Advisory Board
Co-Chairs and Members of the Board
Catherine Amirfar (Co-Chair) (JD ’00)
Catherine Amirfar is a litigation partner at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP and Co-Chair of the firm’s International Dispute Resolution Group and Public International Law Group. Prior to rejoining Debevoise in 2016, Ms. Amirfar spent two years as the Counselor on International Law to the Legal Adviser at the Department of State, where she received the Superior Honor Award for her service to the Department. Ms. Amirfar is Immediate Past President of the American Society of International Law (ASIL) and in 2021 was appointed Deputy Co-Chair of the High Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the State Department’s Advisory Council on International Law the Court of Arbitration of the Singapore International Arbitration Centre, and the ICCA Governing Board and also serves as Co-Chair of the ICCA-ASIL Task Force on Damages in International Arbitration
Joel Ehrenkranz (Co-Chair) (’61, LLM ’63)
Joel Ehrenkranz co-founded the firm Ehrenkranz Partners L.P. in 1966 and currently serves as a senior partner of both Ehrenkranz Partners L.P. and Ehrenkranz & Ehrenkranz LLP. Joel received LL.B. and LL.M. degrees from New York University School of Law. He graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with a B.S. in Economics and an MBA. Joel is Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Mount Sinai Medical Center and of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. He is a Trustee of New York University and Chair of the Investment Committee, a trustee of the Museum of Modern Art, a life Trustee of New York University School of Law, and an honorary Trustee of the Whitney Museum of American Art. He was previously President of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Archives of American Art, and the Jewish Communal Fund of New York. Joel is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Other Members of the Advisory Board
Brian Egan
Brian Egan is Partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP in Washington, D.C. He advises U.S. and foreign clients on a range of complex legal issues including U.S. and multilateral economic sanctions, export control, anti-money laundering programs, national security investment reviews, and other national security matters, cross-border disputes, international cybersecurity and data privacy matters, and public international law issues. He served as Legal Adviser to the State Department and Legal Adviser to the National Security Council. Also member of the editorial board of Just Security.
Lara Flint
Lara M. Flint is Director of the Governance Program at Democracy Fund, a foundation working to ensure that our political system is able to deliver on its promise to the American people. She was previously chief counsel for national security to then-Chairman Patrick Leahy of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and senior counsel to Senator Russ Feingold. She also served in the State Department Office of the Legal Adviser. Prior to government service, Lara worked at the Center for Democracy & Technology, and as a litigator at the law firm of Jenner & Block. She is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, and Harvard Law School.
Ambassador Keith Harper (JD ’94)
Ambassador Keith M. Harper is a partner and the Co-Chair of the Human Rights and Global Strategy practice at Jenner & Block and, concurrently serves as a U.N. Independent Expert to the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (3023-2025). He is the former United States Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the U.N. Human Rights Council (2014-2017). During the 2021-22 academic school year, he served as a Senior Fellow at the Brown University Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. He is a graduate of NYU School of Law and obtained his B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley.
Ambassador Cameron Munter
Cameron Munter served as ambassador to Pakistan at the time of the Bin Laden raid. He was ambassador to Serbia during the Kosovo independence crisis. He served twice in Iraq, in Mosul as Provincial Reconstruction Leader and in Baghdad as Deputy Chief of Mission. In the course of three decades as a career diplomat, he was also NSC Director in the Clinton and Bush White Houses, and served overseas in Warsaw, Prague, and Bonn. Munter studied at Cornell and earned a PhD in history from Johns Hopkins, and has taught at Pomona College, Columbia University School of Law, and UCLA. Currently a consultant in New York, Munter was President and CEO of the EastWest Institute, a nonprofit engaged in global conflict prevention. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Academy of Diplomacy, and serves on numerous corporate and nonprofit boards.
Natalie Reid
Natalie Reid is a partner in the International Disputes practice of Debevoise & Plimpton, where she focuses on public international law, international arbitration, and complex cross-border litigation. Among other appointments, Natalie is a Counsellor of the American Society of International Law, and serves on the American Journal of International Law Board of Editors and the Board of the London Court of International Arbitration. She is the co-author of the International Criminal Law Practitioner Library, and lectures frequently on international law and dispute resolution.
Lee Wolosky
Lee Wolosky is a partner at Jenner & Block and Co-Chair of the firm’s Litigation Department. He has served under four U.S. presidents in senior legal and national security positions, most recently as Special Counsel to President Joe Biden at the White House. He often leads teams working on cases involving the U.S. government, foreign governments, and foreign jurisdictions. He previously served under President Obama as Special Envoy for Guantanamo Closure. Under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Lee served as director of Transnational Threats on the National Security Council. In 2016, President Obama accorded him the personal rank of ambassador.
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Previous Members of the Advisory Board
Ambassador Eileen Donahoe
Ambassador Eileen Donahoe was Executive Director of the Global Digital Policy Incubator (GDPI) at Stanford University. She served as the first US Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva during the Obama Administration. After leaving government, she was Director of Global Affairs at Human Rights Watch and represented the organization worldwide on human rights foreign policy. She holds a J.D. (Stanford) and a Ph.D. in Ethics and Social Theory (GTU Berkeley).
Christopher Fonzone
Christopher Fonzone was a partner in Sidley Austin LLP’s Privacy and Cybersecurity group. He served as Deputy Assistant to the President, Deputy Counsel to the President, and National Security Council Legal Adviser. Before then, he worked at the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel and on the Civil Division’s Appellate Staff; served as Special Counsel to the General Counsel of the Department of Defense; and clerked for Justice Stephen Breyer of the United States Supreme Court and Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Chris is a graduate of Cornell University and Harvard Law School.
Avril Haines
Avril Haines was Senior Research Scholar working on Columbia World Projects. She is also a fellow at the Human Rights Institute and National Security Law Program at Columbia Law School. Haines has extensive government experience, most recently having served as Principal Deputy National Security Advisor to President Obama. She previously served as the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and before that she served as the Legal Adviser to the National Security Council. Before joining the NSC, she led the Treaty Office at the Department of State, and was the Deputy Chief Counsel for the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Haines received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Chicago and a JD from Georgetown University Law Center.
Ambassador David Pressman (JD ’04)
Ambassador David Pressman represented the United States on the United Nations Security Council and has served as the senior U.S. negotiator on international disputes around the world. Pressman previously served as Assistant Secretary of the United States Department of Homeland Security and as the Director for War Crimes and Atrocities on the National Security Council at the White House. He is currently a litigation partner at Boies Schiller Flexner LLP where his practice focuses on complex international disputes and investigations, transnational and national security related litigation, and high-stakes crisis management. Pressman co-founded the human rights organization Not On Our Watch, led George and Amal Clooney’s family foundation, and has counseled some of the world’s most prominent influencers, leaders, and companies on cross-cutting issues involving security and international law.
Jake Sullivan
Sullivan was Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Brady-Johnson Distinguished Practitioner in Strategy at Yale University. He served in the Obama administration as national security adviser to Vice President Joe Biden and Director of Policy Planning at the U.S. Department of State, as well as deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.