Dr. Vickie Casanova-Willis, MBA, MAT, PhD is an independent human rights expert and Senior Fellow with OHBCUD, the Office of HBCU Development and International Cooperation. This human rights cities advocate has twice served as guest presenter for the University of Graz, Austria’s Human Rights Go Local academy. Former Executive  Director of the US Human Rights Network, a national network of over 300 organizations and hundreds of individuals dedicated to building a people-centered human rights culture in the United States, and past President of the National Conference of Black Lawyers (NCBL), Dr. Vickie has spent decades engaging with underserved youth and families across ethnicities and nationalities through interdisciplinary education and cultural work, to dismantle structural racism. She co-organized the 2016 Midwest US visits of the UNWGEPAD and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention; and co-founded the International Civil Society Working Group for the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent.

Dr. Casanova-Willis has co-authored numerous stakeholders’ reports and has testified to the Organization of American States-InterAmerican Commission (OAS-IACHR), Universal Periodic Review (UPR), Committee Against Torture (CAT), International Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), Permanent Forum (PFPAD), UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent (UNWGEPAD), UN General Assembly (UNGA) and the Human Rights Council (HRC) regarding human rights violations. She is a staunch advocate of solutions devised by directly impacted peoples, working for full reparation for the holocaust of African enslavement and its ongoing legacies.