Lori Wallach
Director, Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch
Lori Wallach is Director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch division. A Harvard-trained lawyer, Wallach has promoted the public interest regarding globalization and international commercial agreements in every forum: Congress and foreign parliaments, the courts, government agencies, and the media.
Wallach has been described as "Ralph Nader with a sense of humor" in a Wall Street Journal profile, "the Trade Debate's Guerrilla Warrior" in the National Journal, and "Madame Defarge of Seattle" by the Institute for International Economics. Working closely with civil society, scholars, and activists in developing countries and with U.S. congressional, environmental, labor, and other allies, Wallach has played an important role in fostering the growing debate about implications of different models of trade and globalization on jobs, livelihoods and wages; the environment; public health and safety; equality and social justice and democratically accountable governance.
Wallach has testified before more than 20 U.S. congressional committees on trade and globalization matters. She has served as a trade commentator on CNN, ABC, CNBC, C-SPAN, CNBC, Fox, Bloomberg, PBS, NPR and numerous foreign outlets. Wallach's most recent book is Whose Trade Organization? A Comprehensive Guide to the WTO (The New Press, 2004). She has also contributed to numerous anthologies including the International Forum on Globalization's Alternatives to Economic Globalization: A Better World Is Possible.
Wallach has been a leader in popularizing the trade and globalization debate and in creating new methodologies for effective public interest campaigns on trade and globalization issues. Wallach's work in "translating" arcane trade legalese – indeed, entire international commercial agreements – into relevant, accessible prose and connecting people's lived experiences with pacts' legal requirements, has helped empower more diverse participation in trade and globalization discussions. In 1993, Wallach was a founder of the Citizens Trade Campaign, a national coalition of consumer, labor, environmental, family farm, religious, and civil rights groups representing over 11 million Americans, and now serves on its board.
Wallach, a graduate of Wellesley College and Harvard Law School, is a member of the Wisconsin bar. Wallach has previously worked on Capitol Hill, in television news, and on electoral campaigns. She lives in the historic Mount Pleasant neighborhood of Washington, D.C. in an old row house that she is slowly but surely renovating.
Read and download this biography (pdf), or see Lori's media profile page.