Shelley Inglis

Shelley Inglis (LinkedIn) is a Senior Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights (CGHR) at Rutgers University. Until July 1, 2025, she was a Senior Policy Advisor with the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Governance of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Shelley was formerly the executive director of the Human Rights Center and research professor of human rights and law at the University of Dayton. Prior to this, she served with the United Nations (U.N.) in various leadership and advisory roles – with the United Nations Development Programme at the U.N. headquarters in New York and regionally based in Istanbul, Turkey; the Rule of Law Unit in the office of the U.N. secretary-general working on systemwide policy coherence in the field of rule of law; the Department of Peacekeeping Operations; the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva; and the U.N. Development Fund for Women.

Prior to joining the U.N., Shelley worked extensively on Eastern Europe, the Balkans and Turkey, in particular with Save the Children U.S. in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, Amnesty International Secretariat, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Kosovo. She also practiced public interest family and criminal law in the United States and served as an adjunct professor at Barnard College. She is a graduate of Columbia Law School and Cornell University.