New Directors Join Board of Center for Reproductive Rights

(PRESS RELEASE) The Center for Reproductive Rights, a global legal advocacy organization that fights to ensure reproductive rights are guaranteed in law as human rights, announced three new members of the organization’s Board of Directors.

The new board members are reproductive health advocates and leaders with expertise in international human rights, philanthropy, public policy, and law. They are: Catalina Botero Marino (Bogotá, Colombia), Mary E. Rubin (New York, NY), and Jennifer Sokoler (New York, NY).

“The Center for Reproductive Rights has significant work ahead on behalf of reproductive health and rights in the U.S. and around the world,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center.  “We are proactively setting policy and using the power of law to advance reproductive rights as fundamental human rights around the world.  We’re honored to have three extremely talented and dedicated Board members with international and diverse expertise join us to guide us forward, with a focus on impact.”

The Center for Reproductive Rights’ game changing litigation and advocacy work, combined with its unparalleled expertise in the use of constitutional, international, and comparative human rights law, have transformed how reproductive rights are understood by courts, governments, and human rights bodies around the world. It has played a key role in securing legal victories in the U.S., Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Europe on issues including access to life-saving obstetrics care, contraception, safe abortion services, and comprehensive sexuality information, as well as the prevention of forced sterilization, child marriage, and female genital mutilation. It has brought groundbreaking cases before national courts, U.N. Committees, and regional human rights bodies, and has built the legal capacity of women’s rights advocates in over 60 countries. It is headquartered in New York with offices in Washington, D.C., Bogota, Colombia, Geneva, Switzerland, Kathmandu, Nepal, and Nairobi, Kenya.

Biographical information about the new Board members is below:

Catalina Botero Marino is an attorney and expert in constitutional law, international human rights law, and transitional justice. She is currently the Dean of the law school at La Universidad de los Andes and founding partner of DeJusticia Colombia, which is focused on the regional defense of human rights. She previously served as the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression for the OAS Inter-American Commission on Human Rights from 2008 to 2014 as well as the Auxiliary Magistrate at the Constitutional Court of Colombia for several different periods. Ms. Botero Marino was a senior advisor for UNESCO and she was adviser of the Electoral Tribunal of the Federal Judiciary of Mexico. She serves on the Board of La Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa, a freedom of expression organization in Bogotá. In addition, she worked as a member of the Academic Council of the Center for Constitutional Studies of the Supreme Court of Mexico. She is currently part of the academic committee of the Centro de Estudios en Libertad de Expresión y Acceso a la Información at the University of Palermo, Argentina, a member of the advisory board of Derechos Digitales Chile, and member of the Friends of the Inter-American Democratic Charter of the Carter Center and expert member of the Inter-American Dialogue. Ms. Botero Marino previously held a number of public and private non-profit posts in Colombia, including: National Director of the Office for the Promotion and Dissemination of Human Rights, in the Office of the People’s Defender of Colombia, Director of the Consultancy for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law at the Social Foundation, adviser for the Office of the Prosecutor General of the Nation, and professor and researcher at the Law School of the Universidad de los Andes. She is also a member of the awards committee of the Columbia University Global Freedom of Expression Prize. Ms. Botero Marino received her law degree from La Universidad de los Andes and went on to complete her postgraduate studies in Public Management and Administrative Law at the same university. She continued her postgraduate work in Madrid, where she studied human rights at the Universidad Complutense. Ms. Botero Marino also studied constitutional rights and political science at the Center for Constitutional Studies and received a degree in advanced studies (DEA) at the Universidad Carlos III. (Bogotá, Colombia)

Mary E. Rubin has devoted her career to the not-for-profit and philanthropic sectors. She currently serves on the Executive Committee for City Harvest. She is President of the Borrego Foundation, and serves as a trustee for the Essel Foundation. She has served as Board Chair for the Eastern New York Chapter of The Nature Conservancy, and as Vice Chair of the Housing Action Council. In 2009, she completed an 8-year term on the Board of Directors for Planned Parenthood Hudson Peconic, where she served as Chair of the Fundraising Committee, and as a member of the Executive, Budget and Finance, Investment Advisory, and CEO Search Committees. Previously, she was a program officer at the Rockefeller Foundation, a policy analyst for the City of New York, and a research associate for the Russell Sage Foundation. Ms. Rubin holds a B.A. in History from Swarthmore College, and a Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard Kennedy School, where she was a Kennedy Fellow. (New York, NY)

Jennifer Sokoler is a counsel in O’Melveny’s New York office, and focuses her practice on appellate matters. She joined the firm in January 2017, after serving as a Policy Fellow for United States Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power (2015-16), a Research Fellow for UN Human Rights Committee Member Sarah H. Cleveland (2015), and Litigation Fellow for the Center for Reproductive Rights (2012-14). She also completed clerkships with the Honorable Sonia Sotomayor, Supreme Court of the United States (2014-15), the Honorable Robert A. Katzmann, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (2011-12), and the Honorable Denise Cote, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (2010-11). Prior to that, Ms. Sokoler was an intern in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (2009) and an extern at the United States Department of State, Office of the Legal Advisor (2009-10). She received her B.A. in Political Science from Barnard College (summa cum laude), Columbia University in 2006, followed by a J.D. from Columbia University School of Law in 2010, where she was a James Kent Scholar. She was awarded the Pauline Berman Heller Prize, presented to the highest ranked female graduating student, the E.B. Convers Prize, presented for the best original essay on a legal subject, the David Berger Memorial Prize, presented for excellence in international law, the Robert Noxon Toppan Prize, presented for excellence in constitutional law, and Simpson Thacher &, Bartlett LLP Pro Bono Fellowship. She was a Note Editor for Columbia Law Review. (New York, NY)