Events
Please note that this Global Career Month event is limited to members of the Penn community.
Human rights are at the forefront of international policymaking. From refugee policy to women’s rights, human rights advocacy and enforcement provide potential for interested students to pursue careers in a variety of issue areas, vocations, and geographic contexts.
Alongside defense of human rights, many others interested in improving lives around the world pursue careers in international development, from economic and social rights to sustainable agriculture and food security. Each of these fields has a variety of entry points and types of employment, ranging from grassroots organizing to United Nations diplomacy, and including positions with activists and advocacy groups, direct service non-profits, government agencies, foundations, and the private sector.
Join us on Thursday, October 22 to learn more about careers in human rights and international development from a panel of experts drawn from all over the world. Ben Brockman of IDInsight, Allison Corkery of the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CSER), Kusi Hornberger of Dalberg Advisors, and Juliana Nnoko-Mewanu of Human Rights Watch, will join PWH’s deputy director, formerly of Human Rights Watch and the Ford Foundation, LaShawn Jefferson in a wide-ranging and insightful conversation. Come prepared with questions!
This event is run in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate Certificate in Interdisciplinary Studies in Global Human Rights. Sign up for this virtual event, and details of how to take part will be in your order confirmation email.
PANELISTS
Ben Brockman is an Associate Director at IDinsight. In his role on the innovation team Ben co-leads IDinsight's data science initiative, focused on bringing advanced analytics to non-profits, governments, and foundations across Asia and Africa. Previously, Ben spent 3 years with IDinsight running field experiments in Cambodia, Zambia, and India as one of the organization's first employees. Outside of IDinsight, Ben has worked on a number of progressive campaigns and currently is a data and tech adviser to the non-partisan civic health organization, Vot-ER. Ben holds a B.A .in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.P.A. in International Development (MPA/ID) from the Harvard Kennedy School, where he was a Fellow at the Center for Public Leadership.
Allison Corkery is Director of Strategy and Learning at the Center for Economic and Social Rights. A central focus of her work is how to strengthen interdisciplinary human rights research so as to support more strategic and evidence-based advocacy. Allison first joined CESR in 2010 as a recipient of the David W. Leebron Human Rights Fellowship from Columbia Law School. The fellowship supported a joint project with the Kenya National Commission for Human Rights, which focused on strengthening the capacity of national human rights institutions to monitor socioeconomic rights. She has previously worked with the National Institutions Unit of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva and the Australian Human Rights Commission in Sydney. Allison holds a B.A. and L.L.B. from the University of New South Wales, an LLM from Columbia Law School, and an M.Sc. in Inequalities and Social Science from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is based in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Kusi Hornberger is an Associate Partner with Dalberg Advisors, based in the Washington, D.C. office. In addition to serving as Dalberg’s Global Knowledge Lead Associate Partner, Kusi also co-leads Dalberg’s Finance & Investment Practice and is particularly passionate about the use of innovative finance and technology to accelerate the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Kusi’s recent work includes various projects at the intersection of impact investing/blended finance and agriculture, global health and financial services sectors. Prior to joining Dalberg, Kusi was Vice-President of Investment Research at Global Partnerships, an impact-first investor with investments across Central/South America and East Africa. He also has experience working as a management consultant at Bain & Company in South America and as an Investment Officer with the International Finance Corporation. Kusi holds an M.B.A. from INSEAD Business School in Singapore, an M.P.A. in International Development from the Harvard Kennedy School, and a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.
Juliana Nnoko-Mewanu is a researcher on women and land with the Women’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch. Her work is two pronged focusing on the impacts of large-scale commercial land deals on communities, and its disproportionate impacts on women, and on the impacts of family laws, including on matrimonial property and inheritance, on women’s access and control of land and property. Prior to joining Human Rights Watch, Juliana taught at Iowa State University and the University of Buea, Cameroon. Juliana has a Ph.D .in Sociology and Sustainable Agriculture from Iowa State University, and a Master’s in Public Policy.
MODERATOR
LaShawn Jefferson is Perry World House’s Deputy Director. She brings to Perry World House over two decades of legal and policy advocacy, strategic planning and communications, and research and writing on women’s international human rights through civil-society organizations and philanthropy. She joined Perry World House after almost seven years at the Ford Foundation, where she worked to advance women’s human rights globally and in the U.S. through field building and investments in the areas of rights advocacy; strategic communications and engagement; intersectional leadership and analysis; research; and capacity building. For fourteen years, she also held several leadership positions at Human Rights Watch, a global human rights organization, where she led their women’s rights research and advocacy work, providing strategic and intellectual guidance to the work on women’s international human rights, crafting and executing long-term advocacy strategies, and representing HRW at the highest level of national and international fora. She is the author of many reports on a variety of issues confronting women around the world, and has written op-eds and articles that have appeared in the Wall Street Journal and The International Herald Tribune. She received a B.A. from Connecticut College and an M.A. in International Relations and Latin American Studies from Johns Hopkins SAIS.
