Ajamu Baraka
Executive Director
abaraka@ushrnetwork.org

An experienced grassroots organizer, activist, and educator, Ajamu Baraka currently serves as Executive Director of the US Human Rights Network, a US based network of over 250 human rights and social justice organizations committed to ending US Global impunity and "exceptionalism." Ajamu's human rights work, teaching and activism spans more than three decades with a number of national and international organizations and academic institutions. Ajamu has taught political science at several universities including Clark Atlanta University. In 1998, Ajamu was honored by the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan as one of the 300 human rights defenders from around the world.

Rachel Fowler
Associate Director
rfowler@ushrnetwork.org

Before joining the USHRN, Rachel worked with The Carter Center for 16 years, most recently as Assistant Director of the Center's Human Rights and Democracy Programs, managing efforts in Latin America, the U.S., Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Her focus included human rights interventions, civil society capacity building and election observation. Rachel also served on the Amnesty International USA board of directors from 2003-2008, chairing the organization's International Committee in 2004-2005 and Strategic Planning Committee in 2006-2007. She brings a wealth of financial and personnel management experience to the Network, including fundraising and grant management. Her extensive administrative background coupled with her successes at the grassroots level provide an ideal combination for the Network at this stage of its development.

Janvieve Williams Comrie
Director of Communications (Interim)
jwilliams@ushrnetwork.org

Janvieve Williams Comrie is the Director of Programs nd Network Operations at the US Human Rights Network Coordinating Center. She completed er undergraduate studies in Sociology and Women¹s tudies in Ontario, Canada. While studying in Toronto she organized the Rooming House Working Group, which prevented rooming house tenants from being illegally evicted. Janvieve returned to Panama in 1998 and, through her work at the Women¹s Institute of the University of Panama, she helped organize the National Forum of Rural Women. Along with other oppressed African descendent Panamanians, she formed the first Coalition of Panamanians against Racism in 1999, which is today an active and visible organization that continues to publicly denounce discriminatory practices in the public and private sphere in Panama. Upon moving to Atlanta for graduate school and informed by her experiences with discriminatory and unjust practices at an institutional and social level and the isolation and unjust racial targeting of people of Latino, African, Indigenous and Arab descent in the United States, she helped found the Latin American and Caribbean Community Center, a collective of concerned Afro Latinos (LACCC) with political and cultural ties to Latin America and the Caribbean. LACCC fills the gap of exclusion, division and isolation faced by many of African descent, including low wage workers, undocumented families and immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean in the United States, by building a political and critical consciousness while using a human rights framework.

Tonya Williams
Research Associate / Campaign Coordinator
Twilliams@ushrnetwork.org

Tonya M. Williams is a New Voices Fellow and Research Associate. She also serves as the Campaign Coordinator for the US Human Rights Network's Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) Human Rights Campaign. This campaign calls on the US government to acknowledge Gulf Coast residents displaced by Hurricane's Katrina and Rita as internally displaced persons and develop policies and best practices consistent with international standards, particularly the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement. Ms. Williams is also Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Political Science at Clark Atlanta University whose research interests includes international human rights, the ethnic/racial dimensions of human made and natural disasters and human and intrastate security. Ms. Williams formerly served as a Senior Fellow at the US Human Rights Network, an intern in the Constituency Building Unit at CARE USA and held a number of graduate assistantships. She has also held adjunct teaching positions at Clark Atlanta University and more recently Spelman College in the Department of Political Science. Ms. Williams is the editor of the US Human Rights Network “Resource Guide and Advocacy Toolkit for Human Rights and Social Justice Activists and Organizations.”

Kali Akuno
Director of Human Rights Education
kakuno@ushrnetwork.org

Kali has more than 15 years of experience as a human rights writer, researcher, educator and activist. His considerable social justice expertise includes curriculum development, fundraising, project management, training, volunteer coordination, media outreach and community organizing for numerous organizations. He served as Executive Director of the New Orleans-based Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund from 2006-2008, and founded and directed two organizations in the Oakland area in the 1990s. Kali brings his extensive contacts with progressive communities, youth organizations and other grassroots groups to the Network, and will join the staff on September 2.

Sunyata Altenor
Web Mistress / National Youth Organizer
saltenor@ushrnetwork.org

Sunyata Altenor is a graduating senior at Georgia State University. She has been a social justice activist since dropping out of high school and becoming involved in print and radio journalism. She is a writer and involved with several local media projects and community organizing efforts.