Blue Law International

The founding partner of BlueLaw International, Jeffrey Walker is a rule of law and international and comparative law expert with over 20 years of experience in international development and post conflict stabilization and reconstruction. He works extensively with Department of State and USAID programs and international and private donor organizations. His international development practice has spanned civil society, human rights, rule of law, security sector reform, and anticorruption projects in over 35 countries, including major programs in Egypt, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Paraguay, Albania, Ukraine, Burundi, Morocco, Palestine, and Iraq. He recently served for one year in Baghdad as the first chief of party for the then-largest rule of law project ever funded by the U.S. government.

Mr. Walker is a retired Air Force officer and judge advocate who worked much of his military career exclusively in the area of public international law. His practice included air and space law, foreign civil litigation, foreign criminal cases against U.S. soldiers, treaties and status of forces agreements, law of war, peacekeeping operations, war crimes, and anti-terrorism. He has taught international legal education programs in Uganda, Uruguay, El Salvador, Mexico, Chile, Paraguay, and Nepal. During his military career, Mr. Walker flew over 1,200 hours as a navigator on B-52 bombers, served as legal advisor to NATO’s air operations center for the Balkans, deployed with NATO ground forces to Bosnia after the Dayton Accords, practiced law in Italy, and served as a chief prosecutor for an airbase and as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney for the federal district of Wyoming.

He has published extensively on international, comparative, and legal historical topics in scholarly and legal journals. He is a regular lecturer on international law at federal circuit court conferences across the U.S., a frequent panelist at scholarly forums, and a regular guest commentator on international legal issues for public radio. He is a regular lecturer at Georgetown University, St. John’s University, and The College of William and Mary, where he has taught European legal history, law and ethics of war, and international criminal law. Mr. Walker holds a JD degree from Georgetown University and an LL.M. from Harvard.

Mr. May has more than 30 years of experience in aviation, air campaign planning and execution, air command and control, intelligence, and reconnaissance within the DoD and NATO. He also has a strong background in information warfare and the development of air, space and intelligence program requirements.

Mr. May was a career Air Force officer and command pilot, with experience ranging from flying squadrons to working at The Pentagon. He served and retired as the Chief, Command and Control Operations Division (A-3), Air Force Command and Control and Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Center (AFC2ISRC), Langley Air Force Base, VA. He is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy and earned his MBA from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Janet Lord is an international lawyer with more than 15 years of professional experience in international development with an emphasis on democracy and governance programming in developing, transitioning, and post-conflict countries. Her international development practice is global, with work in more than 25 countries, and includes the provision of technical assistance in human rights institution building and strengthening, human rights advocacy skills building, human rights and disability law and policy reform, advancing election access for marginalized groups, participatory training and legal research.

A Research Associate at the Harvard law School Project on Disability, she is an internationally recognized expert in international disability rights law, policy and programming and has published widely in this area. She has worked with a variety of international organizations, including the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Disability Programme, UNDP, USAID, the EU, the World Bank, Disabled Peoples’ International, Handicap International France, the Center for International Rehabilitation, and the International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES). Prior to joining BlueLaw, she served as legal counsel and director of advocacy at an international organization focused on advancing the rights of landmine survivors and as a lawyer at the World Bank Group. She has taught courses in international law, international human rights law, and human rights, disability and conflict at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, the University of Maryland School of Law, American University, and the University of Baltimore School of Law. She holds an LL.B. and an LL.M. in law from the University of Edinburgh), and an LL.M. in international and comparative law from the George Washington University Law School.

Sudhir Mahara has 20 years of combined professional experience in the defense and development sectors including conflict analysis and response, security sector reforms, United Nations peacekeeping, international development program management. A former Nepalese Army Gurkha officer, he has served as Operations Officer for the United Nations Interim Force (UNIFIL) in Lebanon in 1996, and gained practical experience in complex contingencies, counter insurgency policy analysis and planning, and integrated security and development.

At BlueLaw, Sudhir has worked on projects covering rule of law and security sector reform in support of various U.S. agencies including USAID, Department of State, and Department of Defense projects. He possesses an in-depth understanding of working with foreign militaries and security services, civil bureaucracies, multi-lateral organization, non-governmental organizations and civil society organizations within a complex strategic environment. Under a Millennium Challenge Corporation rule of law project in Paraguay, he designed, developed and implemented the standing up of a special Paraguayan interagency law enforcement unit involving the organization, training, equipping, advising and operationalizing of personnel drawn from the police, intelligence, navy, attorney general’s office prosecutors and customs officers.

He is a graduate of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in the UK, and holds an M.A. in Political Science from Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu, and an M.A. in Security Studies from Georgetown University in Washington D.C.

A rule of law and governance expert with 15 years of international development and post conflict stabilization and reconstruction experience working with Department of State, USAID, and international and private donor organizations, Mr. Gisvold oversees the Security and Justice practice for BlueLaw. His experience includes human rights, judicial reform, security sector reform, and anticorruption projects in Russia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Egypt, Indonesia, Albania, Ukraine, Burundi, Iraq, and West Bank and Gaza.

Prior to joining BlueLaw, he led the democracy and governance practice for Chemonics International where he was responsible for the design and oversight of court administration, judicial reform, anti-corruption, and public administration reform programs. He has served as senior technical advisor for the Rule of Law and Building Recovery through Democratic Governance (BRDG) IQCs, where he oversaw large consortia and the successful preparation of multiple proposals and fielding of major projects. He led rule of law and security sector reform programs in West Bank and Gaza as interim chief of party. He served as county director for American Bar Association programs in Kosovo and Montenegro, including co-director of its War Crimes Documentation Project, which provided unique statistical evidence to the ICTY prosecution of Slobodan Milosevic.

Before moving full time into international development work, Mr. Gisvold served as an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Minnesota, worked in private law practice, and was on the staff of Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights. He holds a B.A. from Amherst College and a J.D. from the University of Minnesota Law School. His published books and articles address human rights and legal reform issues in post-conflict societies.