Risa Kaufman (she/her) joined The Overbrook Foundation as Director of Human Rights in 2023. In this role, she proudly leads the Foundation’s grantmaking and collaborations to advance reproductive health, rights, and justice and defend democracy in the United States, and support human rights defenders in Latin America.

Risa brings over 25 years of experience as a social justice and human rights lawyer and teacher dedicated to advancing gender, racial, and economic justice. Prior to joining the Foundation, Risa was director of U.S. human rights at the Center for Reproductive Rights and executive director of the Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute, among other litigation and advocacy positions. She taught U.S. human rights advocacy as an adjunct professor at NYU School of Law and Columbia Law School and is co-author of the law school casebook Human Rights Advocacy in the United States (with Martha F. Davis, Johanna Kalb, and Rachel Lopez). Risa is a board member of Funders for Reproductive Equity, and a co-founder and board member of A Better Balance, a national legal advocacy organization that promotes workplace justice.

Risa spent her high school years in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and she holds a B.A. from Tulane University and a J.D. from NYU School of Law, where she was a Root-Tilden scholar. Directly after law school, she returned to Alabama to clerk for Judge Ira DeMent in the U.S. District Court in Montgomery. Risa lives with her family in the lower Hudson Valley.