People

Rangita De Silva de Alwis, SJD ’97, is the inaugural Director of the Global Women’s Leadership Initiative at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Among her many accomplishments, she has worked globally in over 25 countries on women’s human rights law and policy making and institutional reform, and convened several transnational networks in India, China and the with women living in Muslim communities. She has worked for 15 years with Chinese gender and law experts and academics and has testified twice before the Congressional Executive Commission on China on the status of women’s rights. Rangita has a LL.M and S.J.D. from Harvard Law School and was a Teaching Fellow with the European Law Research Institute at Harvard Law School and a Research Fellow with the Women and Public Policy Program at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. She was a Fulbright Specialist with the Asian University of Women, a Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at Wellesley College, a Visiting Scholar at Wellesley Centers for Women, and an Honorary Professor of China Women’s University. Her projects at Harvard included co-writing a book on women’s leadership during and post-conflict, as well as a paper for the World Bank on examining emerging developments in the new generation of laws on violence against women.