The LIDS Advisory Board is a group of accomplished scholars and development practitioners that provides continuity and strategic guidance to the organization.
Katrin A. Kuhlmann: President, TransFarm Africa
Katrin Kuhlmann is the President of TransFarm Africa, a fellow with the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs at the Aspen Institute, Senior Advisor to the Corporate Council on Africa and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University Law Center. She was previously a Senior Fellow and Director at the Aspen Institute and a Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund. Her work focuses on a demand-driven market-led approach to trade, development, investment and food security policies and on addressing policy and legal barriers faced by entrepreneurs.
Prior to joining the non-profit sector, Ms. Kuhlmann served for six years as the Director for Eastern Europe and Eurasia in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) where she was responsible for developing and coordinating U.S. trade policy with Russia, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia. She has also practiced law in New York and Washington, DC.
Ms. Kuhlmann holds degrees from Harvard Law School and Creighton University, and she was the recipient of a Fulbright grant to study international economics in Halle, Germany in 1992. She currently lives with her family in Bethesda, Maryland.
Michael Kleinman
Michael Kleinman is currently a Director of Investments at Humanity United, a foundation committed to building peace and advancing human freedom. Michael oversees Humanity United’s work in West Africa, as well as leading the foundation’s emerging focus on technology.
After HLS, Michael spent a year with the Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research (HPCR) at the Harvard School of Public Health, managing a project on the application of International Humanitarian Law to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Following HPCR he served as CARE’s Advocacy Advisor in Afghanistan and Sudan, as well as Regional Advocacy Advisor for East and Central Africa. He then worked in Iraq, where he helped manage USAID’s Community Stabilization Program in Ninewah Province. Prior to joining Humanity United he was a consultant, focusing on humanitarian, conflict and post-conflict issues. Michael graduated from Yale in 1999, and from HLS in 2003.
Rene Kathawala: Pro Bono Counsel, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP (New York)
Rene Kathawala serves as Orrick’s firmwide pro bono coordinator and counsel, responsible for managing and initiating the firm’s pro bono activities, including administrative and legal aspects. Mr. Kathawala works with other pro bono coordinators and nonprofit organizations to increase the quantity and quality of pro bono representation that is being provided to indigent clients in each of the cities where Orrick has a presence.
Immediately prior to joining Orrick in this position, Mr. Kathawala served as a law clerk to the Honorable I. Leo Glasser, United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, between September 2004 and August 2005. Mr. Kathawala was an associate in Orrick’s employment law department between October 1996 and July 2004 where he focused his practice on general labor and employment counseling and litigation. During that time, Mr. Kathawala initiated a formal pro bono program in the New York office and served as the pro bono coordinator for the office. Mr. Kathawala has received recognition for his significant contributions to pro bono clients in the areas of matrimonial and family law and employment law counseling, through receipt of Network For Women’s Services (now inMotion) First Annual Commitment to Justice Award (March 1999), the Cornerstone Award from Lawyers Alliance for New York (May 2001), and the New York City Bar Association Justice Center Public Service honoree (September 2006).
Mr. Kathawala has been a LIDS Advisory Board member since 2009. He works with the LIDS Co-Vice-Presidents of Projects to assign and oversee Orrick attorneys who supervise LIDS projects on a pro bono basis each semester.
April Rinne: Director, WaterCredit (San Francisco)
April Rinne currently serves as the director of WaterPartners’ WaterCredit initiative. In this capacity, Ms. Rinne leads the evolution, execution and expansion of WaterCredit, which aims to make access to clean water and basic sanitation available and affordable for everyone by applying microfinance tools to the water and sanitation needs of the world’s poor. Ms. Rinne brings a wealth of microfinance experience, including serving as director of venture development at Unitus Investment Group and as a member of the Corporate Finance and M&A practice groups at O’Melveny & Myers LLP. Ms. Rinne also currently trains policy makers, attorneys and microfinance executives throughout the developing world for the International Development Law Organization. A Fulbright Scholar, Ms. Rinne received her B.A. in International Relations from Emory University; M.A. from the Fletcher School with concentrations in International Finance and Development Economics; and J.D. from Harvard Law School.
For more information about Ms. Rinne, visit: http://borrowinggreatideas.com/about/.
Ms. Rinne has been a LIDS Advisory Board member since 2009. In March 2010, she gave a talk at HLS, organized by LIDS, on her work on social investment, microfinance, and water. During her visit, she also advised students on careers in law and development.
William Alford: Henry L. Stimson Professor of Law, Harvard Law School (Cambridge, MA)
Professor Alford plays many leadership roles at Harvard: he is the Henry L. Stimson Professor of Law, Vice Dean for the Graduate Program and International Legal Studies, Director of East Asian Legal Studies and Chair of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability. Among other topics, he writes about, works in, and frequently travels to China, where he is actively involved with the country’s rapidly-changing legal profession. He is an HLS graduate. For more information about Professor Alford’s work, visit: http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/index.html?id=1 and http://www.hpod.org/about/who-we-are.
Professor Alford has been a LIDS Advisory Board member since 2009. He has provided significant guidance and support to LIDS since its founding and has been particularly instrumental in working with the HLS administration to support this year’s LIDS-MCC independent clinical project.
Kala Mulqueeny: Senior Counsel, Office of General Counsel, Asian Development Bank (Manila, Philippines)
Dr. Kala Mulqueeny is currently Senior Counsel in the Office of General Counsel (OGC) at the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and a Professorial Lecturer at the University of the Philippines. Her work and research has covered a variety of topics, including carbon trading, infrastructure investment, environmental courts, electricity and water regulation — while focusing on Southeast Asia. At ADB, Dr. Mulqueeny is the primary counsel responsible for regulatory work relating to the environment, and energy and climate change. She leads ADB’s Asia Pacific Dialogue on Clean Energy Governance and Regulation, amongst energy policy-makers and regulators in the region. She was recently chosen as one of only 15 Yale World Fellows for 2010 and will be spending four months this fall at Yale University (see more at: http://opa.yale.edu/news/article.aspx?id=7504). Dr. Mulqueeny completed her LL.M. and S.J.D. degrees at HLS where she was a recipient of a graduate fellowship from the Program on Justice, Welfare and Economics. Dr. Mulqueeny is originally from Australia.
Dr. Mulqueeny has been a LIDS Advisory Board member since 2009. In November 2010, she gave a talk at HLS, organized by LIDS, on her work on international law, climate change, and economic development. During her visit, she also advised students interested in careers on law and development. She also spoke at the 2010 LIDS Symposium on a panel on rule of law in post-natural disaster contexts.
Olivier de Schutter: UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food (New York)
Dr. Olivier de Schutter currently serves as the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. In that capacity, he works actively to promote the full realization of the right to food around the world (see more at: http://www.srfood.org/index.php/en/special-rapporteur). Prior to his current appointment, Dr. de Schutter served as Secretary General of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) from 2004 to 2008. Beyond his role with the UN, Dr. de Schutter plays several academic roles: He is Professor of Law at the University of Louvain (UCL) and at the College of Europe (Natolin). He has been lecturer in law at the University of Leicester (UK) and has been teaching European Union law, international and european human rights law and legal theory at numerous universities in New York, France, Finland, Portugal, Benin and Puerto Rico. He is the founder and coordinator of the EU Network of Independent Experts on Fundamental Rights and the Director of the International Center for the teaching of human rights in Universities, at the International Institute of Human Rights. Dr. de Schutter holds a LL.M. from Harvard University, a diploma cum laude from the International Institute of Human Rights (Strasbourg) and a Ph.D. in Law from the University of Louvain. He is a visiting professor at Columbia University on a regular basis since 2008 and is periodically based out of New York.
Dr. de Schutter has been a LIDS Advisory Board member since 2009. In November 2010, he gave a talk at HLS, organized by LIDS, on the right to food and global food security. In addition, a team of LIDS students will be working under Dr. de Schutter’s direction during the spring 2011 semester on a project that will contribute to his work with the UN on the right to food.
El Cid Butuyan: Senior Litigator, World Bank (Washington, DC)
El Cid Butuyan is currently a Senior Litigator at the World Bank working on transnational issues of corruption and governance. In his work with the Bank’s Legal Vice Presidency, he has extensive experience in both enforcement actions against corruption and in the development of institutional safeguards designed to prevent corruption. In 2007, he was previously appointed by former HLS Dean, Elena Kagan, as the Harvard Wasserstein Fellow for Public Interest in “recognition of outstanding contribution and dedication to public interest law.”
Mr. Butuyan hails from the Philippines, where he served as a member of the Prosecution Panel in the historic impeachment of the former Philippine President for grand corruption and plunder, and as a former clerk to a Justice of the Supreme Court. He is a graduate of the University of the Philippines and received his LL.M. from HLS in 2004.
Mr. Butuyan has been a LIDS Advisory Board member since 2009.
Anne Healy: Alumni Representative, LIDS Advisory Board (Washington, DC)
Anne Healy is a consultant with McKinsey & Co. in Washington, DC where she works with clients across the private, public, and social sectors. Before joining McKinsey, she completed her JD at Harvard Law School and her Master in Public Administration in International Development (MPA/ID) at the Harvard Kennedy School. While a student at HLS, Anne was a founding board member of LIDS, serving as the VP of Collaborations and later as Co-President. Anne has worked with a variety of international development organizations in Africa, including the MIT Poverty Action Lab / Innovations for Poverty Action, the International Rescue Committee, and the Millennium Challenge Corporation.
Lisa Taylor: Alumni Representative, LIDS Advisory Board (Washington, DC)
Lisa Taylor serves as one of two Alumni Representatives on the Advisory Board, from 2011-2013. Lisa was a founding member of LIDS and worked to grow membership and organize the first LIDS clinical project in Lesotho with the Millennium Challenge Corporation. Lisa’s development work has focused on global heath. She has worked for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the Kaiser Family Foundation. Lisa graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Michigan in 2008. She is now working as an Associate in Sidley Austin’s DC office in the health care group.
Director of Alumni and External Relations: Madison Condon
Madison Condon is a member of the class of 2014 at Harvard Law School, pursuing a joint degree with the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Madison is interested in land rights and trans-boundary environmental law. In addition to involvement in LIDS, she is also the Student Writing Editor for the Harvard Human Rights Journal and a fellow with the Harvard Water Security Initiative.
She received a B.S. from Columbia University in Environmental Engineering and Economics in 2008. After graduating, she was a Fulbright scholar to the Netherlands where she studied international water law and policy at UNESCO-IHE. She has worked on agricultural development projects in Arusha, Tanzania, and Koraro, Ethiopia. In her previous life as a scientist she researched the effects of climate change in the Florida Everglades and Qingdao, China. Prior to starting graduate school she traveled for a year – working on organic farms in Hawaii and an archaeology site in France. Her summers in law school have been spent with LIDS partner, the Public International Law and Policy Group (PILPG), and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris.
Elian Maritz: LIDS Co-President
Elian Maritz is a member of the class of 2013 at Harvard Law School, where she is a member of the Law and International Development Society, the Human Rights Journal, and the Harvard Immigration Project. With LIDS, she has worked on projects on arbitration practices in Africa and decentralization in Nepal and has served as VP of Community.
Before attending law school, she served for two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in El Salvador. She worked in the small, rural town of Dolores, where she was involved in several different projects, such as organizing a local fishing cooperative and an artisan jewelry group. She has a variety of experience working at international human rights, development, and policy organizations, including internships at Human Rights Watch, the Center for American Progress, the OneVoice Movement, and the Grameen Bank. As an undergraduate, she studied Political Science at Columbia University in New York. Before university, she took a gap year to study Spanish in Spain and volunteer in Central America. She is a 2002 graduate of the United World College of the American West.
Colette Van der Ven: LIDS Co-President
Colette van der Ven is a member of the class of 2014 at Harvard Law School, pursuing a joint JD/MPP degree with the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Colette is especially interested in demand-driven international development, in particular anti-corruption initiatives, agriculture policy and agribusinesses, global food systems and bottom-of-the-pyramid business models.
Colette has worked on a variety of development-related projects, including litigating corrupt companies at the World Bank’s Integrity Vice Presidency; researching regulatory barriers to commercial agriculture in Tanzania for the Aspen Institute; and mapping the regulatory and legal landscape of agricultural policy in India for the Acumen Fund.
Prior to coming to law school, Colette was a Humanity in Action Fellow for the Berlin program, worked with the United Nations at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal in Cambodia, and explored journalism with the Global Forum for Health Research in Cuba and with International Bridges to Justice in the Philippines. As an undergraduate, she studied political science at Middlebury College, spending a semester abroad in Peru and a summer in Cyprus studying conflict resolution in the Middle East. Colette is originally from the Netherlands.