Kate Mackintosh

In 1995, having just qualified to practice law in the UK, I answered an innocuous advert in a legal weekly and found myself heading to Rwanda with the UN one year after the genocide there. This experience marked my life, and introduced me to the issues that I have worked on ever since – conflict, human rights, humanitarian assistance, and international justice.

I have worked at headquarters and in the field for IGOs and NGOs as well as for think tanks and universities. I spent an important eight years of my life with Médecins sans Frontières, and slightly longer in a range of roles at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and its sister Rwanda Tribunal.

In August 2018, I made my wildest move – to Los Angeles, to set up the new Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA. THNK helped me see the potential of the innovation and storytelling cultures here, and launch the project of bringing these into a center of legal and academic excellence to build a human rights institute that can make a real difference.