Business & Human Rights Resource Centre: Bios of trustees / board members

Melvin Coleman

Melvin Coleman is a trustee of the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre.

He is UK Finance Director of Amnesty International and is a member of its Senior Management Team with responsibilities for Finance, IT, and Company Secretarial and legal matters. He was a member of the international committee devising Amnesty International’s strategic plan for the period 2004-2010, and also sits on the task force studying the method of funding the organisation’s international budget.

A member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (CA), he graduated in law from Glasgow University, winning the Glasgow Juridical Society prize.

After qualifying with Ernst & Young, his career has taken him from North Sea oil to publishing and thence into the not-for-profit sector where he has held senior positions at Consumers’ Association (Which? Magazine), Engineering Industry Training Board and the Performing Right Society.

He is a founder member of the first publicly funded Law Centre in the UK and still acts (33 years later) as accountant, treasurer and Secretary to its Management Committee. He was Treasurer of the Public Law Project – a small, strategic charity developing public law remedies for disadvantaged people – and was Treasurer of the civil liberties/human rights organisation Liberty in the 1980s. He is also involved in a variety of bodies representing the voluntary/charity sectors and was recently elected a Trustee of the Charity Finance Directors' Group.

Sumi Dhanarajan

Sumi Dhanarajan is a trustee of the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre.

She is a barrister working as Head of the Private Sector Team (Policy Department) at Oxfam GB, the development organisation addressing poverty issues worldwide.

Her recent publications include:

• The impact of patent rules on the treatment of HIV/AIDS in Thailand [PDF] (Oxfam GB, 2001)

• Business and Ethical Issues (keynote address to the International Academy of Business, UK chapter, 2001)

• Symbiotic or Parasitic? The Relationship between TNCs and Women Workers in Global Supply-chains (ESRC Seminar Series, 2000)

Sumi’s recent conference papers/presentations include:

• Lawyers and Corporate Citizenship Professionals - Clashes of Cultures? A case study of the South African pharmaceuticals litigation (2001)

• Ethical Procurement: Why does it matter? (2000)

• Ethical Trade: A credible means of improving working conditions? (1999)

• Oxfam’s Clothes Code Campaign: Protecting the rights of workers in the garment industry (1999)

She recently served as a trustee for the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, as a research adviser for the Human Rights & Business Project (International Council for Human Rights Policy), and on the Board of Directors of the Ethical Trading Initiative.

Sumi was educated in Malaysia, Singapore and the UK.  In 1994 she worked as Human Rights Officer for the Malaysian Bar Council.  From 1995 to 1997 she worked as Senior Legal Officer for the Democratic Party of Hong Kong at the Legislative Council.  Sumi became a barrister in the UK in 1997.  In 1998 she received an M.A. in Understanding & Securing Human Rights, at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London.

John Elkington

John Elkington is a trustee of the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre.

Founder & Chief Entrepreneur at SustainAbility, based in London and New York, John is a leading authority on sustainable development and triple bottom line business strategy.  His latest book is The Chrysalis Economy: How Citizen CEOs and Corporations Can Fuse Values and Value Creation (Capstone/John Wiley 2001).  He has spoken at several hundred conferences throughout the world.  In 1989, he was elected to the UN Global 500 Roll of Honour for his ‘outstanding environmental achievements’. 

Since 1974, John has undertaken consultancy work for a wide range of national and international government and non-governmental agencies, including Greenpeace International, IFC, IIED, OECD, UNEP, USAID, WRI and WWF.  He has worked for corporate clients such as Anglian Water, BAA, BP, BP Chemicals, British Airways, British Telecom, Cargill Dow, Dow Europe, Ford Motor Company, ICI Group and ICI Polyurethanes, IBM, Manweb, Monsanto, Nike, Norsk Hydro, Novo Nordisk, Procter & Gamble, Shell, Sita, Unilever and Volvo Car Corporation.

John is also Chair of The Environment Foundation; Chair, Export Credits Advisory Council, UK Export Credits Guarantee Department; a member of the Board Sustainability Committee of Anglian Water; member of the Advisory Board of an ING sustainability investment fund; and a Patron of the New Economics Foundation. 

He is the author or co-author of over 30 books and published reports, including the No.1 best-selling Green Consumer Guide.  His book Cannibals With Forks: The Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business (Capstone Publishing, 1997) was a finalist in the 'Global Business Book of the Year Award’, organised by the Financial Times and Booz Allen Hamilton.  He has written hundreds of articles for newspapers, magazines and journals, and was Editor of Biotechnology Bulletin from 1982 to 1995, producing over 170 issues.  He contributes a regular column to Nikkei Ecology magazine and has been a contributor over more than 20 years to The Guardian.

Dr. Menno Kamminga

Dr. Menno Kamminga is a trustee of the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre.

He is Professor of Public International Law at Maastricht University (Netherlands), where his courses include public international law, international human rights law, and international dispute settlement. He also serves as Co-director of the Maastricht Centre for Human Rights. The Centre's research covers a wide range of human rights issues both at the domestic and the international level, including the universality of human rights, and the indivisibility of all human rights, i.e. civil and political rights as well as economic, social and cultural rights.

Menno is a former Legal Adviser and Representative at the United Nations of Amnesty International (1978-1986), and a former (Senior) Lecturer in International Law at Erasmus University Rotterdam (1987-1999). He is a former member of the International Executive Committee of Amnesty International (1994-1999), a member of the Board of Editors of the Netherlands International Law Review, and co-rapporteur for the Committee on International Human Rights Law and Practice of the International Law Association (ILA). He has published widely in the field of international law, including books on state responsibility for human rights violations and liability of multinational corporations for human rights abuses.

Menno was co-editor (with Saman Zia-Zarifi) of Liability of Multinational Corporations under International Law (Kluwer Law International, 2000).

A revised version of his doctoral dissertation Inter-State Accountability for Violations of Human Rights was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 1992. His articles have appeared, inter alia, in the European Journal of International Law, the International and Comparative Law Quarterly, Human Rights Quarterly and the Netherlands International Law Review.

His degrees include an LL.M. from Groningen University (1973), an MA from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (1974) and a Ph.D. from Leiden University (1990).

Ulf Karlberg

Ulf Karlberg is a trustee of the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre; he is Chair of our US-based non-profit and Co-chair of our UK-based charity.

Ulf was founding Chair of the Amnesty International Swedish Section Business Group, and continues to serve as an active board member of that Group.  The Amnesty Sweden Business Group works to promote respect of human rights internationally by the business community, and does so through its approaches to companies, government officials, trade unions and non-governmental organisations.  Under Ulf’s leadership, the Amnesty Sweden Business Group published a special Swedish edition of the book Human Rights: Is it any of your business?, with case studies from major Swedish multinationals. (The initial management primer was published by Amnesty UK Section and International Business Leaders Forum.)

He is an international business executive who has been a member of Amnesty International since his days as a student in the early 1970s.

From 1989 to 2000 Ulf was a senior executive with Astra Pharmaceuticals (now AstraZeneca).  As Executive Vice President he was responsible for Astra’s companies in Japan, China, Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico.

Previously he had worked at PA International Consulting Group; as their Chief Executive for Western Europe (1984-89), and as a management consultant and Managing Director of their Sweden office (1973-84).

Ulf was educated in Sweden at the University of Lund and University of Gothenburg, where he received his business degree.

Chris Marsden OBE

Chris Marsden is a trustee of the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre; he is Chair of our UK-based charity.

He is also Chair of the Business Group of Amnesty International UK.  The Business Group seeks to persuade transnational companies to promote human rights both through their own business activities and through the influence they can bring to bear on host governments in countries where they operate.

In July 2004 Chris wrote: "Dealing with Joel Bakan’s Pathological Corporation: A strategy for campaigning human rights and environmental NGOs".  Earlier he wrote "Participating in Governance: the Social Responsibility of Companies and NGOs" (in New Academy Review, spring 2003)

Chris also teaches Business ethics and corporate citizenship to MBA students and on Executive programmes. He is Visiting Professor at the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées Graduate School of International Business in Paris, for whom he has designed and taught ‘Business in Society’ MBA modules in Paris, Morocco and Japan. He is also Senior Visiting Fellow to the Corporate Citizenship Unit (CCU) at Warwick University Business School, where he also teaches.  He was CCU’s founding director from October 1996 to May 1999.  He is adviser to the new Academy for Business in Society, a project run by CSR Europe and the Copenhagen Centre.  He is an Associate for The Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum, which promotes good corporate citizenship globally. He is on the faculty of SustainAbility, a member of AccountAbility and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

From 1981 to 1996 he worked for BP, initially as educational relations manager and latterly as head of community affairs. From 1992 to 1996 Chris was responsible for promoting and networking BP's community activities around the world. In 1996 he produced BP’s first international report on its community relationships, a process which is now developing into full-scale social reporting.  

He was until recently Chairman of Hertfordshire's Education Business Partnership, a trustee of the Community Education Development Centre and President of the Economics and Business Education Association.  He was awarded the OBE in 1989 for services to education and industry.

From 1968 to 1980 Chris had a career in education.  This included teaching economics in both the maintained and private sectors and being the deputy head of Beaumont School, St Albans, an 11-18 comprehensive school in Hertfordshire.  He has an economics degree from Cambridge. 

Dr. Mila Rosenthal

Dr. Mila Rosenthal is a member of the Board of Directors for the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre's US-based non-profit.

Mila is the Deputy Executive Director for Reseach and Policy, Amnesty International USA.  She was previously Director of Amnesty International USA’s Business and Human Rights Program.

Mila was previously the Director of the Workers Rights Program at the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (now Human Rights First), and researched labour conditions in textile factories in Vietnam for her PhD in social anthropology from the London School of Economics. She was a consultant in Vietnam on rights-based issues to organisations including OXFAM and UNICEF; served as Director of the NGO Resource Project in Phnom Penh, Cambodia; and worked to build Cambodian civil society for UNTAC, the United Nations peacekeeping operation in Cambodia.

Mila has written extensively about the social impact of globalisation, and is an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, where she teaches a class on international labour rights.