NYU Stern CBHR Names Ralph Bunche Deputy Director
July 2026
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 15, 2026
Contact: Victoria Anderson, Associate Director, Communications, victoria.anderson@stern.nyu.edu | 212-998-0261
NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights Names Ralph Bunche as Deputy Director
NEW YORK — The NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights (CBHR) today announced that Ralph Bunche has been named as Deputy Director at the Center. Bunche brings more than two decades of experience in business accountability, international human rights, and organizational leadership to CBHR’s work at the forefront of shaping business education and addressing human rights challenges across the global economy.
“Ralph Bunche is exactly the partner this Center needs,” said Michael Posner, CBHR Director and Jerome Kohlberg Professor of Ethics and Finance at NYU Stern. “His career reflects the same conviction that animates our work: that sustainable progress on human rights requires engaging seriously with business, and that engagement, done well, produces real results. I look forward to building CBHR’s next chapter with him.”
Bunche comes to the Center from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), where he was seconded by the United States to lead rule of law programming in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo. His work there directly addressed CBHR’s core focus areas: Global Labor, Technology and Democracy, and Values-Based Investing.
Previously, Bunche was elected General Secretary of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO), an international membership organization of governments, political parties and Indigenous peoples’ movements, working to develop understanding of and respect for the collective rights of all peoples and nations. Through its members, the UNPO is the locus of some of the most emblematic business and human rights issues of the last 30 years, from resource extraction on Indigenous lands, to Uyghur forced labor, to the use of technology to both suppress and protect human rights defenders at home and abroad. Bunche served three terms with the organization, helping engineer a major transformation of its structure, focus, and impact.
A graduate of Columbia Law School, Bunche practiced at prominent firms in New York and Washington, D.C., where he worked on business accountability matters involving the financial services and manufacturing sectors, including business and human rights litigation. He spent a year in-house with Liberia’s Minister of Finance, helping negotiate some of the country’s largest foreign investment concession agreements and the elimination of its privately held external debt.
Bunche began his career working with Nobel Peace laureate Kailash Satyarthi’s Global March Against Child Labour, contributing to landmark business and human rights initiatives such as the Rugmark campaign and the International Cocoa Initiative. Bunche has been guided by the legacy of his grandfather, Nobel Peace laureate Ralph Bunche, who played a central role in the early United Nations, helping shape U.N. peacekeeping and advance decolonization efforts.
“The NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights has built a reputation for research and engagement that actually moves the needle,” said Bunche. “That is exactly the kind of work I have spent my career trying to do from different vantage points, in different institutions, in different parts of the world. I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to join Mike and the team, and I look forward to contributing to what comes next.”
In the Deputy Director role, Bunche will work alongside Posner to help chart the Center’s strategic direction, strengthen its fundraising and external communications, and oversee its engagement with companies, governments, and civil society. He will also support CBHR’s expanding business education programs and its collaboration with the Global Business School Network.
About the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights
Founded in March 2013, the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights is the first human rights center based at a business school. Taking a pro-business, high-standards approach, CBHR challenges and empowers companies and future business leaders to make practical progress on human rights. The Center’s current focus areas include values-based investing, technology and democracy, and global labor. Learn more at bhr.stern.nyu.edu.
Business & Human Rights LeadershipRelated
See all
Conscience Incorporated
In his new book Conscience Incorporated, Michael Posner, director of the Center for Business and Human Rights, offers practical strategies and bold reforms to help businesses align profitability with ethical responsibility.
Feedback to the European Commission on Its Draft Delegated Regulation on Data Access Under the Digital Services Act
The multi-stakeholder working group on gaming and regulation, launched in September 2024, brings together industry, civil society, and regulators to advance informed, constructive global regulation for a healthy and responsible online gaming ecosystem.
Setting Higher Standards: How Governments Can Regulate Corporate Human Rights Performance
Our report, released three months after the landmark CSDDD entered into force, provides a roadmap for regulators and companies navigating a new era of corporate human rights responsibility.