NetAid Global Action Awards Judges
Nancy Birdsall
Nancy Birdsall is President of the Center for Global Development, a policy research institution in Washington, DC. Prior to launching the center, Ms. Birdsall served as Senior Associate and Director of the Economic Reform Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where she focused on issues of globalization, inequality, and the reform of international financial institutions. Previously, she was Executive Vice-President of the Inter-American Development Bank, and spent many years in research, policy and management positions at the World Bank. Ms. Birdsall has authored, co-authored and edited more than a dozen books and monographs for audiences worldwide.
William Easterly
William Easterly is Professor of Economics at New York University, joint with Africa House, and Co-Director of NYU's Development Research Institute. He is also a non-resident Fellow of the Center for Global Development in Washington DC. William Easterly received his Ph.D. in Economics at MIT. He spent sixteen years as a Research Economist at the World Bank. He is the author of The White Man's Burden: How the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (Penguin, 2006), The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics (MIT, 2001), 3 other co- edited books, and 49 articles in refereed economics journals. His work has been discussed in media outlets like the Lehrer Newshour, National Public Radio, the BBC, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, the Economist, the New Yorker, Forbes, Business Week, the Financial Times, the Times of London, the Guardian, and the Christian Science Monitor. Easterly is an associate editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Economic Growth, and of the Journal of Development Economics.
Howard Gardner
Howard Gardner is the John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He also holds a position as Adjunct Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. The author of over 20 books, Gardner is best known in educational circles for his theory of multiple intelligences, a critique of the notion that there exists but a single human intelligence that can be assessed by standard psychometric instruments. Among numerous honors, Gardner received a MacArthur Prize Fellowship in 1981. In 1990, he was the first American to receive the University of Louisville's Grawemeyer Award in Education and in 2000 he received a Fellowship from the John S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He has received honorary degrees from 21 colleges and universities, including institutions in Ireland, Italy and Israel.
Vanita Gupta
Vanita Gupta joined the national legal department of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in September of 2006. Prior to this, she worked as an Assistant Counsel at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., where her work centered on civil rights litigation that promotes systemic reform of the criminal justice system. Ms. Gupta successfully led the effort to overturn the racially-biased drug convictions of 38 defendants in Tulia, Texas, and recently settled the civil rights cases of these clients for $6 million. She has received the 2004 Reebok Human Rights Award, the Upakar Foundation Community Ambassador award and the American Red Cross "Rising Star" award. Ms. Gupta served as the Colloquium Editor of the Review of Law and Social Change at New York University School of Law, and has been awarded a Vanderbilt Medal for Public Service and the Anne Petluck Poses Prize.
James F. Hoge, Jr.
James Hoge is Editor of Foreign Affairs, a bi-monthly magazine of analysis and commentary on international affairs and U.S. foreign policy. Prior to joining Foreign Affairs in 1992, he spent three decades in newspaper journalism as a Washington correspondent, then editor and publisher of The Chicago Sun-Times and finally as publisher and president of The New York Daily News. He has been a Fellow at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, the Freedom Forum Media Center at Columbia University and on the American Political Science Association's Congressional program. He is Chairman of the International Center for Journalists, Vice Chairman of Human Rights Watch, and a director of the Center for Global Affairs at New York University.
Claire Kevitt
Claire is the Youth President of Youth for Human Rights International (YHRI). Since her participation with YHRI began in 2000, she has represented them at multi-faith conferences where human rights violations and solutions were addressed. In the summer of 2004 she traveled to San Juan, Puerto Rico speaking to business and community leaders and then to the United Nations for the YHRI Youth Summit on Human Rights. In February 2005, she MC'd a Canadian/American YHRI Inter-scholastic Conference on Human Trafficking. In May, Claire attended the New York Independent Film and Video Festival where the YHRI-produced human rights music video "UNITED" won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Dramatic Short Film. During the summer of 2005 Claire traveled to New Delhi, India as part of the YHRI UNITED World Tour 2005. There, she helped organize and took part in a youth summit with international delegates. In August of this year, Claire helped to organize and spoke at the YHRI Annual International Youth Summit. Delegates from more than 20 different countries flew in from around the world to discuss human rights inside the United Nations Headquarters in New York City.
Kathleen Newland
Kathleen Newland is Director and Co-founder of the Migration Policy Institute. Her work focuses on refugee protection, international humanitarian response and migration management. Previously, she was a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where she co-directed the International Migration Policy Program. She chairs the Board of Directors of the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children and sits on the Board of the International Rescue Committee. Ms. Newland has worked as an independent consultant for such clients as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the World Bank and the office of the Secretary-General of the UN. She has taught at the Georgetown University Law Center and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Ms. Newland is the author or editor of five books, 11 shorter monographs and was the Executive Producer of three documentary films on humanitarian issues.
The Reverend Mpho A. Tutu
The Rev. Mpho A. Tutu is the Founding Director of the Tutu Institute for Prayer and Pilgrimage in Alexandria, VA. She was ordained to the priesthood in 2004 by her father, Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Prize Laureate and anti-apartheid activist. For several years prior, Rev. Tutu was Director of the Discovery Program at All Saints Church in Worcester, MA. Ms. Tutu studied and taught in Grahamstown, South Africa at the College of the Transfiguration, the Anglican seminary of Southern Africa. For five years, Ms. Tutu was Director of the Bishop Desmond Tutu Southern African Refugee Scholarship Fund of the Phelps Stokes Fund. The Ms. Mpho Tutu is the chairperson of the board of the Global AIDS Alliance and a member of the board of Reinvest in South Africa. Ms. Tutu holds a Master of Divinity Degree from Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA. Ms. Tutu is married to journalist Joseph Burris; they have two daughters, Nyaniso and Onalenna.
Elie Wiesel
Elie Wiesel is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and a Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Boston University. The recipient of recipient of more than 100 honorary degrees, Professor Wiesel has received numerous awards for his writings, which include nonfiction works, essays, novels, plays, a cantata and a children's book. His latest novel, Un désir fou de danser, published in France in 2006, is soon to be published in English by Knopf. In 1995, he was included as one of fifty great Americans in the special fiftieth edition of Who's Who In America. He has received the Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1986, Professor Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and shortly thereafter he founded the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, which is dedicated to combating indifference, intolerance and injustice. In 2006, Professor Wiesel and King Abdullah II of Jordan convened a group of thirty Nobel Laureates for the second Petra Conference, a forum for leaders to confront pressing global problems.
Ethan Zohn
Best known for his success on the hit television series "Survivor Africa," Mr. Zohn has used his fame and fortune to help people in need. After graduating from Vassar College, he began a five-year professional soccer career, which reached its pinnacle when he journeyed to Zimbabwe to play for Highlanders FC during their 2000/2001 championship season. Mr. Zohn returned to the United States to coach soccer. Since winning the Survivor challenge in January 2002, he has worked with various organizations to promote youth education through sports. More notably, he co-founded Grassroot Soccer, a nonprofit that trains professional African soccer players and other role models to educate youth about critical life skills and HIV/AIDS prevention strategies.
