Hadar Harris
- Innovative Nonprofit Leader, Human Rights Attorney
- 2024 SPEAKER
Hadar Harris is the interim Washington, D.C., director at PEN America. She is an award-winning international human rights attorney who has worked for more than two decades on a broad range of human rights issues in more than 25 countries. She is the founder and principal of Rights and Justice Consulting, working with human rights organizations around the world on campaign design and implementation, government relations, rights-based strategic transformation, training, and coaching. Harris was the executive director of the Student Press Law Center, which promotes, supports and defends the First Amendment and free expression rights of student journalists. She created Student Press Freedom Day, a national day of action focused on the contributions of and challenges faced by student journalists. She also served as the executive director of the Northern California Innocence Project, which works to exonerate the innocent and to reform the criminal justice system. Harris was the executive director of the Center for Human Rights & Humanitarian Law at American University Washington College of Law. She is a graduate of Brown University and the UCLA School of Law.