Jared Genser (Español)

Jared-Genser-Headshot-img
Managing Director
info@perseus-strategies.com

Jared Genser has been an international human rights lawyer for more than two decades. He is Managing Director of Perseus Strategies, outside General Counsel to the Neurorights Foundation, and a member of the Advisory Board to the Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights at Harvard University, where he was previously a Senior Tech Fellow. He also served as Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect to the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (2020-2025).

Referred to by the New York Times as “The Extractor” for his work freeing political prisoners worldwide, he has served as pro bono counsel to five Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, including three Laureates who won their Prize while imprisoned — Aung San Suu Kyi (Burma, 2006-2010), Liu Xiaobo (China, 2010-2017), and Ales Bialiatski (Belarus, 2023-Present) — as well as Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Elie Wiesel.

Genser was previously a partner in the government affairs practice of DLA Piper LLP and a management consultant with McKinsey & Company. He has also been adjunct faculty at Stanford Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, University of Pennsylvania Law School, and University of Michigan Law School, where which he taught courses about the UN Security Council. In addition, he was a Visiting Fellow with the National Endowment for Democracy (2006-2007).

His other past clients have included former Czech Republic President Václav Havel, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, and former Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed. Over his career, he has also advised multilateral institutions, governments, companies, foundations, and civil society organizations. Coming from his experience freeing his first client as a law student, in 2001 he founded Freedom Now, a non-governmental organization that works to free prisoners of conscience worldwide.

Genser holds a B.S. from Cornell University, an M.P.P. from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he was an Alumni Public Service Fellow, and a J.D. cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School.

He is co-editor with former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein of The Oxford Handbook on the UN Human Rights System (Oxford University Press, Forthcoming 2026). He is author of The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention: Commentary and Guide to Practice (Cambridge University Press, 2019). And he is co-editor of The UN Security Council in the Age of Human Rights (Cambridge University Press, 2016) and The Responsibility to Protect: The Promise of Stopping Mass Atrocities in Our Times (Oxford University Press, 2011). He has also published numerous law review and journal articles and more than 130 opeds in newspapers around the world including the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times, among many others.

Genser is an elected member of the American Law Institute and Council on Foreign Relations, and an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts. He was selected as a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum (Class of 2008). Married with two children, he is an avid ice hockey player, a sport he took up in college.

Awards

  • American Bar Association, International Human Rights Award (2013)
  • Tällberg Eliasson Global Leadership Prize (2020) (one of three winners from among 2,165 nominees from 135 countries)
  • Charles Bronfman Prize (2010)
  • Liberty in North Korea’s Freedom Fighter Award (2009)

Recognitions

  • Washingtonian Magazine, Washington, D.C.’s 500 Most Influential People Making Policy (2025, Tech & Telecom; 2024, Foreign Affairs)
  • National Law Journal, 40 Under 40: Washington’s Rising Stars (2009)

Admissions

  • Supreme Court of Maryland
  • District of Columbia Court of Appeals: U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia
  • Supreme Court of England and Wales

Profiles – Print

Profiles – Television and Radio