2003 to 2011, during which time the college nearly tripled enrollment for low-income students. Before Amherst, Marx was a political science professor and director of undergraduate studies at Columbia University and a Guggenheim Fellow. Marx has a BA from Yale, an MPA from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, and a PhD, also from Princeton.
Gay McDougall
Senior Fellow and Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence, Leitner Center for International Law and Justice/Center for Race, Law and Justice
Gay McDougall has spent her career working on issues of race, gender, and economic justice in the U.S. and in the global context. She has been a leader on human rights within the UN for more than three decades, holding several important positions, including 6 years as the first UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues and 8 years of service on the UN Committee on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination. She was Special Rapporteur on the issue of systematic rape and sexual slavery practices in armed conflict from 1995 to 1999 and played a leadership role in the UN Third World Conference against Racism held in Durban in 2001. McDougall was a member of the South African governmental body created to administer its first democratic, non-racial elections in 1994, which resulted in the historic election of President Nelson Mandela. Prior to that appointment, she served for 15 years as Director of the Southern Africa Project of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, working closely with South African lawyers to secure the release of thousands of political prisoners from jail. The Government of South Africa bestowed on her their national medal of honor, the Order of O.R.Tambo Medal for her extraordinary contributions to ending apartheid. As Executive Director of Global Rights, she also worked with lawyers and activists in 10 countries around the world. McDougall is currently Adjunct Professor at Fordham School of Law. She received a J.D. from Yale Law School, an LL.M. from the London School of Economics and Political Science and has Honorary Degrees from nine institutions.
Sheila McLean
Former President and CEO, Boyden World Corp.
Sheila McLean was part of the beginning of the LRC and worked closely with the founders, Sydney Kentridge, Arthur Chaskelson, and Felicia Kentridge. Sheila’s early career as a young lawyer would land her at the Ford Foundation where she worked to legitimize the idea of “public interest law” in the US. She would go on to persuade Ford Foundation President and Board, to be the first significant funder of the LRC.
Former Vice President of the Institute of International Education during the height of apartheid in the mid 1980’s, Sheila developed a prgram that brought 1,000 black South Africans to the US to study for undergraduate and graduate degrees. Archbishop Tutu was the chair of the South African selection committee and the President of Harvard was the chair of the US advisory committee.
Sheila has been a loyal supporter of the LRC over the years, she served on the board of the Friends of the LRC and now serves as an Advisor for FoLRC.
Deval Patrick
71st Governor of Massachusetts
Co-Director, Center for Public Leadership
Professor of Practice, Harvard Kennedy School
Mr. Patrick is Co-Director of the Center for Public Leadership and a professor of practice at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is also a Senior Advisor to Bain Capital and co-chair of American Bridge 21st Century Foundation, a progressive political action committee. He is the founder and, from April 2015 to December 2019, was Managing Partner of Bain Capital Double Impact, a growth equity fund that invests in commercial businesses for both competitive financial returns and positive social impact. From January 2007 to January 2015, he served as Governor of Massachusetts. He has been a senior executive in two Fortune 50 companies, a partner in two Boston law firms, and by appointment of President Bill Clinton, the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the United States Justice Department. He is a Rockefeller Fellow, a Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute, and the author of two books. Mr. Patrick earned his AB cum laude from Harvard College and his JD from Harvard Law School.
Andrew (Andy) Sillen
Visiting Research Scholar Department of Anthropology
Rutgers University
Andrew Sillen is a Visiting Research Scholar in the Department of Anthropology, Rutgers University. He received his B.A from Brooklyn College in 1974, and Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1981. Sillen lived in Cape Town from 1985-2001, during which time he was first Senior Lecturer, then Professor and Head of the Archaeology Department at the University of Cape Town (UCT). From 1997-2001 he served as UCT’s founding Director of Development, working for Vice Chancellor Mamphela Ramphele to raise funds to support the University’s transformation. From 2003-2005 he worked for Peggy Dulaney’s Synergos Institute, where he helped Global Philanthropy Circle member Maria Garcés Campagna bring Archbishop Desmond Tutu and other members of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission to Cali, Colombia, to discuss peace and restorative justice. From 2005-2017, Sillen served as Vice President of Institutional Advancement at his alma mater, Brooklyn College, where he designed and completed a starting capital campaign for the new Barry R. Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema at Steiner Studios. Recently he has served as U.S. philanthropic advisor for UCT’s new Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance. He continues to write and pursue a variety of archaeological and other research interests from his home in Brooklyn, New York.
Christopher Stone
Professor of Practice of Public Integrity, Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford University
Former President, Open Society Foundation
Chris Stone, Professor of Practice of Public Integrity at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government. He is an expert in institutional strategy and public-sector reform globally, with a special focus on systems of justice. From 2012 -2017, Chris served as president of the Open Society Foundation helping to strengthen civil society as a force for political pluralism in more than one hundred countries worldwide. Prior to joining OSF, he was the Guggenheim Professor of the Practice of Criminal Justice at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he led both the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management and the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations. Chris began his legal career in 1982 as a public defender in Washington, D.C., and later helped found both the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem and the New York State Capital Defender Office. From 1994 through 2004, he served as president of the Vera Institute of Justice, an incubator of innovation for the justice sector, expanding the Institute’s work with government reformers in the United Kingdom, South Africa, Russia, Nigeria, India, China, Chile, and Brazil. He is the recipient of an honorary OBE for his contributions to criminal justice reform in the United Kingdom.
Scott Wallace
Co-Chair, Wallace Global Fund
Progressive Activist; Attorney;
Former Congressional Candidate
Scott Wallace, grandson of Henry A. Wallace, is Co-Chair of Wallace Global Fund. An attorney since 1978, Scott has specialized in criminal law, constitutional law, legislation, and public policy. He has served as Counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, General Counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, Legislative Director for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and Director of Defender Legal Services at the National Legal Aid and Defender Association. He has acted as an advisor on criminal law reform to several East African governments and is a founding partner of the Democracy Alliance. He was the 2018 Democratic nominee for the U.S. House of Representatives in Pennsylvania’s first congressional district.
Hon. Ann Claire Williams
Of Counsel, Jones Day; Former U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Seventh Circuit; Former U.S. District Court Judge;
Hon. Ann Claire Williams (Ret.) leads Jones Day’s global rule of law initiatives in Africa, working to strengthen the delivery of justice across the continent. She has partnered with judiciaries, attorneys, NGOs, and U.S. agencies to develop training programs in countries such as Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Zambia. Additionally, she has taught at the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.
Appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1985, she became the first woman of color to serve on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. In 1999, President Bill Clinton appointed her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, making her the first judge of color to sit on that court and only the third Black woman to serve on any federal circuit court.
Williams has served on numerous judicial committees and held leadership roles in the Federal Judges Association, where she was the first person of color to become an officer. She co-founded organizations like Just The Beginning — A Pipeline Organization and the Black Women Lawyers’ Association of Chicago, demonstrating her lifelong commitment to increasing diversity in the legal profession.
Her extensive board service includes the Carnegie Corporation of New York, iCivics, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Museum of Science and Industry Chicago, and the International Law Institute-South African Centre for Excellence. Williams also chairs the Advisory Board of Equal Justice Works and the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary for 2021-2024. She continues to be a powerful advocate for justice, equality, and the rule of law worldwide.
