Elisa Massimino is Visiting Professor of Law and Executive Director of the Human Rights Institute at Georgetown University Law Center. She also serves as a non-resident senior fellow in national security and international policy at the Center for American Progress. She joined the Georgetown faculty in 2019 as the Robert F. Drinan, S.J., Chair in Human Rights. Before coming to Georgetown, she was a senior fellow with the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a practitioner-in-residence at Georgetown’s Walsh School of Foreign Service. Previously, she spent 27 years — the last decade as president and CEO — at Human Rights First, one of the nation’s leading human rights advocacy organizations.

She has a distinguished record of human rights advocacy in Washington, having testified before Congress dozens of times; written frequently for mainstream publications and specialized journals; appeared regularly in major media outlets; and spoken to audiences around the country. During her leadership at Human Rights First, the influential Washington publication The Hill consistently named her one of the most effective public advocates in the country; and Washingtonian magazine has repeatedly named her one of D.C.’s most influential people in foreign policy.

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