Tricia Olsen

Co-Director

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Tricia D. Olsen, PhD, is professor and the Stassen Chair at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs. She is also a non-resident Sié Fellow at the University of Denver’s Korbel School of International Studies. Olsen studies and teaches about business ethics and the political economy of development, with a focus on Latin America. Dr. Olsen’s book, Seeking Justice: Access to Remedy for Corporate Human Rights Abuse (Cambridge University Press, 2023), provides an in-depth exploration of victims’ access to remedy mechanisms for corporate human rights abuses. The findings in her book are drawn from her original, large-N database of historical trends of businesses’ human rights practices, the Corporations & Human Rights (CHRD) database. Olsen has received support from various organizations for her research, including the National Science Foundation, USAID, Fulbright-Hays, the Carnegie Corporation, and the British Academy/Leverhulme. Her published work can be found in World Development, Organization Studies, Business Ethics Quarterly, Journal of Business Ethics, Comparative Political Studies, among others. Previously, Olsen was professor and associate dean at the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business. Olsen earned her doctorate in political science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Samentha Goethals

Co-Director

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Samentha Goethals, PhD, is Assistant Professor in Business & Society at SKEMA Business School and Visiting Fellow at Copenhagen Business School, where she contributes to the FRONTIERS project on sustainability due diligence for a just transition. She holds a PhD in Politics from Oxford Brookes University and has developed an interdisciplinary research agenda that bridges socio-legal studies, global governance, and organizational theory, grounded in years of advocacy and field-based research with NGOs and human rights defenders in high-risk and transitional contexts, such as the mining sector in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Her on-going work focuses on the translation of human rights in business and corporate responsibility in situations of forced migration and labour exploitation, shaped by policy-oriented research in the garment industry in Turkey and Jordan, and the agri-food sector in Europe. This work has resulted in several publications, including the award-winning article ‘Migrant Workers’ ‘Rights-Talk’ in the British Hospitality Sector’ (Business and Human Rights Journal, 2019) and ‘Business and Human Rights as Sensemaking: A Multi-Level Framework for Organizational Translation’ (Business & Society, 2025). She is Book Review Editor and co-editor of the special issue on Business, Human Rights, and Just Transition in the Energy and Extractive Sectors in the Business and Human Rights Journal. She is also co-editor of the forthcoming volume Beyond Boundaries: Methodological Approaches in Business, Human Rights and the Environment (Springer), which brings together innovative empirical and methodological contributions to the field.

Her current research expands the scope of corporate human rights responsibility to examine how businesses engage with sustainability due diligence in the context of just transition. She is especially interested in participatory, inclusive and embodied approaches to research and governance, including the use of arts-based methodologies to engage affected communities and non-human stakeholders in shaping more accountable and equitable futures. Samentha brings this critical, practice-informed perspective into the classroom, designing and delivering Business and Human Rights courses for students of management, law, and politics, as well as MBAs, social auditors, financiers, and human rights defenders across diverse institutional and regional settings.

Rachel Chambers

Co-Director

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Rachel Chambers is Assistant Professor of Business Law at the University of Connecticut School of Business where she teaches Corporate Social Responsibility and Accountability and Business Solutions for Societal Challenges. Previously at SOAS, University of London, she taught about the regulation of multinational enterprises.

Dr. Chambers directs UConn’s Business and Human Rights Initiative, working with colleagues to further its mission to develop and support multidisciplinary and engaged research, education, and public outreach at the intersection of business and human rights. She advises UConn’s President’s Committee on Corporate Social Responsibility on the advancement of socially responsible policies within the university.

Dr. Chambers’ doctorate in law from the University of Essex considers the challenges of extraterritorial solutions to human rights abuses in global business operations. Her current research includes comparative work on transnational tort litigation and analysis of the accountability potential of laws mandating human rights disclosure and due diligence by corporations. Her publications include the Transnational Corporations and Human Rights Overcoming Barriers to Judicial Remedy (Cambridge University Press 2020) and articles in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law and the Chicago Journal of International Law.

Dr. Chambers’ background is in the practice of law. She is a Barrister (England and Wales) with a decade of experience of trial and appeal court advocacy, specialized in employment and discrimination law. She has worked as a consultant to major players in the business and human rights sphere, including the UN Global Compact and Amnesty International.

Anthony Ewing

Co-Founder

Anthony Ewing is a Lecturer at Columbia Law School where he teaches “Transnational Business and Human Rights” and “Managing Human Rights.” His writing and research examines corporate human rights programs and corporate responsibility best practices. Anthony has served as an independent corporate responsibility expert for the International Labour Organization. His publications include “Mandatory Human Rights Reporting,” in Business and Human Rights: From Principles to Practice (Routledge, 2016); Integrating Human Rights into Crisis Planning (United Nations Global Compact, 2015); What Executives Need to Know (and Do) About Human Rights, Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (2013), and Establishing State Responsibility for Private Acts of Violence against Women under the American Convention on Human Rights, Columbia Human Rights Law Review (1995).

As a Senior Advisor at Logos Consulting Group, Anthony helps companies to engage stakeholders, conduct due diligence, and implement policies and programs that effectively manage the risk of adverse human rights impacts. In the nonprofit sector, Anthony has worked with Religions for Peace, the International League for Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and an international development organization in Central America.

Joanne Bauer

Co-Founder

Joanne Bauer teaches courses on business and human rights at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs and as part of the Institute for the Study of Human Rights (ISHR) Human Rights Certificate Program through the School of Continuing Education. She is also Senior Researcher, Business and Human Rights at ISHR. Her research includes the following projects: National Action Plans on Business & Human Rights, Indigenous Peoples and the Extractives Sector; Investment Chain Mapping; Future Financial Landscape and Accountability; Non-Judicial Grievance Mechanisms; and Benefit Corporations. Bauer is editor of Forging Environmentalism: Justice, Livelihood and Contested Environments(ME Sharpe, 2006), and co-editor of The East Asian Challenge for Human Rights (Cambridge University Press, 1999).

From 2006-2012, Bauer was Senior Researcher at Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, where she was responsible for Asia, as well as the thematic areas of women’s rights, HIV/AIDS, and access to medicines globally. Prior to that (1994-2005) she was Director of Studies at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs where she founded research programs on human rights and environmental values, directed the Fellows program, and was Founding Editor of the magazine, Human Rights Dialogue. Bauer serves as an adviser to a number of non-profits and projects, including Inclusive Development International, Accountability Counsel, Oxfam America, the Business and Rule of Law Program at Singapore Management University, and the Center for Applied Legal Studies at the University Witswatersrand in Johannesburg.

Governance Committee

The Teaching Forum is led by a Governance Committee that includes the Teaching Forum Co-Directors. All members of the Governance Committee serve in a volunteer capacity.

Governance Committee Members

• Juliana Bertholdi – Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná
• Anil Yilmaz Vastardis – University of Essex
• Yingru Li – University of Glasgow
• Harry J. Van Buren III – University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

• John Southlan – University of Western Australia

• Björn Fasterling – EDHEC Business School

• Yingru Li – University of Glasgow School of Business
• Danielle Pamplona – Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná
• Sanchita Saxena – University of California, Berkeley 
• Ana Cláudia Ruy Cardia Atchabahian – Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie

Past Governance Committee Members

• Joanne Bauer – School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University

• Dorothée Baumann-Pauly – NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights

• Nadia Bernaz – Wageningen University 

• Penny Collenette – University of Ottawa

• Nina Gardner – School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University

• Erika George – University of Utah 

• Caroline Kaeb – The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

• Sheldon Leader – School of Law, University of Essex
• Jena Martin – West Virginia University College of Law 

• Jamie O’Connell – Stanford Law School
• Carolina Olarte Bacares – Universidad Pontificia Javeriana 
• Terry Nelidov – Erb Institute, University of Michigan 

• Michael Santoro – Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University

• Sara Seck – Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University 

• Elizabeth Umlas – University of Fribourg

• Ursula Wynhoven – Fordham Law School