Board of Directors

Dorothy Q. Thomas

Dorothy Q. Thomas is an independent scholar and human rights consultant. From 2009-2011 she served as a research associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and was a 2008 visiting fellow at the London School of Economics' Centre for the Study of Human Rights.

In 2005, Thomas co-founded the U.S. Human Rights Fund, a collaborative grant making initiative that supports domestic human rights work in the United States. Previously, she was the founding director of the Human Rights Watch Women's Rights Division, and served in that position from 1990-1998.

She was a 1998 MacArthur fellow, a 1995 Bunting Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and in 1998 received the Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award from President and Mrs. Clinton. She is a member of the Board of the British Institute for Human Rights and the Ms. Foundation for Women and sits on the advisory boards of the ACLU Human Rights Project, the Lambent Foundation and Strategic Philanthropy. Thomas graduated with an M.A. from Georgetown University, which awarded her an honorary doctorate in 1995. She lives in New York City.