Hans Hogrefe served Chairman Lantos as a Senior Professional Staff Member on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs (HCFA), 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. TLHRC Co-Chairman James P. McGovern (D-MA) appointed Hans as the first Democratic Staff Director of the TLHRC. Hans also served HCFA Chairman Howard Berman (D-CA)  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, Hans 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, he 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.

Prior to founding Equal Rights Consulting LLC in 2018, Hans served as Director of Policy and Advocacy at Refugees International (RI) from 2016, where he led RI’s eight-person advocacy team, and was also instrumental in the creation of INHR (inhr.org), which promotes access to the UN and other multilateral and national governmental bodies for NGOs.

Hans 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.

Hans brings with him significant experience regarding the EU countries, the People’s Republic of China (including the Tibetan areas and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region), Central Asia, Burma, North and South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia.

He is fluent in English and German.