Rebecca Rittgers

SCI Mentor

Rebecca Rittgers has dedicated her professional career to leveraging the tools of philanthropy and strategic investment to advance human rights and social justice, and brings to her work a rich experience supporting the design and implementation of social justice campaigns, strategic communications strategies, advocate coalitions and donor collaboratives, and learning/ evaluation initiatives.

For the past year, Rebecca has devoted her time as a consultant, helping not-for-profits and foundations design and implement programmatic, learning, and funding agendas that advance disability rights, migrant and refugee rights, and criminal and social justice priorities in both the US and in Europe.

Prior to that, Rebecca led The Themis Fund, the donor collaborative behind the national campaign to end the death penalty in the United States. As its inaugural director, she helped donors and advocates implement a national strategy, and developed a collaborative funding mechanism that allowed both aligned and collaborative funders unite their resources behind the campaign. 

Before joining Themis, building upon her prior work as senior program executive at The Arcus Foundation, Rebecca conducted an evaluation and assessment of the four US state advocacy campaigns that in 2012 won civil marriage.

From 2001 to 2010, Rebecca served as Program Executive with The Atlantic Philanthropies, and developed and stewarded Atlantic’s US Reconciliation and Human Rights Program, focused on empowering movements through the support of proactive coalitions, policy change and communications strategies that advanced comprehensive immigration reform, ending capital punishment, ex-felon disenfranchisement, and indigent defence reform.

  1. Mentoring Programme

Based in New Jersey, USA