Regional Coordinators

Jessica Pierson is the Regional Coordinator for North America for the International Alliance of Women. Until recently, she worked as Assistant Director of Programs at Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute before transitioning to her current role at Columbia University School of the Arts where she is the Associate Director of the Artists’ Resource Center and Alumni Affairs.

Jessica is co-Director of the Cities for CEDAW History and Futures Project with Soon-Young Yoon, an initiative to document the historic movement for women’s human rights in the U.S. and inform future advocacy.

Jessica has done extensive work with the NGO Committee on the Status of Women/New York, where she co-coordinated the creation of an open-source women’s human rights curriculum. She also co-authored a chapter on integrating global citizenship frameworks into feminist curricula.

Jessica holds an M.A. in Human Rights Studies from Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights and a B.F.A in Musical Theatre from the New School. Her graduate thesis research explored abortion as a human right in the United States and the role of CEDAW cities in challenging the Hyde Amendment. As a graduate student, Jessica was a Research Assistant at the Law, Rights, and Religion Project at Columbia Law School where she worked on initiating local advocacy campaigns to combat religious healthcare refusals.