Maureen Byrnes

For over 30 years Maureen Byrnes served in leadership positions in the federal government, philanthropy and the non-profit sector.   As Executive Director of Human Rights First, Maureen traveled to Russia and Pakistan, and worked to end the use of torture as an interrogation technique. She is a former member of the Council on Foreign Relations.    

From 1997 to 2005, Maureen served as Director of the Health and Human Services program at The Pew Charitable Trusts where she designed and implemented a wide variety of strategies and initiatives to address challenges in the fields of public health, foster care and science policy, among others.

In the 1980’s, Maureen worked with Senator Lowell Weicker as the Staff Director of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, HHS, Education and Related Agencies to provide early government funding to address the HIV epidemic.  Later she served as Executive Director of the National Commission on AIDS, the first Congressionally-mandated independent commission to address the challenges associated with the HIV epidemic.  Maureen has also served as Vice President of the Association of American Universities.  

Currently, Maureen is a Teaching Instructor in the Department of Health Policy and Management in the Milken Institute School of Public Health at the George Washington University where she received an Excellence in Teaching Award in the Spring of 2022.  

Maureen graduated magna cum laude from LeMoyne College in Syracuse, New York and has a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  Maureen came to Washington DC as a Presidential Management Fellow.