Russell Pickard is deputy director in the international advocacy director’s office at the Open Society Foundations. He has more than 10 years of experience in the nonprofit sector working to bring about policy change in human rights and international development in the European Union and Africa.
Prior to joining the international advocacy team in early 2008, he spent five years as a senior policy officer at the Open Society Institute–Brussels, where his primary focus was EU Africa Policy, with a particular interest in the development of EU responses to African governance initiatives. He was a founding member and joint coordinator of the Brussels-based Human Rights and Democracy Network, a grouping of human rights, democracy, and conflict prevention-focused NGOs.
Pickard represents the Open Society Foundations on the advisory board of Ariadne, the European Human Rights Funders Network. He is also a member of Open Society Foundations Africa Coordination Group and the Africa Advocacy Group. He has a master’s in international relations from the University of Kent, and has experience with a number of different NGOs in the human rights and conflict prevention field, including Human Rights Watch.