Ambassador Beth Van Schaack is currently a distinguished fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Litigation Project. From 2022 to 2025, she served as Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice in the US Department of State. As ambassador-at-Large, she advised the Secretary of State on issues related to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. She was highly engaged in efforts to ensure accountability for Russian war crimes in Ukraine, resulting in the establishment of the Conflict Observatory, which analyzes and preserves publicly available information and makes it available for use in ongoing and future accountability mechanisms; the Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group, which provides coordinated expertise to investigators, prosecutors, and judges in Ukraine; and the new Council of Europe-Ukraine Tribunal for the Prosecution of the Crime of Russian Aggression. Prior to serving as Ambassador, Van Schaack was the Leah Kaplan Professor in Human Rights at Stanford Law School, where she taught international criminal law, human rights, human trafficking, and a lab on Legal & Policy Tools for Preventing Atrocities. In addition, she directed Stanford’s International Human Rights & Conflict Resolution Clinic. Earlier in her career, she was a practicing lawyer at the Center for Justice & Accountability, a human rights law firm; and at the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Ambassador Van Schaack is a graduate of Stanford University (BA), Yale University (JD), and Leiden University (PhD).
