Member, WLP Board of Directors
Phillips (USA) is a social justice feminist activist and independent scholar. She was a law professor and a civil rights lawyer before serving as the program officer responsible for the women’s rights portfolio in the Peace and Social Justice Program of the Ford Foundation. Phillips is a board member of the African Women’s Development Fund USA—a sister-foundation to the African Women’s Development Fund in Accra—and of Mississippi Votes, a new NGO committed to advancing democracy in the U.S. Her publications include three essays, “How I Became a Civil Rights Lawyer”, “The Legacy of Other Social Justice Movements”, and “The Trojan Horse Called ‘Diversity’” in Voices of Civil Rights Lawyers: Reflections from the Deep South 1964-1980, ed., Kent Spriggs (University Press of Florida 2017); “How a Targeted Triggering Approach Can Repair the Voting Rights Act,” Mississippi Law Journal Symposium on the Voting Rights Act (Spring 2017) (co-author); “Reflections: Philanthropy and Social Justice Feminism,” Freedom Center Journal 1, 47 (Fall 2014); Dignity and Human Rights: The Missing Dialogue (2011 Programme on Women’s Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, New Delhi); “The Road Traveled, The Road Ahead: Ford Foundation Support for Women’s Rights” in Women, Philanthropy and Social Change: Journey To a Just Society, ed. Elayne Clift (UPNE Press 2005); and numerous other articles in academic journals about democracy.