Board of Directors

Kate Tillery (Co-Chair)
Attorney

Katherine (Kate) Tillery is a lawyer with the law firm of Korein Tillery LLC, with offices in St. Louis, MO and Chicago, IL. She has served on a variety of non-profit boards, including the Illinois Bar Foundation, Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Southwestern Illinois and Trailnet, Inc. In addition to the ERI Board, she currently serves on the Board of Trustees for Illinois College and the Center for the Arts in Crested Butte, Colorado. Pursuing her life-long interest in human rights and environmental issues, Ms. Tillery resumed her formal education in 2000, when she entered the International Affairs Program at Washington University, from which she earned a master’s degree in 2003. She has served as a pro-bono lawyer for Land of Lincoln Legal Assistance Foundation and has written and lectured on the subject of the Alien Torts Claims Act and Sustainable Globalization. She is particularly interested in ERI’s schools in Thailand, where she has taught International Human Rights Law for several years. Kate joined the ERI Board in June 2007.

Neil Popovic (Co-Chair)
Partner, Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP; Lecturer, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law

Neil A.F. Popovic is a partner at Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP, where he practices complex litigation, with an emphasis on international disputes. His practice also includes consumer class actions, white collar criminal defense and international environmental law. He teaches International Environmental Law and Resolution of Private International Disputes(co-taught with Prof. David D. Caron) at Berkeley Law, and has published numerous articles on international environmental law, including human rights and the environment. Mr. Popovic previously worked as an attorney in the International Program of the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund (now Earthjustice), and continues to work with Earthjustice as a consultant. Mr. Popovic has served on the board of ERI since its inception in 2000. He also sits on the board of directors of the Center for Youth Development through Law, and is a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment at Berkeley Law.

Stanley L. Corfman, MBA CPA (Treasurer)
Chief Financial Officer, Transitional Services for New York, Inc.

Stan has served the non-for-profit community in management, advisory and governance positions for over 35 years. After completing his MBA from Columbia, his evolving career took him to a number of arts and human service organizations, including the Directorship of the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center, and included a period as Director of Services to Nonprofit Organizations for Price Waterhouse. It also included volunteer service as Member and as Chair of the AICPA’s Committee on Nonprofit Organizations and membership on Advisory Boards to Independent Sector, the Urban Institute, and the United Way of the USA. He has also served as Adjunct Professor of Accounting at Columbia University’s School of International Affairs and at New York University’s Stern School of Business.

Jelson Garcia
Asia Program Manager, Bank Information Center

Jelson Garcia has extensive experience in managing programs in international, national and local NGOs and the Philippine government, including on development and advocacy issues and post-conflict livelihood rehabilitation and peace-building initiatives. He is currently directing Bank Information Center’s Asia Program, which focuses on governance reforms, rights protection and strengthening citizen voice in the international financial institutions (IFIs). Jelson provides strategic guidance and quality control in BIC’s Bangkok and Jakarta offices, which he established and initially managed, as well as their Delhi office, while currently being based out of BIC’s Washington DC office. He has helped sustain people-based campaigns demanding safeguards, accountability or reconsideration of high-risk energy, mining and landreform projects financed by the World Bank Group and Asian Development Bank. Through his experience with, and knowledge of, issues related to IFIs, investment accountability, development sustainability, indigenous and humanitarian matters, among others, Jelson has been an important contributor to ERI’s work, particularly at the Mekong School and in theMekong Alumni Program. Jelson joined the ERI board in January 2011

David Hunter, Esq.
Professor of International Environmental Law, American University's Washington College of Law

David Hunter is assistant professor and director of the Program on International and Comparative Environmental Law at WCL. He is also the director of the Washington Summer Session on Environmental Law. He is the former executive director of the Center for International Environmental Law and was previously an Associate with the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom. In addition to the Board of EarthRights International, he also currently serves on the Boards of Directors of the Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide-US, the Project on Government Oversight, the Bank Information Center, and Greenpeace-US.

Dorcus Moo
Program Officer, American Jewish World Service

Dorcus Moo is a longtime activist and women’s rights advocate. Dorcus grew up in a Burmese refugee camp on the Thai-Burma border where she co-founded the Karen Student Network Group, a student organization serving refugee youth. Prior to coming to the United States, Dorcus worked with EarthRights International as the women’s rights project coordinator in Thailand and is an alumna of EarthRights School – Burma. Dorcus also worked with the International Rescue Committee in their refugee resettlement division in New York. Currently, Dorcus is a program officer with American Jewish World Service, responsible for the volunteer program in Southeast Asia. Dorcus holds a B.A. in political science from Hartwick College and is pursuing a graduate degree in international affairs at the New School University. Dorcus joined the ERI Board in June 2011.

Laura Levine
Attorney

Laura Levine practiced litigation at Dickstein Shapiro LLP in Washington DC from 1989 to 2002. She had a diverse practice in both federal and state courts involving a wide range of issues, including environmental law, white collar criminal defense and commercial transactions. She has a long-standing interest in public service, and has performed pro bono work for a number of public interest organizations, including the Legal Aid Society and the Legal Counsel for the Elderly.  Before joining Dickstein Shapiro, Ms. Levine was a law clerk to the Honorable John M. Steadman of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. She is admitted to practice in New York and Washington DC. Ms. Levine has also been an Adjunct Professor of English at Montgomery College in Rockville, MD. Ms. Levine graduated from Stanford Law School, where she was a note editor of the Stanford Law Review, in 1987. She received an M.A. in English Literature from Columbia University in 1984, and a B.A. from Brown University in 1981. Ms. Levine is an enthusiastic supporter of ERI’s mission, and joined the Board in November 2009.

Abby Reyes
Attorney; Sustainability Researcher, Environment Institute, University of California, Irvine

As a program director at the Environmental Legal Assistance Center in Palawan, Philippines, Abby provided paralegal education and training to rural fishing and farming communities working to defend their environmental and human rights. As the director of the U'wa Defense Project, she coordinated international solidarity support to the Colombian indigenous U'wa community in their resistance to oil exploitation. Abby completed her bachelor's degree in human biology at Stanford in 1995 and her JD at UC Berkeley Law in 2004. After clerking for the Honorable Richard A. Paez on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Abby served as a staff attorney at the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco. In October, 2011, she joined the Environment Institute at the University of California at Irvine as a Sustainability Researcher. She directs the Heart Politics Project, a small non-profit initiative promoting social transformation in the sustainable living movement, and volunteers on the Swatcha Ganga campaign to clean the Ganga River at Varanasi, India.

Sarah Singh
Attorney, Accountability Counsel

Sarah Singh is an attorney at Accountability Counsel where she represents communities around the world demanding accountability for human rights and environmental violations caused by internationally financed projects. Sarah assists her clients with use of accountability mechanisms tied to international finance and conducts policy advocacy to ensure that those mechanisms are robust and effective. Before joining Accountability Counsel, Sarah clerked for the Honorable Marsha S. Berzon on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Sarah is a 2010 graduate of UC Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall), where she was an active member in the human rights community, and holds an undergraduate degree in International Relations from Brown University. Sarah is a long-time supporter of ERI's work and rejoined the Board in 2011.

Jasper Teulings
Head of the Legal Unit of Greenpeace International, Amsterdam

Jasper Teulings is General Counsel and Advocaat in the Legal Unit of Greenpeace International in Amsterdam. He has served on the Board of the INGO Accountability Charter and helped develop the Global Reporting Initiative’s NGO Sector Supplement. He also was a Board Member of NJCM, the Dutch section of the International Commission of Jurists, and acted as an independent advisor to the international commission investigating the ‘Probo Koala’ case, the dumping of toxic waste in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, on 18 August 2006. He regularly speaks and publishes on a wide range of topics, such as climate change litigation, free speech & peaceful protest and Greenpeace’s corporate campaigns. Before joining Greenpeace in 2004 he practiced as a media lawyer and civil litigator in Amsterdam for 10 years. Jasper joined the ERI Board in June 2011.

James (Jim) Thompson
Attorney

Jim Thompson is a full-time student and part time attorney in his own firm of Thompson and Associates, having resumed his education in the summer of 2010 to pursue a Masters of Law in Estate Planning and Elder Law. He is on the Boards of the Crossville Hospice and the Cumberland County Playhouse, and was a past Board member of Friends of the Earth, and Big Brother of the Year in Northern Virginia in 2005. Jim is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, and served as an Air Force pilot. After graduating from the University of Florida College of Law, Jim clerked for the Honorable Paul Hitch Roney (U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals) and was a partner in the law firms of Kutak, Rock LLP, and Saunders, Snyder Ross and Dickerson. Before being requested to re-enter active duty, Jim was an Associate Professor of Law at the University Of Tennessee College Of Law, where he was part of the Harvard Study Team that traveled to Iraq in 1990, and published the report: The Effect of The Gulf Crisis On the Children of Iraq. Jim has practiced water, and environmental, law since law school and is an ardent advocate of the concept the survival of “space ship earth”. Jim joined the ERI Board in June 2011.