Who We Are: Our Board

Mary Robinson (Chair)
Mary Robinson, the first woman President of Ireland (1990-1997) and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (1997-2002), has spent most of her life as a human rights advocate. Mary Robinson is a member of the Elders, co-founder and former Chair of the Council of Women World Leaders and Vice President of the Club of Madrid. She is chair of the GAVI Alliance Board. She chairs the Fund for Global Human Rights and is Honorary President of Oxfam International, and Patron of the International Community of Women Living with AIDS (ICW). She is President of the International Commission of Jurists. Mary Robinson is currently the President of Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative.

Bjorn Edlund (Trustee)
Bjorn Edlund is a public affairs specialist with a global journalism and corporate background. He brought cross-cultural, sociopolitical experience from his time as reporter, bureau chief and news editor with United Press International and Reuters in Europe and Latin America to his work in large corporations. In his 20 years in business communications he worked as head of communications in three multinationals. His focus has been on how global corporations can play a positive role in the communities where they the operate on the basis of a sound understanding of stakeholder concerns and by implementing appropriate policy frameworks. He recently retired from Royal Dutch Shell plc.

Luis Fernando de Angulo
Luis Fernando De Angulo worked previously as director of Corporate Social Responsibility for Occidental Petroleum Corporation. In that role he was responsible for implementation of the company's Human Rights Policy and its involvement in the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights, along with risk assessment and training tools required by the social responsibility function. De Angulo joined Occidental Petroleum after a two year fellowship at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University where he co-directed the Colombia Civil Society Initiative.

Bennett Freeman (Trustee)
As Senior Vice President for Social Research and Policy of the Calvert Group, Bennett Freeman leads the social, environmental and governance research, analysis, policy and advocacy work of the largest family of socially responsible mutual funds in the U.S. based in Bethesda. MD. Bennett Freeman served in three positions as a Clinton presidential appointee in the State Department, including as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor from 1999 to early 2001 with responsibility for bilateral human rights diplomacy.

Auret van Heerden
Auret van Heerden was Director of Monitoring and Executive Director of the Fair Labor Association before being named President and CEO in 2003. He has over thirty years experience in international human and labor rights work and has written ILO reports on disinvestment and economic sanctions; Export Processing Zones (EPZs); the export garment industry and labor rights. He is based in Geneva in the European office of the FLA.

Isabel Hilton
Isabel Hilton is an international journalist and broadcaster. She worked for the Daily Express and the Sunday Times before joining the launch team for The Independent in 1986. In 1992 she became a presenter of the BBC's flagship news programme, The World Tonight and a columnist for The Guardian. In 1999 she joined the New Yorker as a staff writer. Her work has appeared in the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Granta, the New Statesman, El Pais, Index on Censorship and many other publications. Isabel is CEO of independent online media platform Chinadialogue.net.

Irene Khan
Irene Khan has been Secretary General of Amnesty International since 2001. Irene helped to found the development organization, Concern Universal, in 1977, and began her work as a human rights activist with the International Commission of Jurists in 1979. She joined the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in 1980, and worked in a variety of positions at Headquarters and in field operations to promote the international protection of refugees. She was appointed as the UNHCR Chief of Mission in India in 1995 and as Deputy Director of International Protection in 1999.

Wambui Kimathi
Wambui Kimathi is currently a Commissioner at the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR). She heads the Business and Human Rights Initiative at the KNCHR through which she engages with executives from a variety of fields to help create develop greater understanding of the human rights responsibilities by business, state and non-state actors. Prior to joining the KNCHR she worked as Deputy Executive Director at the Kenya Human Rights Commission, (KHRC) a leading NGO and as a Senior Program Officer at the Institute for Education in Democracy.

Chris Marsden (Chair of Trustees, Vice-Chair of International Advisory Board)
Chris Marsden has been keenly involved in Business and Human Rights since he became Chair of the Business Group of Amnesty UK in 2001. He is also Chair of Trustees of the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre and member of the Global Compact Human Rights Working Group. Chris also teaches MBA courses on Corporate Responsibility and Business Ethics. Now in active 'semi-retirement', Chris Marsden previously worked for British Petroleum as their Educational Liaison manager before taking on an international brief as Head of BP's Community Affairs in 1990. He was awarded the OBE in 1989 for services to Industry and Education.

Caroline Rees (Trustee)
Caroline Rees is Director of the Governance and Accountability Program at the Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative of Harvard Kennedy School. Her primary focus is on the analysis and development of mechanisms that address grievances arising from the impact of corporate operations on the communities where they operate and workers in their supply chains. She is also an advisor to Professor John Ruggie, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Business and Human Rights

Peter Woicke
Peter Woicke is Chair of the global Board of the International Save the Children Alliance, the world's leading independent charity for children. Peter has held senior posts in international business and development sectors and from 1999-2005 was a Managing Director of the World Bank and CEO of the International Finance Corporation (IFC). Under his leadership, the IFC fostered corporate social responsibility among its private sector clients. As a result all major international Banks adopted IFC's social and environmental standards for their future project finance activities which became known as the Equator Principles.