Eric Biel
Acting Director of the Lawyers Committee’s Washington office


Eric Biel is Acting Director of the Lawyers Committee’s Washington office, serving in this capacity while Office Director Elisa Massimino is on sabbatical until October. From February to June 2003, he worked at the Lawyers Committee as a consultant on several policy initiatives, dividing his time with Fontheim International, a Washington law/consulting firm, where he had been Senior Vice President and General Counsel since August 2000. For the past two years he also served on the Lawyers Committee’s Washington Advisory Council. From 1990-2000, Biel held a series of senior government positions at the Department of Commerce; Commission on Government Secrecy and Office of Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan; and Senate Finance Committee. From 1985-90, he was in private law practice in Washington, focusing on international trade as well as immigration and human rights matters. Eric received his undergraduate degree from Johns Hopkins in 1981, and in 1985 completed a joint J.D.-M.P.A. program from Yale Law School and the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton. In summer 1984 he worked in Somalia on refugee protection issues. He is also currently teaching a graduate course at Johns Hopkins on “Business and Human Rights in the Global Economy.”