Community Profile
Chip Pitts
Lecturer in Law, Stanford Law School and Oxford UniversityStanford, USA
Chip is a Lecturer in Law at Stanford Law School, Professorial Lecturer at Oxford University, Professorial Fellow at the SMU Law Institute of the Americas, and lifelong human rights advocate. He is currently dividing his time between ongoing teaching at Stanford and as a Visiting Professor at other universities in the East and West, including China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) in Shanghai, and Minnesota’s Human Rights Center.
Previously a partner at Baker & McKenzie global law firm, then Chief Legal Officer of Nokia, Inc., he has been an investor and founding executive of successful startup businesses in Austin and Silicon Valley, including service as founding General Counsel of Tellme Networks (sold to Microsoft) and CEO of the e-commerce subsidiary of Pavillion Technologies (sold to Rockwell Automation). He has worked with both public company and private company boards globally as an expert on sustainability and corporate social responsibility.
A frequent delegate of the US government and leading international business, human rights, and development organizations to UN bodies for more than two decades, he is Advisor to the UN Global Compact (where he leads the Good Practice Notes and Corporate Culture and Values projects), was Advisor to the successful Business Leaders Initiative for Human Rights (BLIHR), and currently serves on the boards or advisory boards of UTD’s Negotiations Center, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), the African Trade and Development Initiative (ATDI), ACLU Dallas, Imagine Africa, the OICD (Organization for Identity and Cultural Development), L4BB (Lawyers for Better Business), and the London-based Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, among others.
A former board leader of Bonn-based Fair Trade International, and former Chair of Amnesty International USA, his non-profit service also includes membership in the Conference Board’s Working Group on Business Ethics, the UN Global Compact’s Expert Group on Conflict-Sensitive Practices, five years’ service as President & Chair of the national Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC), and current service as Chair of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), OICD Executive Committee, and Independent Expert for the UN Human Rights Council’s Open-Ended Intergovernmental Working Group on a Treaty in the field on Business and Human Rights.
Educated at Tulane, Cambridge, and Oxford universities, Harvard’s Negotiation Project, and Stanford Law School, he is a frequent speaker and commentator on privacy, technology, national security, foreign affairs, and human rights/civil liberties issues at conferences and in the national and international media, and the author of both books and articles on corporate social responsibility, sustainable global business, and human rights, privacy, and civil liberties, including as co-author and editor of the leading legal textbook, Corporate Social Responsibility: A Legal Analysis, the royalties from which all go to business and human rights charities.
Chip is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and founding member of the Pacific Council on Foreign Policy in San Francisco. He is a co-inventor of US and foreign patents in the field of electronic network optimisation.
Areas of Interest
- Ethical Globalisation and Fair Trade
- Corporate Social Responsibility Law and Best Practice
- Leadership
- Corporate Culture and Values
- Sustainable Development, Climate Change, & International Environmental Law
- Intellectual Property and Technological Innovation
- International Trade and International Business Law and Practice
- US and Comparative Constitutional Law
- US and Comparative Corporate Law and Corporate Governance
- International Human Rights Law and Practice
- Privacy Law and Practice
- Artificial Intelligence and Robotics
- Social Entrepreneurship/Enterprise
- AntiPoverty
- Bottom-of-the-Pyramid Opportunities