Stephanie V. Grepo

Resettling Bosnian refugees in the Greater Boston area through Catholic Charities inspired me to pursue a career in human rights. Over seven years in the former Yugoslavia, I designed and implemented democratization, capacity building and educational programs. I brought the Model United Nations to Kosovo (where it continues to this day!), resolved conflicts between Macedonians and Albanians in the former crisis region (leading to the construction of a new primary school for Albanians and the resumption of electricity to minority villages), created a grants program to support grassroots NGOs throughout the former crisis region of Macedonia, facilitated refugee return and led a field office of 10 in Croatia, and supported CSOs promoting multi-ethnic education in Serbia. Since 2008, I have contributed to the development of 200 human rights advocates and their grassroots organizations in more than 70 countries through the Human Rights Advocates Program at Columbia University. I have raised $4 million for the program primarily from foundations. I was a lecturer at the New School for nearly 10 years and guided teams of graduate students on their practicums with organizations including the International Rescue Committee (NYC) and Transparency International (Berlin). I created and taught the first human rights course for high school students at The School of The New York Times. I currently teach high school students at Columbia Pre-College Programs.