Vanessa Kogan

(vanessa.stoessel.kogan@gmail.com) has since 2009 been Executive Director of the Russian Justice Initiative (RJI), a strategic litigation non-governmental organization (NGO) based in Moscow and Ingushetia, which provides representation at the European Court of Human Rights for victims of grave human rights violations committed in the North and South Caucasus.

Vanessa earned a degree in comparative literature from Columbia University in 2004 and a law degree from Cambridge University in 2009. As a recipient of a Third Millennium Foundation grant in 2006-2007, Vanessa worked as a fellow with RJI and also with a refugee rights organization in southern France, where she managed a caseload of refugees from the North Caucasus. Vanessa has also worked in the Legal Office of Human Rights Watch in New York and as a junior researcher with the Human Rights League in Paris.