JusticeMakers Panel of Judges 2012
International Bridges to Justice is honored to present its Panel of Judges for the 2012 JusticeMakers HIV/AIDS Global Competition. Judges will cooperatively choose 12 winners from the competition’s finalists. As the competition progresses, the panel will be updated.
Karen Tse
Karen founded International Bridges of Justice in 2000 to promote systemic global change in the administration of criminal justice. A former public defender, Karen first developed her interest in the cross section of criminal law and human rights as a Thomas J. Watson Fellow in 1986, after observing Southeast Asian refugees detained in a local prison without trial; thousands of prisoners of all ages being held without trial, often having been tortured into making so called confessions. In 1994, she moved to Cambodia to train the country’s first core group of public defenders and subsequently served as a United Nations Judicial Mentor. Under the auspices of the U.N., she trained judges and prosecutors, and established the first arraignment court in Cambodia.
In the initial stages, she negotiated groundbreaking measures in judicial reform with the Chinese, Vietnamese and Cambodian governments. Under her leadership, IBJ has expanded its programming to include Rwanda, Burundi, Zimbabwe and India. In addition to the Defenders Resource Centers in those countries, IBJ also sponsors independent Justice Makers in 25 countries. IBJ has created a Global Defense Support Program to bring IBJ assistance to public defenders worldwide. In 2010, IBJ launched the Justice Training Center in Singapore. A graduate of UCLA Law School and Harvard Divinity School, Karen was named by U.S. News & World Report as one of America’s Best Leaders in 2007. She has been recognized by the Skoll Foundation, Ashoka and Echoing Green as a leading social entrepreneur. Karen was the recipient of the 2008 Harvard Divinity School’s First Decade Award, and the 2008 American Bar Association’s International Human Rights Award. She also received the 2009 Gleitsman International Award at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
Paul Bernstein
Paul Bernstein is Chief Executive Officer of The Pershing Square Foundation (PSF). The Foundation, based in New York, was founded in December 2006 by Karen and Bill Ackman. Bill is the CEO and Portfolio Manager of Pershing Square Capital Management.
The Pershing Square Foundation has committed over $145 million in grants and social investments in the areas of economic development, education, healthcare, human rights, the arts and urban development.
Before joining PSF in November 2010, Paul was Global Managing Director of Absolute Return for Kids (ARK). ARKwas founded by senior figures in the hedge fund industry, seeking to deliver high social returns on philanthropic investment internationally in the fields of global health, education and child protection. Paul co-founded ARK South Africa in 2003, one of the first large-scale HIV/AIDS treatment program in a resource-poor setting, which by 2009 served 1 in 10 South Africans then receiving antiretrovirals. He returned to London in 2004 to lead ARK globally through its growth across multiple geographies, operating in UK, Southern Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia.
Prior to ARK, Paul enjoyed a career in government, telecoms and new media. He helped launch the ONdigital, theUK’s first digital terrestrial TV service, and Vizzavi Europe, an online joint venture between Vodafone and Vivendi. Paul was latterly Marketing Executive for Vodafone Global Products and Services, focused on mobile content services. Government experience in the UK included helping launch the National Minimum Wage, and advising the Cabinet on IT/internet policy.
Paul is Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for Newark’s Future. He holds an MA (Hons) in Economics from Jesus College, Cambridge and an MBA from Cranfield School of Management.
Daniel Lee
Daniel Jae-Won Lee is the Executive Director of the Levi Strauss Foundation, an independent private foundation that conveys the pioneering spirit and enduring values of Levi Strauss & Co.: originality, empathy, integrity and courage. He leads the Foundation’s international grant making in four areas: confronting HIV/AIDS stigma and discrimination, advancing worker rights in the apparel industry, helping low-income people save and invest in their futures, and advancing social justice. He joined Levi Strauss in 2003 as Community Affairs Manager for the Asia Pacific Division in Singapore, and subsequently served as the Director of Global Grant Making Programs.
Daniel has extensive experience with international non-governmental organizations in the fields of human rights, HIV/AIDS and social justice. He served as Senior Program Officer for Asia and Pacific at the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) and on the founding board of the Massachusetts Asian AIDS Prevention Project.
He is currently President of Funders Concerned about AIDS (FCAA), a Board member of the Council on Foundations, a Board member of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (AAPIP), a Board member of the Astraea Foundation for Justice and a member of the Asia-Oceania Advisory Council of the Global Fund for Women.
He received his undergraduate degree magna cum laude in Religion and History from Princeton University and a Master of Divinity from Harvard University.
Gaston Wright
Gaston worked for twelve years with Ashoka: Innovators for the Public. He launched and helped scale several Ashoka Global Programs including Global Fellowship, Ashoka Citizen Base and Changemakers.com. While working for Ashoka Global Fellowship Program, Gaston launched and supported Fellow collaborations on anti-corruption policies, human rights and health in Latin America, Africa, Asia and North America. While working as a Director for Ashoka’s Changemakers community team he started the program in Latin America and managed more than 50 online competitions with different corporate and philanthropic partners. He has a passion for Political Science and is a Professor and Seasonal Lecturer of Latin American Politics and Political Economy at the University of Toronto, IES Buenos Aires and Del Salvador University. Gaston received his bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Del Salvador University, Argentina and completed his master’s degree in Political Science at the University of Toronto, Canada. He studied, lived and worked in the UK, The Netherlands, Argentina and Canada.
Maureen Essex
Maureen Essex joined IBJ in 2012 as the Managing and Training Director in Singapore. She graduated cum laude from Mount Holyoke College with degrees in history and sociology. Following her graduation from Georgetown University Law Center, Maureen became an assistant public defender for the state of Maryland. She worked for the Office of the Public Defender for more than 25 years, representing thousands of indigent clients in criminal trials and training hundreds of colleagues in her role as training director for the agency. Maureen helped to draft the first piece of legislation submitted by the Office of the Public Defender which resulted in the passage of a law ensuring that all children involved in delinquency matters in Maryland have access to counsel. Maureen’s interest and experience in training attorneys and law students is longstanding and far reaching. She has taught students at both the University of Maryland School of Law and the Georgetown University Law Center. In 1998, she participated as a lecturer and workshop facilitator at the Conference on Domestic Violence held in various locations in Uzbekistan and sponsored by the United States Information Service. Maureen is a past president of the Maryland Criminal Defense Attorneys’ Association. She has held leadership roles in various entities of the American Bar Association. She is a founding member of the Maryland Immigrant Rights Coalition.
Mia Yamamoto
Mia Yamamoto has had a distinguished career in criminal law spanning over 30 years. She is a past chair of the Multicultural Bar Alliance, and a past chair of California Attorneys for Criminal Justice – a statewide organization of over 2500 private and public defenders – , and a California State Bar Delegate to the American Bar Association.
She has served on a number of boards and committees for groups including the Asian Pacific American Bar Association, ACLU, LA County Bar, National Lawyers Guild. She has conducted lectures and spoken on a number of panel discussions including the President’s Initiative on Race, the ABA, the Asian Pacific American Bar Association, CACJ/CPDA Death Penalty Seminars.
She is called upon regularly to do commentaries in the news media on issues related to criminal and constitutional law.
Alfred S. Magagula
Mr. Magagula is a gender and human rights activist. He currently works as the Municipal AIDS Program Manager for AMICAALL Swaziland. The main objectives of AMICAALL are to develop and coordinate the political and technical capacity of local government in Africa to effectively lead the multi-sectoral response to HIV/AIDS at the local level, in accordance with the principles of the Abidjan Declaration. Mr. Magagula is also the part-time coordinator of the Centre for Human Rights and Development Swaziland (CHRD), which seeks to advocate for human rights and raise awareness through various media. Mr. Magagula worked with a private law firm, LKM Attorneys, as a research consultant, where he investigated human rights violations carried out by private game farm wardens known as game rangers.
Mr. Magagula received his BA (Law), LLB graduate from the University of Swaziland. During his studies towards his LLB, his interest in human rights lead him to write a dissertation focused on the role of the judiciary in promoting and protecting human rights under the 2005 Constitution of Swaziland.The dissertation queried the constitution’s capacity to empower the courts to promote and protect the judiciary, and also at the independence of the judiciary.
Cait Clarke
Cait has had over 25 years of experience law teaching, training, and consulting on the law and legal policy issues particularly focused on access to counsel. Cait was the founding director of the National Defender Leadership Institute at NLADA, which develops leadership capacity and management skills.
Cait served as a principal and the legal education specialist with Watershed Associates, a Washington, D.C.-based firm specializing in negotiation training globally. She recently co-authored a book, Dare to Ask! A Woman’s Guidebook to Successful Negotiating (Mulberry St. Press, 2010). As the director of Clarke Consulting she provided leadership and management consulting to nonprofit organizations (public defense and legal aid), associations, government agencies and corporations nationwide.
Cait began her legal career as an E. Barrett Prettyman Fellow practicing criminal defense in the Georgetown Law Center’s Criminal Justice Clinic. She then moved toNew Orleansto join the law faculty ofLoyolaLawSchoolas an Associate Professor of Law. Upon completion of her doctorate degree at Harvard Law School, she taught at the Kennedy School of Government’s Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management and directed the Executive Session on Public Defense.
In her community work, Cait serves on the Board of Directors of the D.C. Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy and is a founding director of Gardenia House Foundation, which provides shelter to migrant women and children in Delaware. She served on the Board of Directors of the Southern Public Defender Training Center from 2008-2011.
Cait holds her S.J.D. from Harvard Law School, LL.M from Georgetown University Law Center’s Criminal Justice Clinic, J.D. from Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law, and B.S. from Villanova University’s School of Commerce and Finance.
Paul B. DeWolfe (Rolling Applications Judge)
Mr. DeWolfe has practiced in the area of criminal defense for 32 years, 22 years as a public defender in the State of Maryland. In 2009, Mr. DeWolfe was appointed Public Defender of Maryland, the fourth attorney to hold this position in the agency’s 40 year history. In this capacity, he leads an office of 570 attorneys and 344 support staff. He first joined the Montgomery County office in 1980 as an Assistant Public Defender before leaving the office for private practice in 1989. He returned to the office in a leadership role in the year 2000 serving as District Public Defender for Montgomery County, Maryland.
During his career, Mr. DeWolfe has tried criminal jury trials in cases ranging from misdemeanors to capital murder in both state and federal court. A Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers since 2005, Mr. DeWolfe is currently on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. He is a former President of the Maryland Criminal Defense Attorneys Association, and a former President of the Bar Association of Montgomery County Maryland. Currently he is Secretary of the Criminal Law Section Council of the Maryland State Bar Association.
Mr. DeWolfe is a 2008 recipient of the Joseph P. Curran Award for Distinguished Public Interest Lawyers from the Maryland State Bar Association.
Sanjeewa Liyanage (Rolling Applications Judge)
Originally from Sri Lanka, Sanjeewa became International Bridges to Justice’s Program Director in October 2006, after over 12 years of experience in human rights project management in Asia. He began his career as the Asian Coordinator for International Young Christian Students (IYCS) in 1988, where he conducted social awareness and leadership training programs for students in 14 Asian countries. In 1995, he joined the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) and the Asian Legal Resource Center (ALRC), regional human rights NGOs based in Hong Kong, where he assisted human rights related legal training programs for different groups including civic group leaders, lawyers and judges from the Asia-Pacific region. He represented AHRC at numerous UN forums including the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) and the Human Rights Committee in Geneva, preparatory meetings leading to the World Conference against Racism in Warsaw and Bangkok, and the Committee against Torture. He was a member of the editorial board of the ALRC by-monthly publication article 2 – on the implementation of rights in accordance with the Article 2 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).Sanjeewa was also the East Asian focal point for the NGO Coalition for International Criminal Court (CICC).
He has undergone human rights training at the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in the Hague and Danish Institute (formerly Danish Centre) for Human Rights (DIHR) in Copenhagen. He obtained his Masters of Law (LLM) (Human Rights) at the University of Hong Kong in 2004.