Our Founders

Angelina Jolie is the Special Envoy of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and co-founder of the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative (PSVI), as well as the co-founder of KIND. She began her work with UNHCR as a Goodwill Ambassador in 2001, and in 2012 was appointed to the role of Special Envoy. As Special Envoy she focuses on major crises resulting in mass population displacements and undertakes diplomatic advocacy on behalf of UNHCR. Since 2001 she has carried out nearly 60 field missions to refugee locations worldwide. The protection of the rights of children on the move has been a core focus of Angelina’s humanitarian efforts. Early in her work on behalf of displaced people, she identified the lack of legal representation of unaccompanied children in deportation proceedings in the U.S. as a critical gap in their protection that put their lives and safety at risk. In 2008 she co-founded KIND. She led in the effort to engage the private sector to draw on the time, expertise, and resources of law firms, corporate legal departments, law schools and bar associations, to open avenues to protection for thousands of vulnerable children and young people caught up in the U.S. immigration system. In 2012, Angelina began the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative (PSVI), a global campaign to end the use of rape as a weapon of war, in partnership with the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The initiative strives to address the culture of impunity that exists for crimes of sexual violence in conflict, to tackle stigma and increase the number of perpetrators held to account. It has attracted the support of over 155 countries and led to new breakthroughs including the first International Protocol for the Documentation and Investigation of conflict-related sexual violence. In June 2016 Angelina was appointed a Visiting Professor in Practice at the Centre for Women, Peace and Security at the London School of Economics (LSE). The Centre works to develop strategies to promote justice, human rights and participation of women in conflict-affected situations around the world. Angelina Jolie is an Academy Award® and three-time Golden Globe Award winner. Her most recent Directorial project, First They Killed My Father, tells the story of the Cambodian genocide through the eyes of a child.

Brad Smith is the president of Microsoft, where he leads a team of more than 1,400 business, legal and corporate affairs professionals in 56 countries. He serves as the company’s chief legal officer and leads work on a wide range of issues involving the intersection between technology and society, including cybersecurity, privacy, ethics and artificial intelligence, human rights, immigration, philanthropy and environmental sustainability. Described by the New York Times as “a de facto ambassador for the technology industry at large,” Smith has testified numerous times before the US Congress and other governments on key policy issues. Smith joined Microsoft in 1993, first spending three years in Paris leading the legal and corporate affairs team in Europe. In 2002, he was named Microsoft’s general counsel and spent the following decade leading work to resolve the company’s antitrust controversies with governments around the world and companies across the tech sector. This past decade, Smith has spearheaded the company’s work to advance privacy protection for Microsoft customers and the rights of DREAMers and other immigrants, including bringing five lawsuits against the US government on these issues. Prior to joining Microsoft, Smith was an associate and then partner at the law firm of Covington and Burling, where he is still remembered as the first attorney in the long history of the firm to insist (in 1986) on having a personal computer on his desk as a condition for accepting a job offer. In addition to his work at Microsoft, Smith is active in several civic organizations and in the broader technology industry. He has served on the Netflix board of directors since 2015 and chairs the board of directors of both Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) and the Washington State Opportunity Scholarship program. Smith grew up in Appleton, Wisconsin, where Green Bay was the big city next door. He attended Princeton University, where he met his wife, Kathy (also a lawyer). He earned his J.D. from Columbia University Law School and studied international law and economics at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, Switzerland. He can be followed on Twitter @bradsmi and LinkedIn at bradsmi.