Mikhal Shachar
Prevention Project
Policy & Program Manager

Mikhal Shachar joined the Prevention Project in June 2022, after graduating from the NYU School of Law in May 2022 with an LL.M. in International Legal Studies.

As Policy & Program Manager, Mikhal manages the Constitutional and Legal Tools, Security, Civil Society, and Environment workstreams. During her LL.M., Mikhal was a Human Rights Scholar with the Prevention Project.

Between 2017-2021, Mikhal was a legal advisor at the Israeli Ministry of Justice Office of Deputy Attorney General for International Law. She held positions on the Policy and Strategy team and the Foreign Litigation team, where she drafted Israel’s legal position on issues of international law, universal jurisdiction, cyber governance, state immunity, and business and human rights. Mikhal also managed civil litigation and criminal complaints against Israeli officials abroad. Mikhal holds an LL.B. in Law and Political Science from Tel-Aviv University.

During her LL.B. Mikhal was a research and teaching assistant to a number of leading Israeli international law scholars. Prior to law school, Mikhal served as a shift-commander NCO in the Foreign Liaison Department of the Israel Defence Force where she conducted strategic and tactical cooperation with neighboring foreign militaries and U.N. forces. After being admitted to the Israeli Bar Association, Mikhal took on a Staff Sergeant reserve position at the International Law Department of the Military Advocate General.

Michelle Lobo
Supervising Attorney
The Earth Rights Research & Action

Melina De Bona
Supervising Attorney
The Earth Rights Research & Action

Katelyn Cioffi
Senior Research Scholar, Digital Welfare State and Human Rights Project
Technology and Human Rights

Katelyn Cioffi is a Senior Research Scholar at the Center, where she works on the Digital Welfare State and Human Rights Project and leads the project’s work on digital identity systems. Katelyn’s research focuses on how digital government initiatives—such as biometric national digital ID systems, federated identity ecosystems, and legal and regulatory frameworks for emerging technologies and artificial intelligence—affect human rights, social exclusion, and inequality.

Katelyn has experience working across a wide range of human rights issues, including social and economic rights, freedom of expression, gender-based discrimination, and international justice. Prior to coming to CHRGJ, she worked in the Strategic Litigation Unit at Amnesty International, where she supported human rights litigation in the United States, the European Court of Human Rights, and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. She has worked extensively with civil society organizations around the world on issues of transitional justice, human rights, monitoring & evaluation, and capacity building.

From 2018–19, Katelyn was a Fulbright Fellow at the Amsterdam Center for International Law, University of Amsterdam, where her research focused on the doctrine of emerging consensus and its effect on contestation in regional human rights systems. She holds a JD from Harvard Law School (cum laude), an MA in International Studies and Diplomacy from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, and a BA in History from Brown University. Katelyn is admitted to practice law in the State of New York.

Katarina Sydow
Senior Advisor to UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers

Katarina Sydow is the Senior Advisor to the UN Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, Professor Margaret Satterthwaite.

Katarina was previously Director of the Human Rights and Privatization Project at the Center, where her research focused on poverty and inequality, and the human rights impacts of commodifying essential services such as healthcare, water and education.

Katarina has a broad interest in international law and human rights issues. She has worked as a consultant for UN Women and the United Nations Development Programme, contributing to policy briefs concerning the Women, Peace and Security agenda and the Global Focal Point for the Rule of Law. Katarina was also an NYU International Law and Human Rights Fellow at the United Nations Department of Peace Operations, Justice and Corrections Service.

Before moving to the United States, Katarina worked as a barrister in the UK for eight years, where she was ranked in Legal 500 and Chambers and Partners. She specialized in public law, human rights and medical law.

Katarina holds an LLM in International Legal Studies from NYU, a Graduate Diploma in Law from City, University of London, and a BA in Modern History from the University of Oxford. At NYU, she was an Arthur T. Vanderbilt Scholar and the recipient of the Jerome Lipper Award for International Legal Studies and the Howard Greenberger Award for comparative law.

Jacqueline Gallant
Supervising Attorney
The Earth Rights Research & Action

Gabrielle Apollon
Director, Haitian Immigrant Rights Project
Global Justice Clinic

Gabrielle Apollon directs Rights without Borders: Haitian Immigrant Rights part of the Global Justice Clinic, through which she is building a hemisphere-wide coalition of Haitian activists, lawyers and allies, collaborating to combat the anti-Black racism, exclusion and cyclical displacement Haitians have faced as they’ve migrated throughout the Western Hemisphere.

She is also co-leading the Clinic’s work on climate migration, documenting and challenging anti-Blackness as it relates to Haitians’ experiences of climate harms, in Haiti as well as in transit and destination countries. Gabrielle previously served as Managing Attorney at The Door: A Center for Alternatives, where she represented young people in immigration and family law matters. While at The Door, Gabrielle expanded services for Francophone immigrants and became a New York Community Trust Leadership Fellow. A 2015 graduate of NYU School of Law, Gabrielle was an AnBryce Scholar and served as a student advocate in the Global Justice and Children’s Rights Clinics. As a student, Gabrielle earned a Ford Foundation Public Interest Law Fellowship to work with Conectas in Brazil in 2013, documenting human rights violations of Haitian migrants en route to Brazil.

Prior to law school, Gabrielle worked at the United Nations Office of the Special Envoy to Haiti as a research specialist. She holds a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of International Affairs from Columbia University, where she was awarded the J.W. Saxe Memorial Award for Public Service and Harry J. Carman Fellowship. While studying political science and international development, Gabrielle interned with the Council on Foreign Relations and Haiti’s presidential commission, Groupe de Travail sur l’Education et la Formation (GTEF). Gabrielle speaks French and Haitian Creole. She serves as the Vice President of the Board of Directors of St. Hope Leadership Academy.

Ellie Happel
Interim Director, Global Justice Clinic
Co-Director, Haiti Justice and International Accountability
Co-Director, Caribbean Climate Justice Initiative

Ellie co-directs the Global Justice Clinic projects Haiti Justice and International Accountability and the Caribbean Climate Justice Initiative.

Both projects partner with social movements and communities in Haiti and the Caribbean to defend their environmental, economic, social and cultural rights; to prevent rights violations, particularly by international actors; and to support efforts to build community power in the face of extractive development models and the global climate crisis. Ellie also co-teaches the Global Justice Clinic Seminar.

Ellie lived and worked in Haiti between 2011 and 2017, first on cases of forced eviction in the internally displaced people (IDP) camps in Port-au-Prince, and then to develop the Global Justice Clinic’s partnership with Kolektif Jistis Min (Justice Mining Collective), a coalition of Haitian social movement organizations that came together to monitor Haiti’s nascent gold mining industry.

Ellie is a 2011 graduate of NYU School of Law where she was a Root Tilden Kern scholar. She holds a B.A. magna cum laude in Metropolitan Studies from New York University. Ellie is fluent in Spanish and Haitian Creole.

Diana Rangel
Office Assistant for Programs

Carlos Andrés Baquero-Díaz
Research Director of the NYU TERRA Program
The Earth Rights Research & Action