Karen Tse is an international human rights lawyer, ordained minister and former San Francisco public defender, who founded International Bridges to Justice (IBJ) in 2000. Tse first developed her interest in the nexus of criminal law and human rights in 1986, after witnessing Southeast Asian refugees detained in a local prison without trial. In 1994, she moved to Cambodia to train the country’s first core group of public defenders and subsequently served as a United Nations Judicial Mentor. Tse founded IBJ after witnessing hundreds of prisoners of all ages being held without trials, usually after being tortured into making 'confessions’.

Under Tse’s leadership, IBJ has become a leading advocate for legal reform and human rights. Through a system change approach, IBJ is creating the conditions for a “new normal in justice” in which citizens will have access to justice and ending the use of torture as an investigative tool. IBJ now has a presence in 53 countries, with permanent country programs in 13 countries. Over 23 years, IBJ has supported more than 48,000 lawyers and defenders who have represented more than 500,000 detainees. IBJ has also reached over 40 million people through rights awareness campaigns around the world. Working globally both on the ground and online, IBJ has an active online presence through Criminal DefenseWiki pages for 120+ countries and 152 eLearning modules for over 20 countries, with over 28 million hits for both platforms combined since its creation.

Tse is a graduate of UCLA Law School and Harvard Divinity School. Karen was named by U.S. News & World Report as one of America’s Best Leaders in 2007. She has received awards from the Skoll Foundation, Ashoka and Echoing Green as a leading social entrepreneur. Karen was the recipient of the 2008 Harvard Divinity School’s First Decade Award and a 2018 Distinguished Gomes Honoree. Karen also received the 2008 American Bar Association’s International Human Rights Award, and the 2009 Gleitsman International Award at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.