Vanessa Kogan has 20 years’ experience in international human rights litigation and advocacy as well as NGO development. Prior to joining Araminta, Vanessa served for 13 years as Executive Director of Stichting Justice Initiative (SJI), a strategic litigation NGO focused on protecting marginalized groups in the former Soviet Union, in particular victims of armed conflict, ethnic and religious minorities, women, and children. At SJI Vanessa assisted hundreds of victims of human rights violations to seek justice at the European Court of Human Rights and other international human rights bodies, and oversaw all aspects of the organization’s development and strategy. In 2015-2016, she was a guest contributor to the online curriculum at the University of York on leading and managing effective human rights organizations. Before joining SJI, Vanessa worked at several refugee rights organizations in France, assisting with legal interventions on behalf of asylum seekers and contributing to research on non-communitarian municipal voting rights. She also worked in the Legal and Policy Office of Human Rights Watch in New York. Vanessa studied comparative literature and society at Columbia University and has a law degree from Cambridge University. She speaks English, Russian, French and German.