Hans Hogrefe is a foreign affairs, human rights, humanitarian affairs and government-relations consultant with more than 23 years of experience working in senior positions in the US Congress, the US Executive Branch, and the NGO community in Washington, DC. For 13 years, the German-born Hogrefe served the only Holocaust survivor elected to the US Congress, Tom Lantos (D-CA), as a Senior Professional Staff Member on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and Executive Director of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus (CHRC). This entity was formally institutionalized by an act of Congress as the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission (TLHRC) in 2008. Hogrefe was appointed as the first Democratic Staff Director of the TLHRC, serving Commission Co-Chairman James P. McGovern (D-MA). Hogrefe also served on the Democratic staff of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs as a Senior Professional Staff Member, where he was responsible for the development, drafting, and legislative implementation of human rights legislation. In 2011, he joined Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) as Washington Director and Chief Policy Officer. PHR is a non-governmental organization and co-recipient of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize, which uses the integrity of medicine and science to stop mass atrocities and severe human rights violations. In 2014, Hogrefe was appointed Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary of Civilian Protection, Democracy and Human Rights at the U.S. Department of State. In that capacity, Hogrefe covered the East Asia and Pacific region and served as lead staffer to the Under Secretary for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL), covering the Bureau’s strategic planning, policy goals and programmatic funding priorities. Hogrefe most recently served as Director of Policy and Advocacy at Refugees International (RI), where he led RI’s eight-person advocacy team, and was instrumental in the creation of UNHR Geneva (unhrgeneva.org), which promotes access to the UN and other multilateral and national governmental bodies for NGOs. Hogrefe received his Master’s degree in English, political science, and history from the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster, Germany. He was awarded the Congressional Fellowship of the American Political Science Association (APSA) and the German Marshall Fund (GMF) in 1995.
Hogrefe brings with him significant experience regarding the EU countries, the People’s Republic of China (including the Tibetan areas and the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region), Central Asia, Burma, North and South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia. He is fluent in English and German.
