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Board of Directors

Khadine Bennett   is a law student at American University in Washington, D.C. A former staff member of WILD for Human Rights, and a longtime human rights activist in the Bay Area, she is well recognized and respected as a youth leader in the San Francisco Bay Area, and at the national level. Prior to attending law school, Ms. Bennett was a member of the board at the Third Wave Foundation and an organizer with the California Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. As a member of WILD for Human Rights, she led the Human Rights Delegation to Durban in 2001 for the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. Ms. Bennett has been a member of WILD’s board of directors since 2004.

Patricia Chang  currently serves as the chair of WILD for Human Rights’ board of directors. An integral part of WILD’s campaign to pass CEDAW in San Francisco, and a founding member of WILD; she has recently retired as the President & CEO of the Women’s Foundation of California, a position she held for 13 years. In addition to being a well-known activist and national figure on women’s rights, Ms. Chang has been on the board of the Women's Funding Network, the Asian Pacific American Women's Leadership Institute, the Women's Leadership Alliance, the National Advisory Board for GenderPAC and the National Committee for Responsible Philanthropy. She is a former commissioner with the San Francisco Commission on the Environment and past President of the San Francisco Commission on the Status of Women.

Lisa Crooms  teaches human rights and constitutional law at Howard University. A human rights activist since 1984, she has worked with the Washington Office on Africa and the American Committee on Africa. She is currently the vice chair of the Advisory Committee of the Women’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch, for which she helped document state responses to domestic violence and rape in South Africa. In 1998, she received the United Nations Association of the National Capital Area’s Human Rights Community Award and delivered the Anna M. Hirsch Lecture on Women and the Law at the New England School of Law.Professor Crooms’ research and activist interests include identity and rights under international human rights law, economic justice, poverty and violence. Professor Crooms was also among the leaders of the international delegation to Durban in 2001 for the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. She has served on the board of WILD since 2006.

Krishanti Dharmaraj   is theExecutive Directorand theco-founderof Women's Institute for Leadership Development for Human Rights. Krishanti develops strategies to impact public policy by utilizing international human rights treaties and grassroots advocacy, and designs and conducts training on human rights and leadership. With her leadership, San Francisco became the first city in the U.S. to pass CEDAW, an international human rights treaty to eliminate gender based discrimination against women. Krishanti has lectured and provided human rights training to community leaders, policy makers and educators across the U.S. and in the U.K., India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Mexico and Guyana. In addition to her work at WILD, Ms. Dharmaraj serves on the advisory board of the New Voices Fellowship and has served on the Board of Directors of Amnesty International USA.

Yumi Sera is an international development consultant focusing on organizational capacity development and philanthropy.  She previously worked at the World Bank as the coordinator the Small Grants Program (a grant program focusing on civic engagement working in over 70 countries) and the founding Secretariat for the Grants Facility for Indigenous Peoples (a global grant program focusing on Indigenous Peoples worldwide).  She has also organized learning programs for staff from civil society organizations and multilateral agencies.  She has also held positions at Peace Corps; as the Executive Director of Earth Train, an international youth training organization; and served as a Peace Corps Volunteer.   Ms. Sera has a Master’s in Public and Private Management from Yale School of Management, and a B.A. from Lewis and Clark College.  In addition to her work on the Board of Directors for WILD for Human Rights, she has served on the International Program Committee for the Council on Foundations.

Clara Shin is a Litigation Director at Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin.  She handles a broad range of securities, intellectual property and general commercial disputes, and has tried cases and handled appeals in both state and federal courts.  In the community, Clara has provided pro bono representation to organizations including Equal Justice Society, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium, and to a state prisoner challenging the constitutionality of medical care at Pelican Bay State Prison.  Prior to joining Howard Rice, Clara served as a White House Fellow in the White House Office of the Chief of Staff; was a member of the start-up team which designed and launched AmeriCorps; coordinated a Department of Defense program to assist communities negatively affected by military downsizing; and co-designed a Department of Housing and Urban Development program to revitalize severely distressed public housing developments. Clara's international experiences include working for the United States Agency for International Development in South Africa and participating in the creation of Tahoe-Baikal Institute in California and Siberia. She has served on the board of WILD for Human Rights since 2006.

Chivy Sok is an independent consultantbased in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is currently working on selected projects related to human rights and child labor education and training Ms. Sok has previously worked as the Deputy Director and Adjunct Lecturer at the Center for Human Rights at the University of Iowa, and as Program Director for the Center for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University. She has also been consistently involved in the Cambodian community, working with the International Human Rights Law Group in Phnom Phen and the Cambodian Association of Illinois. She regularly conducts public lectures on global child labor, human rights, and the Khmer Rouge genocide.