Paul O’Brien is the Executive Director of Amnesty International USA. Previously he was the Vice President for Policy and Campaigns at Oxfam America. Before joining Oxfam in 2007, he lived in Afghanistan for five years where he worked in the office of the President and the Ministry of Finance as an advisor on aid coordination, development planning, and policy reform.
Prior to that, he worked for CARE International as their Afghanistan Advocacy Coordinator and Africa Policy Advisor. Previously, Paul was the President of the Echoing Green Foundation and a litigator in New York for Cravath, Swaine and Moore. He is the co-founder of the Legal Resources Foundation in Kenya and the founder of the Human Rights Research and Advocacy Consortium in Afghanistan, both of which are thriving organizations today.
Paul has juris doctorate from Harvard Law School and has recently authored Power Switch: How We Can Reduce Extreme Inequality (November 2020), which challenges the Biden-Harris Administration to put in place transformative policies to redistribute power and wealth in the United States and around the world.