Who We Are

Meg Roggensack

Co-Director

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Margaret Ellen Roggensack teaches “Human Rights at the Intersection of Trade and Corporate Responsibility” at Georgetown University Law School. Meg is a recognized expert on business and human rights with extensive experience in designing and leading multistakeholder engagement strategy and initiatives.  She most recently served as the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable’s Interim Executive Director during its recent leadership transition. As the former Senior Advisor for Business and Human Rights at Human Rights First, Professor Roggensack led work on internet freedom, labor rights, natural resources and security and multistakeholder engagement and accountability mechanisms to address the human rights impacts of global business operations. As the Policy Director for Free the Slaves, she helped shape the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act, worked with ATEST coalition colleagues to secure passage of anti-trafficking law reforms, and worked to strengthen responses to child labor in cocoa production through the International Coca Initiative and related efforts. She serves on the boards of the Global Network Initiative and the International Code of Conduct for Private Security Providers Association. Prior to her work at Human Rights First, Professor Roggensack practiced law with Hogan Lovells, focusing on international trade and legislative matters.

Professor Roggensack has served as an advisor to numerous private and quasi- governmental organizations on democratic transition, rule of law, and economic recovery initiatives, and U.S. policy toward Latin America. She is a member of the board of the Due Process of Law Foundation, past president of the Washington Foreign Law Society, and Past Vice President of the Board of the Washington Office on Latin America. She is a founding board member of the Packard Center for ALS Research and a member of the Board of Advisors of the Center for Humanitarian Health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.

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 plays an integral role at 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 RightsColumbia 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

  • Claire Bright – Nova School of Law
  • Humberto Cantu – Universidad de Monterrey
  • Rachel Chambers, School of Business, University of Connecticut  
  • Anthony Ewing – Columbia Law School
  • David Hess – Ross School of Business, University of Michigan
  • Asif Khan – Department of Law, NUST, Islamabad
  • Chiara Macchi – University of Wageningen
  • Marcia Narine Weldon – University of Miami School of Law
  • Justine Nolan – University of New South Wales
  • Tricia Olsen – University of Denver
  • Danielle Pamplona – Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná
  • Meg Roggensack – Georgetown University Law School 
  • Michelle Staggs Kelsall – SOAS

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