Board of Directors

Robert D. Sloane, President (US – Boston), is professor of law at Boston University School of Law, where his research and teaching focus on international law. After graduating from Yale Law School in 2000, he worked for Tibet Justice Center under the auspices of Yale’s Robert L. Bernstein Fellowship in International Human Rights; clerked for Judge Robert D. Sack of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and for Judge Gerard E. Lynch of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (now of the Second Circuit); practiced international law at Debevoise & Plimpton; and served as a Visiting Lecturer-in-Law at Yale Law School and an Associate-in-Law at Columbia Law School. In 2007, he received a high-level diploma in public international law from The Hague Academy of International Law. Prior to and since joining the Board, he has been involved with the Center’s fact-finding research and reporting, asylum work, and U.N. advocacy.

Wangchuk Shakabpa, (US – New York), is an attorney with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in New York. He graduated Georgetown Law in 1992. He has served on the TJC board since 2007, is also a board member of board member of US-Tibet Committee since 2002 and has been a board member of Students for a Free Tibet. He is currently on the Steering Committee of the Int’l Tibet Network and is a co-editor of web-based Tibetan Political Review. His roots in Tibetan legal matters run deep: his late grandfather, Tsepon W.D. Shakabpa, former Finance Minister in the Tibetan Government, led the Tibetan trade delegation in 1948 and was the author of Tibet: A Political History.

Dennis Cusack, Treasurer (US – California), is a litigation partner in the San Francisco law firm of Farella Braun + Martel. A member of the Board since 1995, Dennis participates actively in our human rights and U.N. advocacy projects as a writer, editor and strategist. He represents Tibet Justice Center on the Steering Committee of the International Tibet Network.

Ganden Tethong, (Switzerland – Zurich) is an attorney in Switzerland, and partner in the Zurich law firm Tethong Blattner (www.tebl-law.com) where she specializes in criminal law and compliance. She has a Master’s degree in law from the University of Zurich, Switzerland and a Master’s degree in criminology from the University of Bern, Switzerland. She is also a former board member and president of Tibetan Youth Association in Europe (TYAE).

Eileen Kaufman, (US – New York) is Professor of Law at Touro Law Center where she served as Vice Dean from 1996-2000 and founded Touro’s summer program in India in 1995 which is based in part in Dharamsala. She has published primarily in the areas of civil rights, women’s rights and comparative constitutional law. Prior to joining the Board, she has assisted with asylum petitions and participated in the Center’s fact-finding and research. She published Shelter from the Storm: An Analysis of U.S. Refugee Law as Applied to Tibetans Formerly Residing in India, 23 Georgetown Immigration Law Journal 497 (2009).

Fiona McConnell, (UK – Oxford) is Associate Professor in Human Geography at the University of Oxford. Her doctoral research focused political geography on questions of sovereignty and legitimacy around the exile Tibetan government and community in India. She has published on issues including exile elections and democracy, citizenship and refugeehood and governance practices, and has on-going projects on geographies of peace, the rehearsal of statehood, non-state diplomacy and the construction of legitimacy. She was a board member of SFT UK from its establishment in 2003 until 2008 and currently sits on its advisory board. She has also written briefing reports on exile Tibetan politics for the All Party Parliamentary Group for Tibet at Westminster.

Tenzin Wangyal, (US – New York) is the founder and principal attorney of the Law Offices of Tenzin Wangyal, with locations in New York and Massachusetts, and is admitted to practice law in New York and Massachusetts.  Tenzin’s law office serves the immigrant communities in New York and Massachusetts, and he specializes in the areas of immigration law and family / matrimonial law, and provides legal representation in other areas of law.  Tenzin is an alumnus of the Tibetan Children’s Village (TCV) School in Dharamsala, India; Hastings College of Arts and Technology, England; Middlebury College in Vermont; and Northeastern University School of Law in Boston.  Before attending law school, Tenzin worked as a paralegal at the law firms of Landis, Arn & Jaynes, PC; Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, LLP; and Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy, LLP.  Tenzin currently serves as a pro bono legal liaison for Tibetan immigrant communities, including the Tibetan Community for New York and New Jersey; and the Tibetan Association of Boston; and assists these and other non-profit organizations on various legal matters on a pro bono basis.