Kathryn Kolbert is the Co-Founder and Producing Director of the
Athena Film Festival
The Athena Film Festival is an annual film festival held at Barnard College of Columbia University in New York City. The festival takes place in February and focuses on films celebrating women and leadership. In addition to showing films, the fest ...
People for the American Way Foundation
People For the American Way Foundation is the charitable arm of People For the American Way (PFAW), a progressive advocacy organization in the United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United Stat ...
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...
's School of Arts and Sciences in 1974, and graduated cum laude from
Temple University School of Law
The Temple University James E. Beasley School of Law is the law school of Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1895 and enrolls about 530 students.
Student body
Admission for fall 2019 entering class was highly comp ...
in 1977.
Before she became a journalist, Kolbert was a public interest attorney specializing in women's reproductive rights.Kathryn Kolbert, Director, Athena Center for Leadership Studies, Barnard College, retrieved on March 7, 2012, at https://web.archive.org/web/20120711201946/http://athenacenter.barnard.edu/about/director From 1979 to 1988, she was a Staff Attorney with the Women's Law Project and Community Legal Services in
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...
. Kolbert served as the State Coordinating Counsel of the American Civil Liberty Union's Reproductive Freedom Project in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
from 1988 to 1992. Between 1992 and 1997, she directed domestic litigation and public policy programs for the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy, where she was Co-Founder and Vice President.
In 1992, Kolbert argued before the
United States Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
in ''
Planned Parenthood v. Casey
''Planned Parenthood v. Casey'', 505 U.S. 833 (1992), was a landmark case of the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court upheld the right to have an abortion as established by the "essential holding" of ''Roe v. Wade'' (1973) and is ...
'', a case which challenged five abortion regulations in Pennsylvania. Kolbert was unsuccessful and four out of five regulations were upheld (This needs to be contextualized).
From 1998 to 2008, Kolbert oversaw a program on law and American life at the
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
's Annenberg Public Policy Center. She was the Executive Producer of Justice Talking, a radio program distributed by
National Public Radio
National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other n ...
, and directed an educational website called JusticeLearning.org, which received a Webby Award in 2005.
Prior to working at Barnard, Kolbert spent a year in
Washington, D.C.
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, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
as president and CEO of the People for the American Way and People for the American Way Foundation. She resigned as president and CEO on April 3, 2009.
Awards and honors
Kolbert has been recognized by the
National Law Journal
''The National Law Journal'' (NLJ) is an American legal periodical founded in 1978. The NLJ was created by Jerry Finkelstein, who envisioned it as a "sibling newspaper" of the ''New York Law Journal''.
Originally a tabloid-sized weekly newspape ...
as one of the "100 Most Influential Lawyers in America," and by
the American Lawyer
''The American Lawyer'' is a monthly legal magazine and website published by ALM Media. The periodical and its parent company, ALM (then American Lawyer Media), were founded in 1979 by Steven Brill. In 2011, Kolbert received the Edith I. Spivack Award from the New York County Lawyers' Association's Women's Rights Committee.