2022 European Pro Bono Week

Olga Vorontsova-Mykhailova is an international refugee law professional currently working as a Protection Officer for the UNHCR’s Regional Bureau for Europe. Before joining the Regional Bureau for Europe, she was working as a Refugee Status Determination Adviser (Legal) for UNHCR’s Division of International Protection in Geneva, Switzerland since 2015, where she closely engaged with the work on the GRF Legal Community Pledge.

Her experience with UNHCR dates back to 2001, when she joined the UNHCR Regional Office for Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova working with the national governments in strengthening their asylum systems. Between 2008 and 2012, she was deployed to Ethiopia and Uganda in the East and Horn of Africa, heading protection/legal teams in the field offices managing the large refugee camps and settlements, both in the context of refugee reception and voluntary return.

Prior to her current assignment, she has spent three years working for UNHCR’s operation in New Delhi, India between 2012 and 2015, where she headed a team managing refugee status determination under UNHCR’s mandate, as well as reception and registration of refugees.
In addition to her experience with UNHCR, she held a number of voluntary positions with NGOs and the Kyiv National University legal clinic on the pro bono basis providing legal assistance to refugees, as well as spent several months working for the Council of Europe’s Directorate General for Human Rights and Rule of Law back in 2003.

Ms. Vorontsova-Mykhailova comes from Ukraine and has an academic background in international law, with a focus on international human rights and refugee law.

Zuzanna Rudzińska-Bluszcz, the head of ClientEarth Poland, was the 2020 candidate for Commissioner for Human Rights in Poland and was supported by over 1200 non-governmental organizations. Between 2015-2021, she was head of strategic litigation in the Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights of Poland. She is an alumni of the Marshall Memorial Fellowship (2019) and Leaders Europe: Obama Foundation Fellowship (2021).

Lucy Westcott is the director of CPJ’s Emergencies Department. Westcott joined CPJ in 2018 as the James W. Foley Fellow, focusing on safety issues for women journalists in non-hostile environments. In 2021, she played a prominent role in CPJ’s response to the Afghan crisis, including helping Afghan journalists and their families evacuated to Qatar. Prior to joining CPJ, Westcott was a staff writer for Newsweek and previously reported for outlets including The Intercept, Bustle, The Atlantic, and Women Under Siege, and was a United Nations correspondent for the Inter Press Service. As a fellow with the International Reporting Project in 2016, Westcott wrote about gender and development in South Africa and Lesotho. She has a master’s in multi-platform journalism from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom.

Phil Worthington is the Managing Director of European Lawyers in Lesvos (ELIL). Phil worked as a lawyer in London for six years, before coming to Lesvos in 2016. He helped establish ELIL in June 2016 and oversees both its work in Greece (four locations) and its new projects in Poland (Warsaw and the Poland-Belarus border). ELIL’s collaboration with numerous law firms on pro bono refugee projects is integral to its work in Greece and Poland.