Kathleen Peratis

Kathleen Peratis is a senior partner in the New York law firm Outten & Golden LLP representing plaintiffs in employment law matters.   She has written books and many articles and taught and lectured on issues of human rights, civil rights, women's rights and employment law.  She has participated in fact finding missions to Russia, Bosnia, and Jordan for Human Rights Watch and participated in the writing and editing of the reports that resulted from those missions.  She is a trustee emerita of Human Rights Watch, founding Chair of its Women’s Rights Division, and co-chair of the Advisory Committee of HRW's  Middle East and North Africa Division.  She is former vice chair in North America and board member of the New Israel Fund, former Chair of the New York Civil Liberties Union, and member of the board of directors of congregation B’nai Jeshurun.  She is an occasional columnist for The Forward, a weekly Jewish newspaper.  She has a B.A. and a J.D. from the University of Southern California.  After law school she joined the Los Angeles firm of O’Melveny & Myers.  In 1974, she succeeded Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the director of the Women’s Rights Division of the American Civil Liberties Union in New York where she represented plaintiffs across the country in constitutional challenges to gender discrimination.  She has been in private practice since she left the ACLU in 1979.