Assistant Director of Programs
Jessica Pierson is the Assistant Director of Programs at the Human Rights Institute. Prior to joining HRI, she was the Student Services Coordinator at the Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics at Columbia University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science.
Pierson's graduate thesis research explored abortion as a human right in the United States and the role of CEDAW cities in challenging the Hyde Amendment. As a graduate student, Pierson was a Research Assistant at the Law, Rights, and Religion Project at Columbia Law School where she worked on initiating local advocacy campaigns to combat religious healthcare refusals. Outside of Columbia, Pierson is the UN Representative to DGC for the International Alliance of Women. She also works with the NGO Committee on the Status of Women/New York, where she co-coordinated the creation of a women's human rights curriculum and co-led a project to document the history of the Cities for CEDAW movement. She co-authored a forthcoming chapter on integrating global citizenship frameworks into feminist curricula for a book on global citizenship education.
Pierson holds an M.A. in Human Rights Studies from Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights and a B.F.A. in Musical Theater from The New School.