Advisory Council

Mabel van Oranje, Chair of the Advisory Council

Mabel van Oranje is a serial entrepreneur for social change working globally to advance equality, freedom and justice. 

During the last decade, she played a catalytic role in the global movement to end child marriage, including the creation and growth of three entities central to efforts to support girls’ futures: Girls Not Brides, the Girls First Fund, and VOW for Girls. 

Mabel is currently a board member of Fondation Chanel, the Sigrid Rausing Trust and VOW for Girls (Chair). She is also an advisor to Apolitical Academy Global, Co-Impact’s Gender Fund, Global Witness, and The Elders. 

Mabel is a global champion of Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage, and a co-founder and chair emeritus of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

You can follow her tweets @MabelvanOranje

Anita Ramasastry

Anita Ramasastry is the Roland Hijorth Professor of Law and Director of the Sustainable International Development Graduate Program at the University of Washington School of Law. She is an expert in the fields of business and human rights, anti-corruption and commercial law and development. 

She is a commissioner and chair of the Washington state delegation and the President Elect of the national Uniform Law Commission, where she oversaw the drafting of a new law focused on prevention of and remedies for human trafficking, for the 50 states.

Between 2009-2012, Ramasastry served as a senior adviser to the Assistant Secretary of Market Access and Compliance in the International Trade Administration (ITA) of the US Department of Commerce, working under the leadership of then Secretary Gary Locke. 

She directed the ITA anti-corruption and trade effort, and helped to launch new initiatives with the G20, APEC and the OSCE.  

She also coordinated trade strategies with new emerging markets, such as Vietnam, Colombia, Indonesia, South Africa and Saudi Arabia, and developed a new business and human rights curriculum for US trade officers in their embassies worldwide.

Professor Ramastastry has served as a staff attorney at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, an associate attorney at the law firm White & Case in Budapest, and has been a visiting professor and Atlantic Fellow in Public Policy at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary Westfield College in London.

Camille Massey

Camille Massey was appointed Founding Executive Director of the Sorensen Center for International Peace and Justice in January 2014. She previously served as Vice President for Global Strategy and Programs at the Council on Foreign Relations, overseeing international initiatives, strategic partnerships and the corporate programme. 

Prior to the Council, Camille was the Founder and CEO of Cue Global, a consulting business that designs and implements strategic policy, legal and advocacy plans for global organisations. 

Other positions held include Senior Advisor at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, Director of Communications at Human Rights First and Human Rights Fellow at The Carter Center. 

Originally from Gainesville, Georgia, Massey earned her JD from City University School of Law with a clinic concentration in human rights and gender justice and a BS from Syracuse University. 

She serves as board chair of Breakthrough, a global human rights organisation working to make violence and discrimination against women and girls unacceptable. 

She also serves on the advisory boards of Syracuse University's Newhouse School, New York University Stern School’s Center for Business and Human Rights, and House of SpeakEasy, a literary non-profit organisation. 

Camille is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Bar Association and the New York City Bar Association.

Disha Ravi

Disha Ravi is a climate change activist from Bengaluru, Karnataka, India. She is a founder of Fridays for Future India and has organised strikes across the country.

Disha was instrumental in setting up Fridays for Future Most Affected People and Areas (MAPA). She campaigns and writes about climate justice with a focus on communities experiencing the worst impacts of the climate crisis now.

Edward Zwick

Edward Zwick is an Academy and Emmy Award-winning producer, writer and director. 

Along with his partner, Marshall Herskovitz, he created the critically acclaimed television series Thirtysomething, My So-Called Life, Relativity and Once and Again, as well as the Academy-Award winning films, Shakespeare in Love and Traffic.  

Zwick began his feature film career directing About Last Night.  He went on to direct the Academy Award-winning films Glory and Legends of the Fall, as well as Courage Under Fire, The Siege, The Last Samurai, Defence and Love & Other Drugs. His most recent film is Pawn Sacrifice.  

He is currently serving his third term as a Governor of the Motion Picture Academy, as well as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the American Film Institute. 

He is most proud of his film Blood Diamond – based on the work of Global Witness – which has helped bring worldwide attention to the resource curse and its cost in human suffering.

Marinel Ubaldo

Marinel Ubaldo is an advocate for climate justice and the environment. She is a registered social worker and one of the Founders of the Youth Leaders for Environmental Action Federation, a youth-led organisation based in Eastern Visayas that aims to mentor youth individuals and organisations in climate advocacy. 

She is the Advocacy Officer for Ecological Justice and Youth Engagement of Living Laudato Si' Philippines, was the Philippine Country Coordinator for UN COY16 Glasgow, and also serves as the Philippine Focal Point for Climate Science Olympiad. 

Marinel has been actively involved in educating communities – especially the youth and children – about climate change and the roles they can take to adapt and mitigate to its effects. 

She has spoken to world leaders on behalf of Filipinos during the opening of the UNFCCC COP21 in Paris and in UNFCCC COP25 in Madrid. 

She has been trained by former US Vice-President Al Gore as a Climate Reality Leader. 

Her global campaign with Amnesty International calling on the Philippine government to ensure relocation of Super-Typhoon Haiyan survivors generated 528,070 actions from around the world. 

Nick Grono

Nick Grono is an Australian human rights campaigner, committed to ending modern slavery, human trafficking, child marriage and other egregious human rights abuses. 

He is CEO of the Freedom Fund, a leader in the global movement to end modern slavery. 

To date, the Freedom Fund has worked with some 100 frontline partners around the world to directly impact the lives of over one million of those most vulnerable to exploitation and contribute to systems change affecting six million at risk of slavery.

Prior to the Freedom Fund, Nick was Deputy President and COO of the International Crisis Group, one of the world’s leading conflict prevention organisations. He also previously worked as chief of staff and national security adviser to the Australian Attorney-General.

Silas Siakor

Silas Siakor is the former Director of the Liberia-based Sustainable Development Institute. He was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2006 for his work gathering evidence that proved that Liberia's former president, Charles Taylor, was using profits from logging to fund the civil war. 

His work, carried out at great personal risk, led to UN sanctions on the export of Liberian timber. 

As Director of SDI from 2005 to 2009, Silas coordinated civil society’s input into Liberia’s forest reform, and he continues to work for social justice, human rights and the environment. 

He was chosen by TIME Magazine as one of the 2008 Heroes of the Environment and, in 2012, was awarded the Alexander Soros Foundation Award for Extraordinary Achievement in Environmental and Human Rights Activism. 

He is now working with communities across Liberia to secure legal recognition and protection for their customary lands.

Victor Lopez Illescas

Víctor López Illescas is a Programme Officer on the Ford Foundation Natural Resources and Climate Change team, based in the foundation’s Mexico and Central America office. 

He has been working with Guatemalan and Central American indigenous farmers and fishing communities for more than 20 years in various capacities, including as a forester, a forest firefighter and a cooperative manager.

Before joining Ford in 2019, Victor led the Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests (AMPB) School for Youth Training and Leadership Development, where his fluency in regional dynamics allowed him to foster agreements with indigenous and community-based grassroots groups to develop joint training and leadership-promotion programs. 

Prior to that, as Executive Director of the Community Forestry Association of Guatemala Utz Che’, he led staff and regional teams in their efforts to strengthen local governance of sustainable forest and natural resource management.

Víctor sits on the Global Witness advisory council as well as the Forests Dialogue steering committee, and he is an adviser and honorary member of the Utz Che’ general assembly.