Our President

MARK JAMES WILLIAMS

 

Our President, Mark Williams, is a lawyer by profession with over 20 years of experience working on human rights, rule of law, access to justice, and transparency issues in the developing world with both USAID and the United Nations. After practicing law as a legal aid lawyer in New York City for six years, Mr. Williams began to work in the field of international development in 1994. He has lived and/or worked for extended periods of time in El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Bolivia, and on a short-term basis in several more. For a total of over ten years, he has held management positions in rule of law programs in Latin America, serving as Chief of Party or Coordinator for USAID rule of law programs in El Salvador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Colombia, and as technical coordinator in Guatemala. He has also backstopped rule of law and access to justice projects in Latin America. In these capacities, he has worked with judiciaries, public ministries, public defenders offices, the police and others in a broad range of training and institutional strengthening activities.  Over the past 20 years, Mr. Williams has developed a particular expertise in preparing successful proposals and building strong teams for rule of law and access to justice development projects, primarily with USAID. Mr. Williams graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1984 with a BBA in Accounting and a minor in the Italian language, and from the Columbia University School of Law in 1988 with a JD. He is bi-lingual in English and Spanish, speaks professional level French, and is conversant in Italian and Hindi.