Interested in careers in public policy, law, and human rights? Join us to learn from Hardy Vieux, Chief of Staff of Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), and Harry A. and Margaret D. Towsley Foundation Policymaker in Residence at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.

Please note: This session will be held virtually ET through Zoom. This webinar is free and open to students, but registration is required. Once you've registered the joining information will be sent to your email.

Register at: https://myumi.ch/VPrYE

Hardy Vieux, MPP ’97, serves as Kids in Need of Defense’s (KIND) chief of staff. In that role, he aligns vision, strategy, and tactics in an organization dedicated to addressing the legal and psychosocial needs of migrant children. Hardy endeavors to harness time, information, and decision processes to enable KIND to focus on zealously advocating for the rights of refugee and immigrant children.

Prior to joining KIND in May 2021, Hardy served as the senior vice president, legal, at Human Rights First, where he led the organization’s pro bono asylum representation team and its impact litigation efforts, having started that work in 2018.

Since January 2017, Hardy has also served as a Towsley Foundation Policymaker in Residence at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. In that role, Hardy teaches a fall semester, graduate-level human rights law seminar at the policy school.

In 2014, Hardy served as a policy fellow with Save the Children in Jordan, focusing on the problems of safeguarding and educating Syrian refugee children. Prior to living in the Middle East, he was in private legal practice focused on white collar criminal defense and complex civil trials. While in private practice, Hardy handled numerous pro bono matters, from litigation stemming from the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq to juvenile detention impact litigation and asylum representation.

Before moving to private practice, Hardy was a criminal appellate defense counsel in the United States Navy’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps, where he served as counsel on a death penalty case and national security matters, among others. Since leaving the JAG Corps, Hardy has served on the board of the National Institute of Military Justice, a nonprofit dedicated to the fair administration of justice in the armed forces.

Hardy is a 1997 graduate of the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and Law School, where he served as a co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Michigan Journal of Race & Law. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Public Policy Studies from Duke University, later serving on the board of visitors of the university’s public policy school.

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at is-michigan@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.