Pedro Pizano

Pedro Pizano is the assistant director for the Democracy Programs at the McCain Institute in Washington D.C. He previously served as the Northwestern-McCain Public Interest Legal Award Fellow and the International Criminal Law Fellow and Human Rights Journalism Fellow at the McCain Institute and ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law’s International Rule of Law and Security (IRLS) Program, under Amb. Clint Williamson.

In 2018, Pizano graduated cum laude and with honors with a dual J.D./LL.M. in international human rights law from Northwestern Pritzker School of Law in Chicago, Ill. He was the executive editor of the Journal of Human Rights and the co-founder of a debate club: The Speakers Union. He was jointly appointed by the presidents of both the Northwestern Federalist Society and the Northwestern American Constitution Society, as the co-chair of the Civic Education Committee, as Northwestern Law was one of the law schools, if not the first, to cancel classes on election day so students, faculty, and staff could volunteer as poll watchers and officials, and reinforce our shared common civic liberal democratic responsibilities.

Before law school, Pizano earned a joint certificate in international human rights law from Oxford University and George Washington University’s law school. Prior to that, he worked for three years as the global media liaison and strategy and development associate at the Human Rights Foundation and Oslo Freedom Forum in New York City. In 2013, he was recognized as one of the 99 under 33 most promising young professionals in foreign policy by the Diplomatic Courier. His opinions and byline have appeared in, among others, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, Foreign Policy, The New Republic, Slate, Forbes, El Tiempo, El Mundo and the BBC. He was born in Bogotá, Colombia and is also a native Spanish speaker, fluent in French, and knows basic Arabic.