Eileen B. Hershenov

As Senior Vice President, Democracy Initiatives, Eileen Hershenov (LinkedIn) develops thought leadership and strategies for ADL’s fight against authoritarianism and illiberalism in addition to leading ADL’s emerging litigation capacity. She also oversees ADL’s civil rights team, cross-organizational work on tech policy, the Civil Society Fellowship (a partnership between ADL and the Aspen Institute), and the library and archives work.

Eileen joined ADL in 2018 after serving as General Counsel for several of the nation’s leading mission-driven not-for-profits. Directly prior to coming to the ADL, she served as GC and head of public policy for the Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, a top five global internet site. Prior to that, she was GC at Consumer Reports and before that, GC at the Open Society Foundations. Eileen began her legal career clerking for federal district court Judge Jack B. Weinstein, litigated as an attorney with the ACLU, and then spent three years as a litigation associate at the law firm Morrison & Foerster, where among other things, she brought cases supporting racial justice and the rights of women, immigrants, and the LGBTQ+ community, and also litigated and lobbied in the intersection of civil rights and national security. Eileen began her professional career as an organizer for the New York Public Interest Research Group.

Eileen earned a BA from Yale College and a JD from Yale Law School.

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