Making Partnerships Work for Technology and Human Rights

Breakout Session #2
12:45 p.m. until 2:00 p.m.

Featuring:

Steve Crown
Steve is Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, Human Rights, Microsoft Corporation, contributing to development and interpretation of company-wide policies that support advocacy for Rule of Law and respect for human rights in the conduct of the company’s business across the globe.  In order to advance company and industry initiatives and public-private partnerships to make the global internet safer and more trusted, Steve works closely with colleagues across Microsoft, and with external parties -- companies, academics, investors, civil society, and governments -- throughout the world.  In his external engagements Steve champions principled solutions that meet competing concerns in a manner salutary to evolution of international laws and norms. Since joining Microsoft in 1997 Steve has served in a variety of roles, including as Vice President and Deputy General Counsel for China strategy, and as the senior legal and corporate affairs executive for key Microsoft product groups, including Windows Client, Microsoft Office, and Entertainment and Devices (Xbox).  A graduate of the University of Washington, Oxford University and the Yale Law School, Steve participates on the executive committees of a range of external organizations, including the Seattle Chamber, the Global Network Initiative, the International Bar Association Media Law Committee, and the Association of American Rhodes Scholars. Steve is fluent in English and Russian.


 

Eric Goldman
Eric Goldman is a Professor of Law at Santa Clara University School of Law, where he is also Director of the school’s High Tech Law Institute. His research and teaching focuses on Internet law, intellectual property and marketing law. Before becoming a full-time law professor, Eric practiced law in the Silicon Valley for 8 years, first as a technology transactions attorney at Cooley Godward LLP and then as General Counsel of Epinions.com, an Internet start-up company. Prior to Santa Clara, he was an Assistant Professor at Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He has also taught as an adjunct professor at UC Berkeley Law School and the University of San Francisco Law School. He blogs on Internet law matters at the Technology & Marketing Law Blog and the Tertium Quid Blog at Forbes. He obtained a B.A. and a J.D./M.B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles.


 

Jason Pielemeier
As Policy Director, Jason works with GNI’s diverse membership of leading Internet and telecom companies, human rights organizations, academics, and investors to develop and advocate for policy positions in support of freedom of expression and privacy online. Jason joined GNI after seven years in the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Democracy and Human Rights (DRL), initially as a Special Advisor on national security and human rights and then as Head of the Internet Freedom, Business, and Human Rights team.Before joining the State Department, he worked as a law clerk for the Hon. Raymond Dearie and as an attorney in private practice in New York.Earlier in his career, Jason worked with indigenous communities in Guatemala on land tenure and conservations issues, initially as a Peace Corps Volunteer and then as the country director of a USAID-funded project. Jason is a graduate of Northwestern University and Yale Law School. He is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese.

 

Moderator: Amy Lehr
Amy K. Lehr is the director of the Human Rights Initiative (HRI) at CSIS. The HRI was launched in June 2014 and is the only program of its kind in the Washington think tank community. From this unique position, HRI brings together key actors, catalyzing creative, game-changing solutions to the globe’s most pressing human rights challenges through a cross-sectoral and multidisciplinary approach. Amy comes to CSIS after a decade with Foley Hoag LLP’s unique corporate social responsibility (CSR) practice. In this role, she carried out groundbreaking work across sectors, engaging with international financial institutions, corporations, non-governmental organizations, and governments, to help them develop best practices and apply international law to address global human rights challenges. Her expertise includes labor rights, privacy and freedom of expression and association, forced labor in global supply chains, security and human rights, land rights, and indigenous rights issues. She has carried out field work across the globe, including conducting human rights impact assessments for large projects. Previously, Amy served as legal adviser to the UN special representative on business and human rights, John Ruggie, and in that role helped develop the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. She also served as a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative. She previously worked for development NGOs in Burma (Myanmar) and Thailand, including Save the Children. She was a term member at the Council on Foreign Relations. Amy received her A.B. from Princeton University and her J.D. from Harvard Law School.