Keynote Speaker:

David Weissbrodt is the Regents Professor and Fredrikson & Byron Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School. A world-renowned scholar in international human rights law, Professor Weissbrodt became the first U.S. citizen since Eleanor Roosevelt to head a United Nations human rights body when he served as the chairperson for the U.N. Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights. Having been principally responsible for the United Nations' Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights, Professor Weissbrodt brings to the symposium unique insight into the role of law in shaping transnational corporate conduct. Professor Weissbrodt is a graduate of Columbia University and UC Berkeley School of Law.

View Professor Weissbrodt's full bio here.

Panelists:

Chip Pitts is an advisor to the Business Leaders Initiative on Human Rights, a Lecturer in Law at Stanford University, former Chief Legal Officer of Nokia, Inc., and past Chair of Amnesty International USA. For several years he has taught "International Business and Human Rights" at Stanford Law School, believed to be the first law school course specifically on the subject. Chip has also been a partner at the global law firm Baker & McKenzie, and an investor, founding executive, and consultant to various start-up businesses in Austin, Texas and Silicon Valley.

In private practice, he advised a number of pioneers in corporate social responsibility, including such companies as The Body Shop and Starbucks, and at Nokia his responsibilities included global corporate citizenship, which resulted in his drafting the company's code of conduct in the mid-1990's that included one of the earliest corporate commitments to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

His long-time human rights activism includes stints working as a pro bono lawyer against apartheid in South Africa, serving as a delegate of both the U.S. government as well as NGOs including Amnesty International, Human Rights First, and the International Business Leaders Forum to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights and various U.N. human rights conferences over the past two decades, and service as Chair of Amnesty International USA. Chip is co-author of a forthcoming book offering a legal perspective on corporate social accountability, and his publications and commentary have appeared in law reviews, newspapers ranging from The Wall Street Journal to The Washington Post, magazines ranging from The Nation and The New Republic to The American Conservative, and broadcast media ranging from National Public Radio to Fox News.

Aron Cramer is the President and CEO of Business for Social Responsibility. Aron works closely with BSR's 250 member companies, providing advice and counsel on the full spectrum of social and environmental issues. Aron joined BSR in 1995 as the founding director of its Business and Human Rights Program, and later opened BSR's Paris office in 2002, where he worked until becoming President and CEO in 2004. A recognized expert in the field of CSR, Aron speaks frequently at business forums such as the World Economic Forum and UN meetings, and is widely quoted in media such as The New York Times, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, La Tribune (France), and The Financial Express (India). He serves on the Board of Directors of the Institute for the Future, Forum EMPRESA and the Center for Responsible Business at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to joining BSR, Aron practiced law in San Francisco, and worked as a journalist at ABC News in New York. He is a graduate of Tufts University and obtained his law degree from the University of California, Berkeley.

David Vogel holds the Solomon P. Lee Distinguished Professorship in Business Ethics at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, and a Professorship in UC Berkeley's Political Science Department. He has served as Editor of the California Management Review since 1982. Vogel's research focuses on business-government relations with a particular emphasis on the comparative and international dimensions of environmental and consumer regulation. He is also a noted authority on corporate social responsibility. He is the author of numerous books, including The Market For Virtue: The Potential And Limits Of Corporate Social Responsibility (2005).

Monica Oberkofler is Director of Social Responsibilty at Gap Inc. Ms. Oberkofler oversees policy development and public reporting on labor standards for Gap Inc. She was a key player in the development of the company's 2003 and 2004 Social Responsibility Reports. Oberkofler works closely with several multi-stakeholder groups, including the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) and Social Accountability International (SAI), as part of her policy and public reporting responsibilities. She also represents Gap Inc. on the Global Reporting Initiative's (GRI) working group to develop common reporting standards for the apparel and footwear industries. Oberkofler has a PhD in European politics and law from Oxford University and an AB in history, summa cum laude, from Dartmouth College. She joined Gap Inc. in 2003.

Richard Buxbaum is Associate Dean and Jackson H. Ralston Professor of International Law at UC Berkeley School of Law. He publishes in the fields of corporation law and comparative and international economic law, and since 1987 has been editor in chief of the American Journal of Comparative Law. From 1993 to 1999, Buxbaum was Dean of International and Area Studies at UC Berkeley. Buxbaum has served on various state and national committees engaged in the drafting and review of corporate and securities legislation. He is contributing editor to a variety of U.S. and foreign professional journals and has been a visiting professor at the Universities of Michigan, Cologne, Frankfurt, Münster and Sydney. He holds honorary degrees from the Universities of Cologne, Osnabrück and Eötvös Lorand Budapest, and received the 1992-93 Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Award for Humanities and Arts. Buxbaum is a member of the American Law Institute and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001.

Laurel Fletcher is a Clinical Professor of Law and the Director of the International Human Rights Clinic at UC Berkeley School of Law. She is active in the areas of transitional justice and humanitarian law, as well as globalization and migration. As director of the International Human Rights Law Clinic, she utilizes an interdisciplinary, problem-based approach to human rights research, advocacy, and policy. She has conducted empirical studies of the human rights impacts of Hurricane Katrina and the 2004 tsunami, forced labor in the United States, forced migration from the Dominican Republic, and the relationship between justice, accountability, and reconciliation in Bosnia. Before joining the Boalt Hall faculty in 1998, Fletcher practiced complex civil litigation, including representing plaintiffs in employment discrimination class actions. She received her J.D. from Harvard University.

Patrick Keenan is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Illinois College of Law, where he founded and directs the school's International Human Rights Clinic. He is presently visiting at the University of Chicago School of Law. Professor Keenan's recent scholarship focuses on the effects of financial globalization on human rights practices. Before coming to the College of Law, Professor Keenan spent five years litigating death penalty cases in Georgia and Alabama as an attorney with the Southern Center for Human Rights. He received his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the Yale Journal of International Law. While in law school, he also studied at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Before entering law school, he served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Christiana Ochoa is an Associate Professor of Law at the Indiana University School of Law. Her scholarship concerns global governance and human rights, focusing in particular on two inter-connected areas: the role of individuals in law-formation and the inextricable links between global economic activity and human rights. Before joining the faculty in 2003, Professor Ochoa was an associate in the Banking and Finance Group at the New York office of the global law firm, Clifford Chance, where she dedicated her efforts to cross-border capital markets and asset-backed finance transactions. Ochoa has also worked for a number of human rights and non-governmental organizations in Colombia, Brazil, and Nicaragua. She has lived for extended periods in Latin America and has significant academic and other work experience in that region. She received her J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she was Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Human Rights Journal.

Hannah R. Garry is a Visiting Associate Professor at University of Colorado Law. Prior to joining the faculty, she was a Legal Officer for the Honorable Judge Fausto Pocar in the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia from 2004-2007 working on cases involving serious violations of international humanitarian law in the Balkans as well as Rwanda. During that time, she also served as Deputy Chief of Cabinet in the Office of President Pocar assisting in coordinating the judicial, diplomatic and administrative work of that office. Professor Garry has previously been a law clerk to the Honorable Judge Rosemary Barkett sitting on the U.S. Court of Appeals, 11th Circuit. She has also worked in the private sector as an Associate in the international law firm, Freshfields, Bruckhaus, Deringer LLP, in its New York office practicing in the international arbitration, dispute resolution and public international law groups. She received her J.D. from the UC Berkeley School of Law, where she was Managing Editor of the Berkeley Journal of International Law.