Maureen Greenwood-Basken is the Executive Director of the Universal Access Project of the United Nations Foundation. She previously worked as the Acting Managing Director of the Government Relations and Advocacy Development Unit of Amnesty International USA, (AIUSA) managing a 13-person team and a $1.6 million budget. For the previous decade she worked as an Advocacy Director covering the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, women, and other human rights topics for AIUSA. She contributed to the drafting of the bill, “The International Violence Against Women Act” and has spoken in Congress more than a dozen times. She acted as a frequent spokesperson on human rights in the media appearing on CNN, NPR, Washington Post, Time and other media outlets.

She received a United Nations Association human rights award in 2002. From 1996-1998 she served as the Director for Research and Advocacy for the Union of Councils, creating and editing a 200-page report, “Anti-Semitism in the former Soviet Union.” She worked in Moscow from 1993-95 as the US representative in the Union of Councils’ Russian-American Bureau on Human Rights and is proficient in Russian. She previously was a lecturer at the University of Michigan teaching writing. She earned a M.A. in International Relations from the University of Chicago and a B.A. in Slavic Studies and Psychology from the University of Michigan.

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