Meet Karen Hanrahan, President and CEO of San Francisco’s GLIDE Foundation

Winter 2023: A Note from Karen Hanrahan, President & CEO, GLIDE Foundation — Hello, and welcome to the website dedicated to helping more people understand the importance of social justice and what they can do to make a difference starting today. On the pages of this site, you’ll learn about the powerful work we are doing at GLIDE Foundation in San Francisco, which I believe is a model for what can be accomplished around the world. 

To get us started, below, you’ll find an interview I did with my friend and publicist, Hope Katz Gibbs for her online magazine, Inkandescent Women. She will be helping me spread the word on this website and through op-eds, interviews that I will do with leaders in the social justice community, and more. 

Invitation: If you are working in the equity and social justice community, we look forward to hearing from you about the work you are doing. I am also looking to share all of our stories as I speak to organizations worldwide as a keynote and panelist. Please send emails and invitations here.

I am incredibly proud, honored, and humbled to be heading up GLIDE. I look forward to raising our voice even louder and to collaborating with more organizations around the world. — Karen

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A Note from Hope Katz Gibbs, publisher, Inkandescent Women magazine — When it comes to defining what it means to be a Truly Amazing Woman, sometimes it’s the work a woman does—from running a philanthropic organization (The GLIDE Foundation) to working for a former president (Obama)—that defines who they are. For Karen Hanrahan, the common thread is equity for all.

“I knew at a relatively young age that I wanted to work on international justice issues,” Karen says. “My mother was very socially aware, especially of international events. So, I’ve known since high school that I wanted to do international human rights and justice work.”

I had the privilege of meeting this truly amazing woman at a Hillary Clinton fundraiser in 2008 when Karen was senior advisor to the Iraqi minister of human rights. I’ve followed her career and interviewed her several times — first when she became the director and COO of the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, where she led a comprehensive project for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to redefine how the US government practices international development and diplomacy. And again, when she was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Human Rights and Democracy in the Obama administration’s US Department of State.

These positions are two of many high-level jobs she has held in her illustrious career. But perhaps closest to Karen’s heart is the job she’s held since 2017 — as President and CEO of the GLIDE Foundation, a social justice organization based in San Francisco, CA.

“GLIDE is a social justice movement, social service provider, and spiritual community dedicated to strengthening communities and transforming lives,” Karen explains. “Located in San Francisco’s culturally vibrant but poverty-stricken Tenderloin neighborhood, GLIDE addresses the needs of, and advocates for the most vulnerable and marginalized individuals and families among us.”

Karen’s work at GLIDE builds on the nearly 60-year legacy of co-founders Rev. Cecil Williams and Janice Mirikitani. GLIDE challenges inequities and stands with the poor, people of color, LGBTQ persons, and others facing systemic oppression, isolation, and stigma while offering a holistic, integrated model of programs and services to address the complex needs of this community.

Today, under the leadership of President and CEO Karen Hanrahan, GLIDE continues to deepen its impact and extend its reach to thousands of people in need. Through comprehensive services, fearless advocacy, and spiritual connection, GLIDE remains a powerful beacon of hope for a healthier, more just, and inclusive city. Learn more at GLIDE.org.

Karen’s illustrious career began after graduating with a Political Science and Journalism degree from Indiana University in 1992. While in college, she took the first steps to work internationally when she spent a year abroad in Morocco, studying at the King Fahd Arabic Language School in Tangier and the School of International Training in Rabat.

Hanrahan then got her MA in International Politics at American University in 1995. In 2000, she finished her Law degree—with honors and at the top 5 percent of her class—at the University of Washington School of Law in Seattle. While there, she was an assistant mediator at the US Court of Appeals, the Law Review editor, and a research assistant for Professor Joan Fitzpatrick, a federal public defender who has written habeas corpus petitions for indefinitely detained immigrants.

If that’s not impressive enough, Hanrahan capped her education with a degree from the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School in 2008.

It is our privilege to interview Karen. Please scroll down for our Q&A. — Hope Katz Gibbs, publisher Inkandescent Women magazine, www.InkandescentWomen.com.

A Champion for Human Rights

Hope: Tell us a bit about your background, the jobs you have held, and your education.

Karen: I feel incredibly fortunate to have had the opportunities I’ve had to do this work. I followed that path as soon as I could. I worked at nongovernmental organizations like Amnesty International, Search for Common Ground, and the United Nations doing international human rights work in Afghanistan, the West Bank, Gaza, and other usually volatile countries. Sometimes in the midst of conflict and sometimes coming out of it.

I realized that I was more of an advocate than a peacemaker at some point along the way. I know that those are not always mutually exclusive. Still, I decided to go to law school very much because the experience I had working in the West Bank and Gaza heightened my sense of what I was meant to do in this world, and that was to advocate for the right of people who were being oppressed or abused.

I followed my instincts. I worked with USCID, the State Department in Iraq, and the United Nations in Afghanistan. I have also worked for private companies that integrated human rights in the security sector from efforts in countries in Africa and elsewhere. All of that put me on the path to where I am right now.

Hope: Talk a little about your previous work. What were you doing when we met in 2008, and what have you done since you took this top job in the Obama administration?

Karen: I worked with the United Nations in Afghanistan as a protection officer, which meant that I did many human rights monitoring, training, and capacity building for local government officials. I studied women and girls in remote areas of Western Afghanistan, where I met very young child brides, usually 8 or 9 years old. I sometimes found myself in very unusual situations, such as standing in front of a room of mullahs, Afghan religious leaders, “training” them on human-rights issues.

I put the word “training” in quotes because it required them to get any food assistance or any assistance from the UN. Although the intention is correct, most of what I was talking about wasn’t always beneficial for their reality, even though it was tailored to them. At the time, many Afghan families I interacted with were verging on starvation because there was a drought. Some of them would have one meal a day. It was just a complicated and challenging situation.

On the bright side, many committed people were in Afghanistan working to protect the rights of the people around them. There were a lot of displaced people in refugee camps or displaced people camps. So I worked in those camps and with local staff, helping them learn how to protect people.

Hope: Did those experiences change your worldview and your personal view of yourself? How does it contrast with what you see here in the United States?

Karen: The work I have done—in Iraq and Afghanistan and the rest of the Middle East and parts of Africa—has had an enormous impact on me. It has shaped me as a person. You can’t go to those places and engage with the people I have without being deeply affected. I spoke to child soldiers and displaced people. I helped build the capacity of entrepreneurial women who wanted to start their own NGOs to help other women.

I look at some of the women and girls who have led complicated lives, some of whom have faced torture and sexual violence, bounce back, and see them become entrepreneurs and leaders in their communities. These are deeply profound experiences that have affected me very much.

Hope: Tell us more about your background. You graduated from Indiana University in 1992 with a degree in Political Science and Journalism, and you went to school and spent time abroad in Morocco and studied Arabic. So you knew back then that this was what you wanted to do? Did you want to work in the Middle East in human rights?

Karen: Initially, I thought I would pursue a career in journalism and work internationally in journalism. After receiving my degree in Journalism and Political Science, I wanted to be more directly engaged and less of a reporter. I wanted to be on the ground and in the field, helping to build local capacity, engage in the issues, and influence them rather than just reporting on them.

Hope: Is that when you decided to go to law school?

Karen: I decided to go to law school because my sense of what I wanted to do evolved and focused on international human rights issues, from law to policies to practice. Many of the people I saw around me doing the kind of work I was interested in, and having the most influence, had law degrees. When I went to law school, there weren’t many paths to international, public human rights Rule of Law type of work. Now there are more opportunities. I went to law school knowing what I wanted to do and carved that path for myself.

Hope: Talk about your work as a human rights activist in the Obama Administration. 

Karen: I think the United Nation’s leadership did a great job under the Obama administration. In the past, we used to have this debate over security versus human rights. The President and Secretary Clinton brought the discussion to a new level.

Under the previous administrations, you often saw those issues juxtaposed and in competition. We now have a President and Secretary of State who prioritize human rights and democracy as equally crucial to security, in fact, critical to our national safety and global security.

We see around the world, all over the world, a popular movement, sometimes violent and sometimes not, driven primarily by a fundamental sense of the need for justice. These populations have been oppressed, where fundamental freedoms have been restricted for so long that people can’t take them anymore.

All sorts of reasons fall under the rubric of human rights. Sometimes it is discrimination; sometimes it is oppression – being jailed or detained without justification. It is driving change in the world, and we see its impact on the world stage. I see many advances in the legal framework and multilateral institutions like the UN and other organizations on a broader level.

Hope: When you were working as a government official, did you see many positive initiates to improve human rights worldwide?

Karen: Yes, but one of the concerning trends we see is popular movements of unrest that are emerging. We see a crackdown by the government on people, organizations, and media where the governments justify their bad behavior by saying, “We are trying to stabilize our country.”

We also see trends around abusive security forces. Some military, police, and other armed groups are not necessarily part of the government and have no respect for rights. They use arms, but they also use rape and other forms of torture and intimidation. This is still a severe and significant problem that we are facing in several regions.

Hope: What could change those trends?

Karen: For me, it is about maintaining a historical perspective and thinking about all of this as a more significant movement. Human rights in the world have improved in the last century—and that is significant.

And, fortunately, it continues to improve. Yes, there are setbacks, but overall, the bigger picture is a movement forward for democracy and human rights. It is essential that we not let some of the other trends around terrorism and insurgency undermine these advances in human rights and democracy.

Suppose you crack down too hard on the wrong people, cast the net too broadly, and use inappropriate, abusive tactics. In that case, all you’re doing is laying the groundwork for additional instability.

To learn more about Karen Hanrahan’s work at Glide, click here.