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Chi Mgbako
Clinical Associate Professor of Law
Director, Leitner International Human Rights Clinic

Fordham University School of Law
Leitner Center
33 West 60th Street, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10023

 		Email: mgbako@law.fordham.edu
Telephone: 212.636.7716
Fax: 212.636.6775
Office: Room 223

Chi Adanna Mgbako is clinical associate professor and founding director of the Walter Leitner International Human Rights Clinic at Fordham Law School in New York City. She and her students work with grassroots justice organizations on four thematic areas: sexual rights, health and human rights, access to justice, and women's rights in Africa.

She has conducted human rights fieldwork and advocacy in many countries, among them Ethiopia, Liberia, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and South Africa. Her publications have appeared in scholarly reviews such as the Harvard Human Rights Journal and popular media including the global opinion pages of NYTimes.com, the International Herald Tribune, The Huffington Post, and allAfrica.com. In 2011, the National Law Journal named her to its list of "Top 40 Minority Lawyers Under 40." In 2012, she was honored as Fordham Law School's "Public Interest Professor of the Year." 

She began her Fordham career as Crowley Fellow in International Human Rights, completing a fact-finding project and documentary film on the feminization of HIV/AIDS. Prior to that, she served as Harvard Henigson Human Rights Fellow and Researcher with the International Crisis Group, focusing on justice sector and political reform in West Africa. She has also taught African women's history in Ghana.

She received her J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she was awarded the Gary Bellow Public Service Award, the Dean's Award for Community Leadership, and the Kaufman Public Service Fellowship. She earned her B.A. in History, magna cum laude, from Columbia University, where she was a John F. Kluge Scholar.

Professor Mgbako's publications include:

BOOK CHAPTERS:
  • Engaging Legal Dualism: Paralegal Organizations and Customary Law in Sierra Leone and Liberia in THE FUTURE OF AFRICAN CUSTOMARY LAW, Cambridge University Press, Jeanmarie Fenrich, Paolo Galizzi, and Tracy Higgins, eds. (with Kristina Scurry Baehr) (2011)

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Education

  • Harvard Law School, J.D., 2005
  • Columbia University, B.A., magna cum laude, 2001