JESSICA NEUWIRTH

Jessica Neuwirth  is an international women’s rights lawyer and activist.  She holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a B.A. in History from Yale University. She is one of the founders of Equality Now, an international women’s rights  organization established in 1992, and the founder and Director of Frontline Women's Fund, an offshoot project now hosted by the Sisterhood is Global Institute to  support women’s rights organizations around the world.  She is also a co-founder of the ERA Coalition,  mobilizing a renewed effort to get the Equal Rights Amendment into the  United States Constitution. To aid this effort, in 2015 she wrote Equal Means Equal, Why the Time for the ERA is Now, updated and republished in 2026 as Equal Means Equal, the Case for the ERA as the 26th Amendment.   

Jessica has worked for the human rights  organization Amnesty  International, for the Wall Street law firm of  Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen  & Hamilton, and for the United Nations  Office of Legal Affairs, as  well as the UN Office of the High  Commissioner for Human Rights. She served as a special consultant on  sexual violence to the International  Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda for  its landmark Akayesu judgment holding  that rape is a form of genocide,  and again worked for the Rwanda  Tribunal on the Media judgment holding  print and radio media accountable  for their role in the Rwandan  genocide. She subsequently directed the  legal team that drafted the  judgment of the Special Court for Sierra  Leone convicting former  Liberian President Charles Taylor of war crimes  and crimes against  humanity. 

In September 2018 Jessica was appointed by Hunter College as Distinguished Lecturer and Rita E. Hauser Director of the Human Rights Program at the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute. In 2021 she was awarded the French Legion of Honor.