Amelia Parker: Executive Director
E-Mail: amelia(at)pbiusa.org
Amelia Parker has worked in the field of human rights for over 20 years, working both at home and abroad. In 2000, she traveled to Ghana to work for the Legal Resources Centre, where she researched the right to work of Sierra Leonean refugees, as well as the human rights implication of water privatization in Ghana. Also during the early part of the 2000s, she served as a Legislative Coordinator for Amnesty International - USA. In 2006, she joined the staff of the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in Washington, DC as program coordinator where she designed and implemented human rights programming such as the Genocide Teaching Project, which trained law students to teach the lessons of genocide in area high schools. Most recently, her focus has been on the domestic implementation of human rights laws in the U.S. In 2007, she published an article concerning racial inequalities in the U.S. public education system and U.S. non-compliance with international treaty norms, which led to her being a contributing author to the U.S. Human Rights Network’s shadow report on U.S. compliance to the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD). Amelia served as executive director of a community organizing non-profit in Tennessee called Statewide Organizing for Community eMpowerment (SOCM) from 2009-2013 before joining the staff at PBI-USA in 2014 as Executive Director. In addition to working for PBI-USA, Amelia also serves on the Knoxville (TN) City Council as the at-large seat C representative. In 2023, she was awarded the Local Legislator of the Year Award by the National Homelessness Law Center.
Pat Davis: U.S. Advocacy Director
E-Mail: Pat.Davis@peacebrigades.org
Pat Davis is a writer and human rights activist. She began working in human rights in 1992, when she joined the staff of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission as Communications Director, a position she held for five years. She left to co-author a book with her colleague Dianna Ortiz, The Blindfold’s Eyes: My Journey from Torture to Truth. Published in 2002, the book recounts Ortiz’s experiences in Guatemala and her struggle for justice. Pat returned as executive director of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission from 2003—2005. As director, she led the organization’s advocacy work, developed campaigns, led delegations to Guatemala, testified as an expert witness in political asylum cases, and produced regular human rights reports and analyses. More recently, she turned to dramatic writing for advocacy, penning a stage play based on the life of Mexican human rights activist Digna Ochoa, which was produced by a new professional theater company, the Digna Theater, in Tucson, Arizona. She has published articles on foreign policy in The Nation, Foreign Policy in Focus, Counterpunch, and Common Dreams. Her work has also been published by the North American Congress on Latin America, the Copenhagen Initiative for Central America and Mexico, and the Center for International Policy.
Jasel Steinmetz: Human Rights Program Intern
E-Mail: intern1@pbiusa.org
Jasel Steinmetz is a human rights advocate with experience in policy development, refugee protection, and legal aid. Her work focuses on supporting displaced communities and advancing institutional accountability, sustainable development, and legal frameworks that safeguard human rights and promote democratic governance.
She began working in human rights in 2022 at Centro de Acogida a Refugiados de Vallecas (CAR) in Madrid, under Spain’s Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security, and Migration. There, she assisted Afghan, Venezuelan, and Moroccan refugees and asylum seekers in securing international protection guarantees and accessing essential medical and social service services in compliance with international law.
In 2023, Jasel joined JusticeCorps, an AmeriCorps program, where she worked in Domestic Violence and Housing Clinics supporting survivors of gender-based violence—primarily migrant women from South and Central America—in filing restraining orders, securing child custody agreements, and navigating housing evictions. She later served as a Legislative Fellow for the City of Oakland, where she contributed to policy development advancing redlining reparations, fiscal restructuring, and equitable urban redevelopment.
Jasel is a 2024 Matsui Center Leonard D. Schaeffer Fellow at the Berkeley Institute for Governmental Studies and a Regents’ and Chancellor’s Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, where she is completing a triple major in Political Science, Legal Studies, and Spanish Language, with a concentration in International Affairs.
She is incredibly excited to join PBI-USA as a Human Rights Program Intern, supporting communications and advocacy efforts to amplify PBI’s work supporting human rights defenders worldwide.
For general inquiries, please email info(at)pbiusa.org