Risa Kaufman is the director of human rights at the Overbrook Foundation, where she leads Overbrook’s grantmaking, partnerships, and collaborations advancing reproductive health, rights, and justice, defending democracy, and supporting human rights defenders in Central America. Prior to joining Overbrook, Risa was the director of the U.S. Human Rights at the Center for Reproductive Rights, where she led the Center’s efforts to integrate international human rights norms and strategies to advance the full spectrum of reproductive rights in the United States. She previously was the Executive Director of the Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute and has additional litigation and other advocacy experience focused on gender, racial, and economic justice, political participation, and access to justice.

Risa is a co-founding board member of A Better Balance, co-author of the law school casebook Human Rights Advocacy in the United States (with Martha F. Davis, Johanna Kalb, and Rachel Lopez) (3rd ed. 2023), and an adjunct law professor at NYU School of Law, where she teaches a seminar on U.S. human rights advocacy.