Senior Legal Officer, Office of the Legal Counsel
United Nations, New York, NY

Mark Quarterman has been privileged to witness firsthand several historic transitions over the course of his career. From attending Namibia's independence ceremony, to observing the birth of a post-apartheid South Africa, to assisting East Timor's first steps to becoming an independent country, he has amassed a wealth of unforgettable professional experiences. He recently served in the Middle East working with the United Nations to facilitate a peace process and coordinate donor assistance to the Palestinian Authority. Now a Senior Legal Officer with the U.N. in New York, working on public international law, transitional justice and international humanitarian law, Quarterman says "I have had the type of career I hoped for when I applied to the Woodrow Wilson School," noting that "I wanted to develop skills and an analytical framework that would equip me to work on difficult political and development issues in a variety of regions of the world."

Specifically, Quarterman has worked to coordinate, deploy, and train election observers in South Africa as a project manager for the South African Election Monitoring Project sponsored by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. He has dealt with the political issues of East Timor, in succession as a member of the U.N.'s negotiating team, as political adviser to the head of the U.N.'s referendum mission in East Timor, and as head of the mission's Jakarta office. He served as special assistant to the Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs, whom he advised on Asian issues, and he was recently the chief of staff in the Office of the U.N. Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, working in Gaza and Jerusalem. Now he works on such issues as the establishment of a tribunal of an international character to try those accused of the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and carries out special projects at the direction of the U.N.'s Legal Counsel.