Liesl Gerntholtz

Liesl Gerntholtz (LinkedIn) is the managing director of the PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Center at PEN America. She drives the international work at PEN America, working on cases of individual writers at risk around the world, and also pushing for global change for the protection of writers.

She is a South African human rights lawyer who spent the early part of her career working for the South African Human Rights Commission and the Commission on Gender Equality in post-apartheid South Africa. She was the head of the HIV Litigation Unit of the AIDS Law Project and the Director of the Tshwaranang Legal Advocacy Centre. In those capacities, she led high-impact, strategic litigation to advance the human rights of people living with HIV and women affected by violence. Between 2008 and 2020, Liesl worked for Human Rights Watch and was the executive director of the Women’s Rights Division for nearly ten years, overseeing research and advocacy that responded to the most critical women’s rights issues in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe and the U.S.

Liesl holds a BA (LLB) from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.