ROLC - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• Program Manager
• Program Manager With the

Abby Natividad is Program Manager with the Rule of Law Collaborative (ROLC), which she joined in November 2020. Before joining ROLC, she was a Research Specialist for Justice + Security in Transitions, where she focused on drug flows, forced migration, organized crime, resource-driven conflict, and security sector reform. She helped develop atrocity prevention training materials for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and has worked with the World Bank on issues involving alternative dispute resolution. She also has experience as an immigration and civil litigation attorney and clerked for the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit of Virginia. In law school, she was a Graduate Research Fellow for the Center for Comparative Legal Studies and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding (CLSPCP). Her work on post-conflict legislation and constitution drafting was used by groups such as the Ukrainian Constitutional Commission and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Through the CLSPCP, she resided in Pristina, Kosovo, where she assisted the Democracy for Development Institute. She was also a Research Assistant for the U.S. Institute of Peace, where she co-authored a memorandum on freedom of information as an anticorruption tool for the International Network to Promote the Rule of Law. She received a J.D. from William & Mary Law School and a B.S. and B.A. from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where she graduated summa cum laude.

Job Titles:

• Senior Fellow

Job Titles:

• Administrative Assistant

Job Titles:

• Program Manager
• Program Manager With the

Asma Peracha is a Program Manager with the Rule of Law Collaborative (ROLC), which she joined in March 2022. Before joining ROLC, she worked as a National Security Fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union. At the ACLU, she helped conduct impact litigation and advocacy in areas of national security concern, including government surveillance and watch listing. Her prior experiences include working on international human rights issues at NGOs around the world, including Al Haq in Palestine, the Human Rights Commission in Pakistan, and the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. She holds a B.A. in History from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a J.D. from New York University School of Law.

Job Titles:

• Program Manager
• Program Manager Law
• Program Manager With the

Atif Choudhury is a Program Manager with the Rule of Law Collaborative (ROLC), which he joined in February 2021. Before joining ROLC, he was a Senior Program Associate with the Carter Center's China Program, where he managed programming and conducted research on U.S.-China relations and Africa-U.S.-China issues. He has worked on projects involving rule of law development, international elections, post-conflict transitional justice, and maritime law. Most recently, he independently developed two proposals on Libya de-confliction and CVE in the Sahel, and he was invited to present his working paper on Gulf of Guinea piracy at a televised forum organized by CGTN Think Tank, as well as the 2020 Development Studies Association Ireland conference. In law school, he drafted an elections law briefing in Cambodia; a report on the Bangladeshi judiciary; and transitional justice reports in Sudan, South Sudan and Ethiopia. As a Tetratech DPK Global Development Fellow, he worked with the Timorese Ministry of Justice to draft a report on their community legal education initiatives, and worked with the Judicial Services Monitoring Programme (JSMP) to help draft the first state-of-legal aid report in Timor-Leste. He is a blogger and writer whose works have been featured in The Oxford Political Review, The Diplomat, The Carter Center's U.S-China Perception Monitor, the Huffington Post, the Dhaka Tribune, William and Mary Law School's the Comparative Jurist, the Vanderbilt Political Review, and the Advocates for International Development Student Blog. Atif has native-level conversational fluency in Bangla and Sylheti, and elementary fluency in Spanish. He holds an LL.M. in Public International Law from Queen Mary University of London, a J.D. from William and Mary Law School, and a B.A. in Political Science and Medicine, Health & Society from Vanderbilt University.

Job Titles:

• Administrative Coordinator

Carol Young is Administrative Coordinator at the Rule of Law Collaborative (ROLC), which she joined in August 2016. She came to ROLC from the University of South Carolina School of Law, where she served as a Faculty Scholarship Assistant. Her work included researching, editing and formatting casebooks and law review articles, and managing law review article submissions for faculty. She brings 14 years of experience serving the University of South Carolina, including five years at the Children's Law Center where she managed over 70 training programs annually for child-serving professionals, including attorneys, judges, law enforcement and educators. She also edited Children's Law Center publications and managed the digital content of the website, including online training. She majored in Hospitality Management at Columbus State College, Columbus, Ohio. Her international experiences center around women's leadership development. She has volunteered in Honduras, El Salvador, Zambia, Tanzania and DR Congo.

Job Titles:

• Program Officer
• Program Officer With the

Clare Holtzman is a Program Officer with the Rule of Law Collaborative (ROLC), which she joined in May 2024. Before joining ROLC, she served as the Duke University School of Law's International Law and Human Rights Post-Graduate Fellow. Through this fellowship, she worked with the Indigenous Peoples and Minorities Section of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Amnesty International Secretariat's Racial Justice Team. While in law school, she served as a Judicial Intern for the U.S. Court of International Trade, as a Law Clerk for DAI's Office of the General Counsel, and as a Research Assistant for the Duke University School of Law's Global Financial Markets Center. She was also the Managing Editor of the Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law and a student in the Duke Law International Human Rights Clinic. In the clinic, she focused on the intersections of gender, criminal justice, and terrorism. She received a J.D., cum laude, and LL.M. in International and Comparative Law from Duke University School of Law, and a B.A. from Colorado College.

Job Titles:

• Associate Professor of Social Foundation

Dr. Payal Shah is an Associate Professor of Social Foundations of Education and Qualitative Inquiry. She joined the Department of Educational Studies after completing her Ph.D. at Indiana University, Bloomington. Her primary research interests include girls' education, international development and education policy, and qualitative research methodology, with geographical expertise in South Asia. Shah's current projects include empowerment, gender and education related research and a co-edited book on Girls' Education in India and China. Shah has published in a variety of journals across the fields of research methods, gender studies, and international and comparative education. Her research has been funded by the Fulbright Program and Spencer Foundation. She teaches courses on qualitative research methodology, international and comparative education, and the social foundations of education. Shah is an active member of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), Comparative and International Education Society (CIES), and The Association for Asian Studies (AAS). Dr. Shah earned her Ph.D. in Education Policy Studies, MA in International and Comparative Education, and MA in Sociology from Indiana University. She earned her BA in International Studies from Colby College.

Job Titles:

• Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology

Dr. Sherina Feliciano-Santos is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of South Carolina. She also has affiliations with the Linguistics Program and the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program. Her research interests include the politics of language use, social activism, language and cultural revitalization, racial and ethnic formations, narrative, and face-to-face interaction. Her regional specializations are the Caribbean and the Southern United States. Specifically, she examines face-to-face interactions, and the culturally and historically situated communicative ideologies that influence and emerge from everyday life. She currently has two research projects in progress. The first, in collaboration with Dr. Sonia Das from NYU, is a study of language use in police-subject interactions in the U.S. South. In this National Science Foundation, Wenner-Gren, and University of South Carolina funded project, she considers how subjects apprehended during traffic stops manage police interactions and how subjects' actions are interpreted by law enforcement officers. Through ethnographic observation of courts and legal offices, interviews with lawyers, subjects, and police, and analysis of body- and dash-cam video, Das and Feliciano-Santos aim to understand the processes involved in the production of evidence, the dynamics involved in the escalation of force, and the cultural and language ideologies that undergird the U.S. judicial system. Feliciano-Santos also has a long-term project that has centered on indigenous Taino cultural revitalization in Puerto Rico. She is completing a book on the debates surrounding the Taíno indigenous movement in Puerto Rico as well as the historical and interactional challenges involved in claiming membership in, what for many Puerto Ricans, is an impossible affiliation. Her work has been published in various journals such as the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, Racial and Ethnic Studies, and Language and Communication, among others. She earned her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Michigan in 2011.

Job Titles:

• Visiting Fellow With the

Fiona Mangan is Visiting Fellow with the Rule of Law Collaborative (ROLC). She is the Director of Justice + Security in Transitions (J+ST), which focuses on researching justice and security concerns in conflict, post-conflict, and transitional environments. She previously served as Country Representative in Central African Republic for the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), following four years with USIP's Rule of Law Center, and the International Network to Promote the Rule of Law (INPROL). She has worked at the Stimson Center where her research involved a multi-country study on the impact of police, justice, and corrections reform work in UN peace operations. She has also worked for the International Policy Division at the Irish Department of Justice, Independent Diplomat in New York, Lawyers Without Borders in Liberia, and the International Stability Operations Association in Washington, D.C. In addition to rule of law work, she has served as an international election observer for the Carter Center in South Sudan and for Progressio in Somaliland. She holds an M.A. in Conflict, Security, and Development from King's College in London, an LL.M. from Columbia University in New York City, and a law degree from University College Dublin in Ireland. She is an accredited mediator and holds a post-graduate diploma in project management.

Job Titles:

• Technical Director

Greg Gisvold is Technical Director for the Rule of Law Collaborative (ROLC), where he joined in January 2018. He is a senior rule of law and security sector reform expert with two decades of experience in complex governance challenges, focusing on judicial and law enforcement, government service delivery, accountability mechanisms, and public engagement with policy. He has an extensive track record leading security and justice programs for major international development organizations and niche implementers, serving regularly as Chief of Party, Team Leader, and Country Director. He has worked closely with USAID and the Department of State to develop new technical leadership tools. He led a team for the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) to create first-ever technical guidance and programming support systems for INL staff overseeing justice, police, and anticorruption reform initiatives. For USAID's Security Sector Reform program, he led an effort to ‘widen the aperture' on rule of law and security sector reform efforts related to piracy. Including other relevant disciplines, he was the principal architect and author of the Maritime Security Sector Reform Guide. He was previously an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Minnesota, a Human Rights Officer for the Office of the High Representative in Bosnia, and a law clerk to the Honorable Sandra Gardebring of the Minnesota Supreme Court. He has published a number of articles and two books on post-conflict human rights, legal reform, and reconstructing justice institutions. He received a J.D. from the University of Minnesota and a B.A. from Amherst College.

Job Titles:

• Senior Fellow
• Senior Fellow With the

Ibrahim J. Wani is Senior Fellow with the Rule of Law Collaborative (ROLC), where he brings over 30 years of experience working in international organizations and NGOs on rule of law issues, including nearly a decade in senior global leadership positions. He retired from the United Nations in 2015, where most recently he served as Director of the Human Rights Division at the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) and representative of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in the Republic of South Sudan. As the Director of the UNMISS Human Rights Division during the period of crisis in South Sudan that started in December 2013, he led the team that monitored, investigated and reported on the human rights situation in the country, and served as the principal adviser on human rights to the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General. From 2005 to 2013, he served as Chief of the Africa Branch and Director for Research and the Right to Development in the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva. He was previously the Eastern Africa Regional Representative of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, as well as Representative to the UN Economic Commission for Africa and to the African Union between 2002 and 2005. Prior to joining the United Nations, he was a Professor of Law at the University of Virginia and the University of Missouri Law Schools where he taught courses in public and private international law, conflict of law, immigration law and human rights. Subsequent to his teaching career, he served with the World Bank, working on capacity building and institutional reform issues in Africa, after which he headed the Africa Program at the International Human Rights Law Group (now Global Rights) where he oversaw the implementation of a wide-ranging program to enhance the institutional capacity of human rights organizations across Africa. He was also the Academic Dean at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies in Washington, D.C., from where he joined the United Nations. He started his career as Foreign Service Officer in the Diplomatic service in Uganda. He received S.J.D. and LL.M. degrees from the University of Virginia School of Law, and his LL.B. from Makerere University (Uganda).

Job Titles:

• Senior Fellow

Jerome Hansen joined the Rule of Law Collaborative (ROLC) in September 2020 as Senior Fellow. He has over 20 years' experience in the strategic development and implementation of peacebuilding and governance projects, with country expertise in Liberia, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Jordan. He has experience in the critical components of project design and delivery including political and conflict analysis, research, training, as well as project and personnel management. He has a strong background in the thematic areas of civil society development, democracy, reconciliation, good governance, and human rights and has overseen the delivery of over $35m in grants to civil society for USAID, UNDP, US Department of State and DFID. His successful start-up of projects include two USAID civil society grants and capacity development projects in Sri Lanka, a country office for International Alert in Sri Lanka, and the UN Peacebuilding Fund in Liberia all with a strong emphasis on civil society peacebuilding and civic participation. While working with International Alert, he supported private sector approaches to peacebuilding in the Philippines and Sri Lanka and served three years as their Country Director in Sri Lanka. Prior to joining ROLC, he advised on democracy and conflict efforts at MSI for over ten years in the areas of program strategy, implementation, and business development and acted as technical director for numerous projects in Sri Lanka, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. He has a master's degree from the Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University, as well as a bachelor's degree in Political Science from The Catholic University of America.

Job Titles:

• Business Administrator

Joe Davis joined the Rule of Law Collaborative (ROLC) as Business Administrator in November 2018. He most recently worked as the Business Manager in the University of South Carolina School of Law, serving there since 2013. While there, he managed a variety of personnel and financial matters. He also received several awards, including the ADVOCATE award and the Outstanding Staff award for Spring 2018. He has been with the University since 2008, having previously served in the Deductions area of the Payroll Department. He holds an M.B.A. from Francis Marion University and a B.A. in Political Science with a minor in Spanish from the University of South Carolina.

Job Titles:

• Executive Director
• Professor of Law and Executive

Joel H. Samuels is Professor of Law and Executive Director of the Rule of Law Collaborative (ROLC) at the University of South Carolina. In February 2022, he was appointed Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences after serving as Interim Dean for 13 months, and prior to that, Interim Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies. His scholarship explores the challenges and opportunities presented by changing notions of sovereignty, and his written work addresses international boundary disputes, maritime piracy and cross-border litigation. He is a lead co-author of one of the premier casebooks on international law, Transnational Law (West Academic Press). He also lectures extensively on litigation matters involving foreign parties involved in cases in U.S. courts. As Executive Director of ROLC, he oversees programming focused on rule of law development across the globe. In addition, he regularly lectures to U.S. Government officials from the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense on rule of law development abroad. He has also worked at the World Bank in both Washington (in the Office of the Vice President for Africa) and in Zimbabwe (at the African Capacity Building Foundation) focusing on capacity building in economic policy analysis and development management. During that time, he was a member of the World Bank team that drafted the Initiative for Capacity Building in Africa, a cornerstone document in the World Bank's initial efforts in that arena. Before joining the World Bank, he worked extensively in Russia in the early 1990s on efforts to combat organized crime, and he was an observer of the Russian Constitutional Assembly in 1993. In addition, he has been a contributor to several Russian newspapers and magazines and a variety of African publications. During his time in private law practice at Covington & Burling, he was involved in the ad hoc arbitration of the Eritrea-Ethiopia boundary dispute and led the team that drafted a new Civil Service Code for Eritrea. Honored by the University of South Carolina School of Law student body in 2007 and 2016 as the Outstanding Faculty Member for teaching excellence, he received his J.D., cum laude, from the University of Michigan Law School, where he was a Clarence Darrow Scholar. While at Michigan, he also earned a master's degree in Russian and East European Studies. He received his A.B., magna cum laude, in politics from Princeton University. At Princeton, he also received certificates in Russian Studies and European Cultural Studies and was awarded the Asher Hinds Prize in European Cultural Studies, the Montgomery Raiser Prize in Russian Studies, and the Caroline Picard Prize in Politics.

Job Titles:

• Deputy Executive Director
• Deputy Executive Director With the

Karen Hall is Deputy Executive Director with the Rule of Law Collaborative (ROLC). Previously she was an Associate Professor and Director of the LL.M. program in Democratic Governance and Rule of Law at the Ohio Northern University Pettit College of Law. Prior to joining ONU, She served for ten years with the U.S. Department of State in its Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. While there, she directed the development and management of State Department assistance to the criminal justice system in Afghanistan as part of the overall U.S. foreign assistance initiative. She has also developed programs dealing with institutional reform, access to justice, protection of women's rights, and legal education. She spent 2006-2008 living at the Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan directly managing the State Department's criminal justice and corrections programs. In recognition of her work, Professor Hall has earned multiple Meritorious and Superior Honor Awards from the State Department. Her teaching interests include International Rule of Law Reform, International Law, Comparative Criminal Law, Rule of Law Program Design and Management, Student Externship Courses and Introduction to the American Legal System. Her current research involves examining the consequences of the appropriations and administrative processes of the U.S. government in relation to rule of law reform worldwide. She received her J.D. from Harvard Law School, her M.A. in Security Studies from Georgetown School of Foreign Service, and her B.A. in Russian from Brigham Young University, where she graduated magna cum laude.

Job Titles:

• Director of Research
• Director of Research and Resilience Initiatives

Kiel Downey is Director of Research and Resilience Initiatives for the Rule of Law Collaborative (ROLC), where he returned in March 2023. He brings twelve years of experience working on rule of law and human rights issues across the public, non-profit, and higher education sectors combined. At ROLC, he has overseen the development and implementation of training activities focused on fundamental concepts in rule of law and justice sector reform for USG interagency, multilateral, and rule of law implementer audiences; faculty-led research projects on selected topics in rule of law; and digital research and learning resources for rule of law practitioner audiences. Previously, he served as Senior Advisor for the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), where he worked on issues related to criminal justice, freedom of the press, regulation of digital communication, disinformation, transnational repression, and authoritarian influence in international organizations, among others. In that capacity, he performed open-source research in multiple languages on complex topics and produced analysis for CECC products delivered to Congress and the President. He also advised CECC staff leadership on substantive issues within his areas of research. Through his work with the CECC, he also provided background memoranda and in-person briefings to Congressional and State Department staff. From 2012 to 2014, he was in the Department of Political Science at the University of South Carolina, where he served as Director of the Master of Arts in International Studies program, Internship Director, and Adjunct Faculty, and where he taught courses on world politics, human rights, and U.S. foreign policy. He also previously worked as a Program Officer for the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, where he administered grants for projects that focused on rule of law, democracy, and human rights issues in a variety of countries and regions worldwide. He is professionally proficient in Mandarin Chinese and conversant in Spanish, and he has translated academic and commercial materials from Chinese to English. He holds an M.A. from the Fletcher School, Tufts University, and a B.A. in International Relations and Linguistics from Stanford University.

Job Titles:

• Graphic Designer

Job Titles:

• Guest Lecturer

Mike McCurry is a Guest Lecturer with the Rule of Law Collaborative (ROLC). He is a retired communications consultant, political advisor, and seminary professor residing in Kensington, Maryland. He has nearly four decades of experience in the nation's capital. He served in the White House as Press Secretary to President Bill Clinton (1995-1998). He also served as Spokesman for the U.S. Department of State (1993-1995) and Director of Communications for the Democratic National Committee (1988-1990). He held a variety of leadership roles in national campaigns for the Democratic ticket from 1984 to 2004 and worked as a Press Secretary in the United States Senate from 1976 to 1983, serving Senators Harrison A. Williams, Jr. (D-NJ) and Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY). He is also a former member of the governing board of the Wesley Theological Seminary and a professor emeritus at the Center for Public Theology which he helped establish. He has served on several boards or advisory councils including Share Our Strength, the Children's Scholarship Fund, the White House Historical Association, and the Global Health Initiative of the United Methodist Church. He is former Co-Chair of the Commission on Presidential Debates, which organizes the fall general election debates between the major candidates for President and Vice President of the United States. He is also of counsel at the Washington, DC public affairs and communications consulting firm Public Strategies Washington, Inc. He received his Bachelor of Arts from Princeton University in 1976 and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Georgetown University in 1985 in addition to his MA degree from Wesley Seminary which he received in 2013.

Job Titles:

• Visiting Fellow With the

Sarah Tate Chambers is Visiting Fellow with the Rule of Law Collaborative (ROLC) where she joined in August 2021. She is currently an Attorney Advisor with the Executive Office for Immigration Review at the Department of Justice. She is also a Judge Advocate for the United States Army Reserve. She is completing a M.A. in Religious Studies from the University of Chicago and holds a J.D. from the University of South Carolina.

Job Titles:

• Senior Rule of Law Expert

Scott Ciment is the Senior Rule of Law Expert for the Rule of Law Collaborative (ROLC). He joined ROLC in September 2022 and has over 15 years of overseas experience - primarily in Asia - designing, managing, implementing, and monitoring rule of law programs for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative (ABA ROLI). From 2016 to 2020, he served as the Chief Technical Advisor (Rule of Law) for UNDP in Myanmar where he led dozens of training programs on international standards of due process and fair trials with prosecutors, judges and members of the Bar. He also served as the international legal advisor to the Attorney General and his senior officials as they implemented reform programs to improve their legal services and administrative functions. He also worked closely with the Supreme Court and the National Prosecution Service to develop their 5-year Strategic Plans, Codes of Conduct and the Legislative Drafting Manual for assistant attorneys general who reviewed and wrote proposed laws. Earlier, he held the position of Policy Advisor (Rule of Law and Access to Justice) for UNDP in Viet Nam. During that time, he conducted training sessions for judges, prosecutors, and lawyers on the adversarial justice system, the UN Convention Against Torture, the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and trial advocacy for defense attorneys. He also worked with law school legal clinics to implement innovative outreach and legal services programs for prisoners and citizens living in marginalized communities and collaborated closely with the Ministry of Justice in Viet Nam as the 2016 Revised Penal Code and the Revised Criminal Procedure Code were developed. Prior to working for the UN, he was the Country Director for ABA ROLI in the Philippines, overseeing a large justice sector support program that, among other accomplishments, helped the Supreme Court establish small claims dockets in every first-instance court nationwide, integrate a user-friendly automated case management system into the Court of Appeals, and pilot modern rules of court to speed litigation. In addition to Myanmar, Viet Nam and the Philippines, Scott has worked as a rule of law expert in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Bangladesh. Prior to his career in international rule of law development, he worked for over over fifteen years as a public defender and private criminal defense attorney and has conducted over 50 criminal jury and bench trials. He also served as the Legislative Advocate for California Attorneys for Criminal Justice, the largest statewide criminal defense association in the U.S., later serving on their Board of Directors.

Job Titles:

• Project Assistant
• Project Assistant Mass Communications

Serra Williams joined the Rule of Law Collaborative (ROLC) in August 2021 as Project Assistant. She is a sophomore majoring in Mass Communication, from North Charleston, South Carolina. She has a specialty in social media, as well as graphic design. She has been employed at a variety of different community outreach organizations and has taken on many different roles including social media manager, social media strategist, and even social media marketing coordinator. She plans to graduate from the University of South Carolina in May 2024 and hopes to one day run social media for a large fortune 500 company.

Job Titles:

• Deputy Executive Director
• Deputy Executive Director Law

Steven Austermiller is the Deputy Executive Director for the Rule of Law Collaborative (ROLC), where he joined in June 2016. He has worked on rule of law programs throughout the world, advising officials in six countries on legal and judicial reform and managing various international development programs. He has served as trainer and expert advisor on programs involving commercial law, human rights, ethics, international law, institutional capacity building, professional skills, legal education, and other matters. He has trained government officials, civil society leaders, judges, lawyers, and academics. He published the first legal textbook on Alternative Dispute Resolution in Cambodia and later in Georgia and the first annotated criminal procedure code book in Cambodia. He has also published in law journals such as the Yale Journal of Human Rights and Development Law and the Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law. Before joining ROLC, he was Director for Legal Education and Deputy Chief of Party on the USAID-PROLoG Program (Promoting the Rule of Law in Georgia). There, he helped reform Georgian legal education by establishing nine legal clinics (including the first mediation clinic), promoting interactive teaching methods, introducing legal competitions, reforming curriculum standards and establishing academic journals, as well as founding the National Center for Alternative Dispute Resolution and the National Center for Commercial Law. He also helped lead important judicial and legal reform efforts. Before PROLoG, he served in a similar capacity on the USAID-PRAJ Program in Cambodia (Promoting Rights and Justice) as country representative for the American Bar Association. There, he focused on modernizing the judiciary and the legal education system. He established a number of firsts: the first model courtroom, the first academic law journal, the first legal clinic, the first legal ethics and ADR courses, and the first national law student competitions (mock trial and client counseling). He also helped the Royal Academy for Judicial Professions establish a continuing legal education program. Before working in Cambodia, he managed various programs in other countries, including Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, and Oman. He helped establish a court-annexed mediation program in Bosnia. He trained lawyers and judges and helped establish legal clinics in several countries. He also ran a post-war inter-ethnic reconciliation program, established a FOIA center and trained professionals, including Iranian lawyers, on key advocacy skills. Prior to his sixteen years of work in the field, he practiced commercial litigation for eight years at Pedersen & Houpt in Chicago, becoming a partner in 2000. He has a J.D. from Northwestern University School of Law, where he served as Coordinating Note & Comment Editor for the Journal of International Law and Business. He also has a B.A. in Political Science from Northwestern University. He is currently President of the Brown Mosten International Client Consultation Competition.

Job Titles:

• Finance Director