Betsy Apple

Betsy Apple is advocacy director and head of the Rule of Law Cluster for the Open Society Justice Initiative based in New York. She brings litigation and advocacy experience on a broad range of human rights and international justice issues.

Prior to joining the Open Society Foundations, Apple was the legal director/general counsel for a small advocacy organization, AIDS-Free World, where she led the legal team filing a challenge to the Jamaican anti-sodomy law at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. She has also served as the director of the Crimes Against Humanity program at Human Rights First, deputy director of the Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO), and the managing/legal director of EarthRights International, in Thailand and the United States.

Apple has consulted for various organizations including Refugees International and the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma. She was a 2011–12 Wasserstein Fellow at Harvard Law School, and currently is an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, where she teaches international human rights law.