Team

Dorothée Baumann-Pauly is a Professor at Geneva University’s School of Economics and Management and directs the Geneva Center for Business and Human Rights. Since 2013, she has also served as the Research Director at the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights. In these roles, Dorothée works with companies to advance human rights in corporate practice. Her applied research is focused on embedding human rights in organizations and developing business models that enable profits and human rights principles to coexist. Dorothée also teaches Business and Human Rights and she co-edited the first textbook on Business and Human Rights (Routledge 2016). In 2016, she co-founded the Global Business School Network for Business and Human Rights to integrate human rights in business education as well as the Business and Human Rights Young Researchers Summit for emerging scholars. Dorothée earned her PhD in Economics (summa cum laude) at the University of Zurich in 2010 while working for the Fair Labor Association, a multi-stakeholder initiative with the mission to improve labor rights in global supply chains.
Please also refer to Dorothée’s UniGE webpage and her list of publications.

Pascale Chavaz is a research associate at the Geneva Center for Business and Human Rights. She supports Prof. Dorothée Baumann-Pauly and her team in all aspects of the Center’s activities from research and communication to teaching and administration. Before joining the GCBHR, she had mostly worked in the academic world and civil society in the field of ethics, socially responsible investing, and philosophy. She co-authored a book on Sovereign Wealth Funds and their regulation (Globethics, 2016). Pascale also works as a freelance certified coach and neuro-linguistic programming master practitioner. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and Linguistics from the University of Geneva, and a Master’s degree in Applied Ethics from Sherbrooke University.

Serra Cremer Iyi is a consultant at the Geneva Center for Business and Human Rights. Trained as a corporate lawyer with a background in M&A and project finance, Serra brings her experience representing businesses and advising senior management to the interdisciplinary field of business and human rights. Prior to her position at GCBHR, she worked as an adjunct professor of U.S. law, a local counsel for the International Refugee Assistance Project, and a managing director at Executive English Coaching. Serra continues to work as a global communication coach to executives at multinational corporations. She is a member of the New York Bar Association and holds a Juris Doctor degree from Fordham University School of Law and a double major Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies from New York University.

Dr. Berit Knaak is a Senior Research Associate at the Geneva Center for Business and Human Rights. She completed her Ph.D. in Management with a focus on integrating business and human rights at the University of St.Gallen in 2020. Her research evolves around business perspectives on human rights and approaches to facilitate corporate engagement with human rights issues. In her work, Berit focuses on resilience and ethical supply chains, companies’ impact in their ecosystems, and on children’s rights, among others in a collaboration with UNICEF. Berit builds on a dual background in economics and in human rights law, holding a Master of International Business from Maastricht University and an LLM degree in International Human Rights Law from the National University of Ireland. During her time as doctoral researcher, she served as a fellow for the Business and Human Rights Journal.

Ömür Kılınçarslan is a postdoctoral researcher at the Geneva Center for Business and Human Rights. He received his PhD degree in Business Administration from ATU University in 2024 with a dissertation focusing on the personal values of social entrepreneurs. Kılınçarslan teaches social entrepreneurship, management history courses at undergraduate level at ATU University. His research interests include business ethics, business and human rights, social entrepreneurship, sustainability, and diversity in the workplace. His works have been published in leading academic journals such as Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, Journal of Social Entrepreneurship and BMJ Open. He is currently working on a project discussing the role of businesses in addressing challenges of human rights that migrant agricultural workers face.