Bio: Minky Worden

Minky Worden (Chairwoman)

Minky Worden is the Director of Global Initiatives at Human Rights Watch. Worden brings 15 years of experience in human rights leadership. She provides vision, strategic guidance to the Campaign, as well as extensive communications and media connections. As Human Rights Watch’s Director of Global Initiatives, Worden develops and implements international outreach and advocacy campaigns. She previously served as Human Rights Watch’s Media Director, working with the world’s journalists to help them cover crises, wars, human rights abuses, and political developments in some 90 countries worldwide.

Before joining Human Rights Watch in 1998, Worden lived and worked in Hong Kong as an adviser to Democratic Party chairman Martin Lee and worked at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. as a speechwriter for the U.S. Attorney General and in the Executive Office for US Attorneys.

A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Worden speaks Cantonese and German, and is an elected member of the Overseas Press Club’s Board of Governors. She is the editor of The Unfinished Revolution (Seven Stories Press, 2012) and China’s Great Leap (Seven Stories Press, 2008), and the co-editor of Torture (New Press, 2005). She has served on the board of several human rights NGOs.