Traylor joins board of trustees

Julianne Cartwright Traylor, a former chair of the board of Amnesty International USA whose work in human rights was recognized by Skidmore College in 2001 with an honorary doctorate, has now been elected to the Skidmore College Board of Trustees.

The first African-American woman to chair Amnesty International USA, a Nobel Prize-winning human right organization with more than 1.1 million members in 192 countries, Ms. Traylor graduated from Skidmore in 1968 and was elected to the board in conjunction with the Skidmore College Alumni Association.

"Julianne Traylor's distinguished record in the struggle to achieve human rights makes her an exceptional representative of Skidmore," said Suzanne Corbet Thomas '62, board chair. "Her international perspective will be especially valuable as Skidmore increasingly focuses its curriculum on intercultural and global understanding."

A human rights educator, researcher, consultant and grassroots activist specializing in the fields of international human rights law and policies, the United Nations, and development and gender issues, Ms. Traylor is a founding member and director of Human Rights Advocates (HRA), an international organization based in Berkeley and accredited to the United Nations Economic and Social Council. HRA provides assistance to lawyers in the U.S. involved in lawsuits in which international human rights law can be used effectively.

After receiving her B.A. in government from Skidmore College, Ms. Traylor earned a master's degree in political science at the University of California, Berkeley and went on for advanced training in international law and human rights law at Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law. As a consultant on domestic and international human rights issues, she has traveled extensively including leading the HRA Delegation to the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, held in China in 1995. While serving as Research Fellow for the International Human Rights Project on Human Rights Research, she lived in Oslo, Norway, for five years. She also studied in Geneva as part of the Ford Foundation International Human Rights Internship Program.