Erika Dailey serves as Director of Advocacy and Policy. In this role, she leads the expansion of PHR’s advocacy work, mobilizing and leveraging PHR’s vast network of health and science professionals to promote human rights worldwide.
Dailey comes to PHR with thirty years in the international human rights field and in NGO management, principally at Human Rights Watch and the Open Society Foundations. Most recently, she served as Head of Research and as Interim Director of the Climate and Economic Justice Division for the Open Society Justice Initiative, based in New York. At the Open Society Foundations, she worked to combat torture in the post-Soviet space and to study and hone the use of strategic human rights litigation as a tool for social change and improved human rights protections. She also helped produce over 40 human rights reports, with accompanying policy recommendations. In addition, Dailey served as Deputy in OSF’s Office of Programs, which supported more than twenty thematic programs globally, and on the Justice Initiative’s Senior Management Team during times of organizational transition.
At Human Rights Watch, Dailey worked as a field researcher, international advocate, and head of the Moscow office. Over her career, she has completed over 20 field missions, including related to torture and other atrocity crimes, with a particular focus on the post-Soviet space, Kenya, and Türkiye.
Dailey has a Bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and a Masters degree and Certificate in Advanced Soviet Studies from Columbia University.