Jessie Tannenbaum is a legal advisor at the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative (ABA ROLI), where she designs, manages, implements, and evaluates international justice sector reform and rule of law development programs. She currently leads programs working with justice sector professionals in 18 countries to create and sustain institutional and systemic change in the justice system and serves as a subject matter expert on judicial reform, administration of justice, legal profession development, and criminal justice reform. She has led fieldwork and been the principal or co-author for more than a dozen assessments of judiciaries, bar associations, prosecutorial services, and criminal justice systems and has led the development of qualitative research methodologies to assess criminal detention procedure, the criminal defense bar, anti-human trafficking, and judicial training.

Jessie’s research and technical assistance have contributed to justice system reform in more than two dozen countries around the world, including in Latin America, Central Europe, Central, South, and East Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East and North Africa. She is fluent in Spanish and French with working proficiency in Portuguese, Russian, and Hebrew. Prior to joining ABA ROLI in 2008, Jessie was a legal fellow at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. She is also a volunteer lawyer with an immigrants’ rights organization. She holds an LL.M. in international human rights law, summa cum laude, and a J.D., cum laude, from the University of Notre Dame Law School, and a B.A. in French and international studies, cum laude, from the University of Denver. Jessie loves working with fellow lawyers around the world and is perpetually excited to teach legal research and writing for international LL.M. students.