Prior to joining the Department of State, Mr. Posner was the Executive Director and then President of Human Rights First. From HRF’s founding in 1978, Mr. Posner helped the organization earn a reputation for leadership in the areas of refugee protection, advancing a rights-based approach to national security, challenging crimes against humanity, and combating discrimination.

Mr. Posner played a key role in proposing and campaigning for the first U.S. law providing for political asylum, which became part of the Refugee Act of 1980. In 1998, he led the Human Rights First delegation to the Rome conference at which the statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) was adopted.He has been a prominent voice in support of fair, decent, and humane working conditions in factories throughout the global supply chain. As a member of the White House Apparel Industry Partnership Task Force, he helped found the Fair Labor Association.  He also was involved in the development of the Global Network Initiative, a multi-stakeholder initiative aimed at promoting free expression and privacy rights on the internet.

Earlier in his career, Mr. Posner was a lawyer with Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal in Chicago, and was a visiting lecturer at Columbia University and Yale University law schools. A member of the California Bar and the Illinois Bar, he received his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley Law School (Boalt Hall) and an undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan.