Natalie Baird was elected to the Governance Team in May 2008. Natalie is currently a part-time lecturer at the University of Canterbury’s School of Law. Her research interests lie in the areas of international human rights law, Pacific legal studies and constitutional law. Before becoming an academic, Natalie spent around ten years working in the New Zealand public service. This included four years at the Crown Law Office where she worked primarily on Treaty of Waitangi and international law issues, and three years in the Cabinet Office as a legal adviser on constitutional issues. Natalie also worked at the New Zealand Law Commission on the Commission’s project on custom and human rights in the Pacific, resulting in the publication Converging Currents: Custom and Human Rights in the Pacific (2006). As well as being a member of Amnesty’s Governance Team, Natalie is also currently a trustee of the Christchurch Trade Aid shop trusts.

In 2004, Natalie spent a year in Cambodia as a Volunteer Service Abroad volunteer working at the Cambodian Defenders Project - a legal aid and human rights NGO. Her experience in Cambodia demonstrated the huge importance of the work of international human rights NGOs like Amnesty in supporting the efforts of local NGOs working at the grassroots level. “As a foreigner, I was often asked by Cambodians to make sure that the Cambodian story was told to the outside world.”