Betsy Apple is Advocacy Director for the Open Society Justice Initiative. She has diverse experience as an international human rights lawyer, focusing on issues at the intersection of human rights, gender justice, environmental abuses, and public health. Previously, she was Legal Director and General Counsel at AIDS-Free World and, prior to that, the director of the Crimes Against Humanity program at Human Rights First (formerly the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights).
Betsy also served as deputy director of the Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO), based in New York. Earlier, she was the managing and legal director of EarthRights International, in Thailand and the US, where she focused on corporate accountability for human rights and environmental violations. Betsy has served as legal consultant to various institutions including Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Clinic, Refugees International, and the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma.
Betsy has been an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) since 2005, where she teaches International Human Rights Law, and was a Wasserstein Public Interest Law Fellow at Harvard Law School for 2011/2012.
Betsy graduated from Brown University and Boston College Law School.