OFFICERS

Iona Liddell, Executive Director (UK - Edinburgh), joined TJC as executive director in September 2012. She brings a background in human rights campaigning, advocacy and research relating to Tibet, and to human rights defenders more broadly. Prior to joining TJC, Iona was in Nepal for two and a half years working as a human rights advocacy officer for Peace Brigades International Nepal, and is currently on their advisory board. Iona specialized in forced migration during her academic degrees and worked for UNHCR in Bangladesh. Iona was also a board member of SFT UK from 2006 – 2008 and is a member of the Cross Party Group on Tibet in the Scottish Parliament, which she co-founded in 2003.

Robert D. Sloane, President (US - Boston), is professor of law at Boston University School of Law, where his research and teaching focus on international law. After graduating from Yale Law School in 2000, he worked for Tibet Justice Center under the auspices of Yale's Robert L. Bernstein Fellowship in International Human Rights; clerked for Judge Robert D. Sack of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and for Judge Gerard E. Lynch of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (now of the Second Circuit); practiced international law at Debevoise & Plimpton; and served as a Visiting Lecturer-in-Law at Yale Law School and an Associate-in-Law at Columbia Law School. In 2007, he received a high-level diploma in public international law from The Hague Academy of International Law. Prior to and since joining the Board, he has been involved with the Center's fact-finding research and reporting, asylum work, and U.N. advocacy.

Dennis Cusack, Treasurer (US - California), is a litigation partner in the San Francisco law firm of Farella Braun + Martel. A member of the Board since 1995, Dennis participates actively in our human rights and U.N. advocacy projects as a writer, editor and strategist. He represents Tibet Justice Center on the Steering Committee of the International Tibet Network.

John Isom, Secretary (US - California), has served on the board of directors of Tibet Justice Center since February 2005, and served as TJC’s executive director from November 2008 until May 2012. Mr. Isom is a geographer and cartographer, and has been involved in Tibet advocacy since 1991. His work with TJC focuses on environment and development issues.

Eileen Kaufman, (US - New York) is Professor of Law at Touro Law Center where she served as Vice Dean from 1996-2000 and founded Touro’s summer program in India in 1995 which is based in part in Dharamsala. She has published primarily in the areas of civil rights, women’s rights and comparative constitutional law. Prior to joining the Board, she has assisted with asylum petitions and participated in the Center’s fact-finding and research. She published Shelter from the Storm: An Analysis of U.S. Refugee Law as Applied to Tibetans Formerly Residing in India, 23 Georgetown Immigration Law Journal 497 (2009).

Wangchuk Shakabpa, (US - New York), is an attorney with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in New York. He graduated Georgetown Law in 1992. He has served on the TJC board since 2007, is also a board member of board member of US-Tibet Committee since 2002 and has been a board member of Students for a Free Tibet. He is currently on the Steering Committee of the Int'l Tibet Network and is a co-editor of web-based Tibetan Political Review. His roots in Tibetan legal matters run deep: his late grandfather, Tsepon W.D. Shakabpa, former Finance Minister in the Tibetan Government, led the Tibetan trade delegation in 1948 and was the author of Tibet: A Political History.

Yodon Thonden, (US - New York), is director of the Isdell Foundation, a private foundation that supports advocacy and capacity building initiatives for the Tibetan people. A member of the Tibet Justice Center board since 1996, Yodon also serves on the boards of the Tibet Fund and the Dalai Lama Trust. A graduate of Harvard College and NYU School of Law, she resides in New York City with her husband and three children.

Fiona McConnell, (UK - London) is Research Fellow in Geography at Trinity College, University of Cambridge. Her doctoral research focused political geography on questions of sovereignty and legitimacy around the exile Tibetan government and community in India. She has published on issues including exile elections and democracy, citizenship and refugeehood and governance practices, and has on-going projects on geographies of peace, the rehearsal of statehood, non-state diplomacy and the construction of legitimacy. She was a board member of SFT UK from its establishment in 2003 until 2008 and currently sits on its advisory board. She has also written briefing reports on exile Tibetan politics for the All Party Parliamentary Group for Tibet at Westminster.