Catherine Hanssens, Executive Director and founder of the Center for HIV Law and Policy, has been engaged with HIV legal and policy issues since 1984.. She previously was AIDS Project Director at Lambda Legal, where she led the development of Lambda’s national HIV litigation and policy work; an attorney with the AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania , where she created a multi-site, hospital-based project offering legal assistance to patients of HIV care; and, as a lawyer at the New Jersey Department of the Public Advocate, successfully litigated cases addressing involuntary HIV testing, a state-wide challenge to segregation and mistreatment of prisoners with HIV, and the right of incarcerated women to funded elective abortions. She also was Director of the Women and AIDS Clinic at Rutgers University Law School-Newark.