Maureen Byrnes
Executive Director
Joined Human Rights First in 2006

Maureen Byrnes is the Executive Director of Human Rights First. As Executive Director, Maureen is responsible for providing institutional leadership and overall management of the organization’s programs, staff and resources.

Before joining Human Rights First, Maureen served at The Pew Charitable Trusts in Philadelphia as Director of Policy Initiatives and the Health and Human Services (HHS) program. Under her leadership, the Trusts’ HHS program established a strong reputation for its ability to identify and seize opportunities to help solve tough policy problems. Its approach focused on engaging experts, exploring divergent views and building broad consensus for change. While at the Trusts, Maureen redesigned the organization’s health and human services program and was responsible for a wide range of highly successful policy initiatives, including helping to rebuild the nation’s public health infrastructure, reforming the nation’s foster care system, and addressing challenging science and technology issues.

Before going to The Pew Charitable Trusts, Maureen worked in Washington, D.C. for 15 years. She served as Executive Director of the National Commission on AIDS, a 15-member commission established by law to make recommendations to both the President and the Congress on how the country should address the many challenges associated with the HIV epidemic. As Executive Director, Maureen was responsible for the publication of all commission reports, designed and coordinated a series of commission site visits around the country to a wide range of venues and cities, and she represented the commission in the press.

Maureen served on Capitol Hill as both majority and minority staff director for the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies of the United States Senate Committee on Appropriations, and she served as vice president of the Association of American Universities, where she worked with the presidents and chancellors of more than 60 leading public and private research‑intensive universities on a wide variety of federal research policy issues.

Maureen graduated magna cum laude from LeMoyne College in Syracuse, New York and holds a master’s degree in Public Administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.