Director, Co-FounderEarthRights International
Katie is the Co-Founder and Director of EarthRights International, based in Washington DC. She is an international human rights lawyer by training, and has focused her career on serving clients and communities who have experienced grave human rights and environmental harms at the hands of corporate and financial elites. She is a graduate of Colgate University and the University of Virginia School of Law, where she received the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Human Rights and Public Service. Katie received an Echoing Green Fellowship in 1995 to establish ERI, and since that time has split her time between ERI’s Asia and U.S. offices. She is a member of the Bar of the Supreme Court of the United States and the Massachusetts State Bar, and has served as counsel to plaintiffs in ERI’s various human rights and environmental lawsuits including the landmark case Doe v. Unocal. In addition to working on ERI’s litigation and teaching at the EarthRights Schools, Katie serves as an adjunct professor of law at both UVA and the Washington College of Law at American University, and also on the Boards the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR) and the Slingshot Development Fund. In 2006, she was selected as an Ashoka Global Fellow and in 2007 as a Rockwood Leadership Fellow. Katie has been profiled in a variety of media including the books Be Bold and Your America: Democracy’s Local Heroes, and the award-winning documentary film Total Denial.