IJNetwork is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit human rights organization that promotes equal access to justice through legal advocacy, public education, global networking, and local empowerment. IJNetwork provides legal aid to survivors of human rights abuses and their families, and empowers indigenous organizations abroad with expertise and technical support to address the root causes of injustice from within their own communities.
Tina Monshipour Foster is the founder and Executive Director of the International Justice Network (“IJNetwork”), and serves as lead counsel in several of IJNetwork’s legal cases on behalf detainees imprisoned without charge at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. Ms. Foster’s work on behalf of prisoners and other victims of human rights violations has been featured in major media outlets in the US and abroad, including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Harper’s Magazine, Smithsonian, Al Jazeera channel, and others.
From November 2004 to May 2006, Ms. Foster was an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights (“CCR”) and Counsel for CCR’s Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative. Prior to joining CCR, she was a litigation associate at Clifford Chance US LLP and previously served as a law clerk for Hon. Delissa A. Ridgway at the United States Court of International Trade. Ms. Foster is a graduate of CornellLawSchool, where she was an editor of the Cornell International Law Journal, and currently serves on the Executive Board of the Cornell Law School Alumni Association. She received her B.A. with honors from BostonUniversity, and is a graduate of BU’s Modern British Studies Program at St. Anne’s College, OxfordUniversity.
Barbara Olshansky is IJNetwork's Litigation Director and the Leah Kaplan Distinguished Professor of Human Rights at StanfordLawSchool. Prior to her appointment, Barbara was Deputy Legal Director and Director Counsel of the Global Justice Initiative at the Center for Constitutional Rights, where her docket included class action lawsuits concerning international human rights; immigrants’ rights; race discrimination in employment, education, the environment, and public health; and prisoners’ rights. Prior to joining the Center in 1995, Barbara was a senior attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund where her responsibilities included litigation, policy analysis, advocacy, and lobbying on toxic and solid waste issues, sustainable economic development, and environmental justice. Barbara has also practiced union-side labor and plaintiffs’ employment discrimination law at the law firm of Vladeck, Waldman, Elias & Engelhard, P. C. in New York City. After law school, Barbara clerked for the Honorable Rose Elizabeth Bird, Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court. Barbara received her J.D. from StanfordUniversity, and her two undergraduate degrees, summa cum laude, from the University of Rochester.
Barbara recently co-authored two books: the first, Against War With Iraq, analyzes the international law ramifications of the U.S. decision to pursue unprovoked aggression; and the second, America’s Disappeared, discusses America’s “war on terror” detainees. She has also written three other books, including Secret Trials and Executions, which assesses the military commissions scheduled for Guantánamo detainees; Democracy Detained, which examines the secret practices of the U.S. government in the “war on terror” and The Case for Impeachment, which compares the current malfeasance of the Bush Administration with prior presidential administrations against which impeachment investigations were commenced.
Jeff L. Hogue is IJNetwork's Technology Director, as well as a member of the Board. He is a Supervising Attorney at Legal Assistance of Western New York, Inc., where he provides direct legal representation to low-income residents of western New York. Jeff also serves as the project manager for Legal Services Corporation Technology Initiatives Grant projects which are developing online, interactive interviews that produce pleadings and customized legal information for unrepresented litigants. He has a small technology and design consulting company and has provided technology consulting to several legal providers. He is also serving as one of the upstate LawHelp.org outreach coordinators, and serves on the local Zoning Board of Appeals. He is a graduate of CornellLawSchool and the Fulbright College Honors Program at the University of Arkansas.
Wilneida Negron is the Project Coordinator for IJNetwork's Prisoners and Their Families Advocacy Project. She holds a Master in Public Administration and is currently completing a PhD in Political Science, majoring in comparative politics and public policy. Wilneida has spent over a decade working in the non-for-profit sector as a Social Worker and Program Coordinator. A language enthusiast, Wilneida speaks and writes in Spanish, Chinese, and French. She is currently studying Arabic.
Erin Valentine is a Staff Attorney at IJNetwork and a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School where she was a James Wilson Scholar and the recipient of the Blank Rome Alvin Ackerman Prize. At Penn, Erin was a senior editor for the Journal of International Law and the founder of the Penn Law International Human Rights Advocates. Erin interned in the gender rights division of the Legal Assistance Centre of Namibia and the litigation department of Clifford Chance US LLP. Prior to law school, Erin interned for Amnesty International in Washington, DC and volunteered at the Institute for Motivating Self-Employment, a micro-credit and woman's development organization in rural India. She holds a B.A. in International Studies from the University of California, Irvine where her research focused on transnational accountability, human rights, and US foreign policy.
Lisa Riordan Seville is IJNetwork's Communications Associate. Prior to IJNetwork she worked at Lapham's Quarterly in New York City, Counterpoint Press in Berkeley, California, and conducted research and investigative work for criminal defense cases in the San Francisco Bay Area. She graduated with honors from the Universtiy of California at Berkeley with a dual degree in English and Art Practice.
Brian McCafferty is an IJNetwork Intern and a senior at New YorkUniversity with majors in History and Sociology. He also currently interns with LawHelp.org, where he works in outreach and website maintenance.
Sabina Rizvi is an IJNetwork Intern and a rising senior at SetonHallUniversity. A major in Diplomacy and International Relations with minors in Arabic and Economics, she hopes to attend law school next fall to study International Human Rights Law.
Alexander Karsten was IJNetwork's first Human Rights Fellow. He graduated from the University of Buffalo law school, and is now an attorney at the Empire JusticeCenter in Rochester, New York. He continues to work with IJNetwork on several projects.
Former Staff:
Alix Reid was IJNetwork's first Development Director. She is a certified mediator at the Center for Conflict Resolution in Chicago and works in the publishing industry. Prior to moving to the midwest, Alix was the Editorial Director, Vice President, and Director of Foreign Acquisitions at HarperCollins Children's Books in New York, where she published many critically acclaimed and award-winning books for young adults. She holds masters degrees in English literature from HarvardUniversity and the University of Michigan, and a B.A. in English and history from WilliamsCollege, where she graduated magna cum laude and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
IJN has a distinguished and motivated board of directors and a growing family of friends and volunteers from around the world. Our board membership includes:
Buz Eisenberg of Weinberg & Garber, P.C. of Northampton, MA has been a litigator since 1980. A recipient of the 1999 Massachusetts Bar Association Pro Bono Publico Award, Buz has worked to promote social justice and human rights throughout his career. A president of Western Massachusetts Legal Services Board of Directors during his 25 years on that board, he has and continues to serve on a number of not-for-profit boards whose missions involve providing equal access to justice regardless of the ability to pay. He has recently joined the Board of Directors of the International Justice Network in order to advance the rights of victims of human rights abuses across the globe.
Buz has spent years volunteering as an advocate for those who otherwise lack access to the courthouse. He continues to as a cooperating attorney with the ACLU as he has since 1985. He has performed volunteer habeas corpus death penalty work for years. In January of 2005 Buz joined The Center for Constitutional Rights’ Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative. His first client having been repatriated to his native Saudi Arabia, Buz currently serves as co-counsel for two Algerian nationals who continue to be detained in Guantanamo Bay.
Marc Falkoff is a law professor at Northern Illinois University College of Law, where he teaches courses in criminal law, criminal procedure, and the federal courts. Since 2004 he has represented 17 Yemeni prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. Mr. Falkoff was formerly an associate at Covington & Burling, where he received the firm’s 2005 Charles F.C. Ruff Pro Bono Lawyer of the Year for his Guantánamo work. He writes and speaks frequently about Guantánamo, and has been featured in a variety of media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, New York Magazine, CNN, the BBC, and NPR. He is the compiler and editor of Poems from Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak, a bestselling anthology of prisoner poetry published by the University of Iowa Press.
Mr. Falkoff is a graduate of Columbia Law School, where he was Articles Editor for the Columbia Law Review and a James Kent Scholar. He holds a Ph.D. in American Literature from Brandeis University, an M.A. from the University of Michigan, and a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania. Following law school, he clerked for the Honorable Carlos F. Lucero of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and for the Honorable Jack B. Weinstein of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. He was appointed Habeas Corpus Special Master for the EDNY from 2003 to 2004.
Ellen Lubell, a partner at the law firm of Tennant Lubell, LLC in Newton, Massachusetts, focuses on non-profit organizations and intellectual property law – primarily copyright. Her clients range from universities, publishers, and social service organizations to scientists and authors. Before establishing Tennant Lubell, she was General Counsel at Education Development Center, and Counsel for Research and Technology Transfer at the University of Massachusetts. Prior to that, she was a health law attorney at the Boston law firm of Goulston & Storrs.
Ellen has had a longstanding commitment to the field of human rights. She is currently representing a young Algerian man detained at Guantanamo Bay. She has focused on child abuse and neglect issues over the years in many capacities, and was a Harvard Law School Human Rights Fellow at the International Labor Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. Before attending law school, she worked in a Laotian refugee camp on the border of northeast Thailand, building a school and supporting a variety of health initiatives. Ellen is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School.
Janhabi Nandy recently completed a two-year appointment as an Assistant Attorney General for the Federated States of Micronesia, and is currently pursuing an M.B.A. at the Yale School of Management. In her role as an AAG, she assisted the national government of a small island nation in the Pacific to draft, interpret and implement laws and regulations on a variety of matters from immigration to insurance. She also taught Constitutional Law at the College of Micronesia.
Ms. Nandy previously worked as a legal aid attorney on the Navajo Nation in New Mexico and Arizona, advocating for Native Americans with mental and physical disabilities. She has also worked as a plaintiff’s attorney representing clients in civil rights and toxic torts cases in New York and volunteered in Vietnam and Indonesia. She holds a J.D. and LL.M. in International and Comparative Law from Cornell Law School and a B.A. in Economics from Stanford University.
Colette Pollitt is a corporate associate at the law firm of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP where she has practiced since 2000. While at the firm, she has served as counsel to major investment banks and Fortune 500 companies, as well as various small businesses and not-for-profit entities. In addition, she has provided pro bono counsel to several charitable organizations in drafting charter documents, preparation of applications for not-for-profit status and providing ongoing legal advice. A graduate of Cornell Law School, Ms. Pollitt was a member of the Cornell International Law Journal, and received awards of excellence for study in Islamic Law, African Legal Systems and International Human Rights. She currently serves on the Executive Board of the Cornell Law School Alumni Association. She received an M.A. in Arab Studies from Georgetown University and a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.
Wesley R. Powell is a partner at Hunton & Williams LLP in New York. His practice focuses on antitrust counseling and litigation as well as other complex civil litigation, with a particular emphasis on antitrust matters in the securities and financial services industries. Mr. Powell also has devoted a substantial portion of his career to pro bono legal work. He has represented seven men in their habeas corpus challenges to their imprisonment at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He has previously represented a New York-based Chinese labor organization in a series First Amendment cases concerning the client's right to petition and protest against sweatshop conditions in the restaurant and garment industries. He has also been a cooperating attorney with the Lambda Legal Defense Fund.
Mr. Powell is a 1991 graduate of Vanderbilt University and a 1994 graduate of Duke University School of Law, where he was the recipient of the North Carolina Bar Association Pro Bono Service Award for his work in co-founding the Duke Law AIDS Legal Services Program. He serves on Alumni boards at both Vanderbilt and Duke Law.
Iwona Spytkowski is a Management Consultant at the United Nations. Prior to joining the UN, Ms. Spytkowski was the Director of Special Programs at a labor standards consulting firm and has experience in management systems with a particular emphasis on non-profit accountability and standards in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) sector. She has traveled to over 30 countries for her work and has several years of experience developing the assessment methodology & tools to bring top international NGOs in compliance with globally recognized non-profit standards and best practices.
Ms. Spytkowski takes an avid interest in local community service and is a recipient of formal Board training through the United Way of New York City, Linkages Board Training and Placement Program. In addition to serving on the Board of IJN, Ms. Spytkowski also serves on the Board of Sunnyside Community Services (SCS) in Queens, where she resides. Ms. Spytkowski received her B.A. with honors from Drew University, with a double major in Spanish and German as well as double minor in Politics and European Studies. In addition to English, she is fluent in Polish, Spanish, and German.
