The Board
Scott Greathead
President
R. Scott Greathead has served as President of Friends of FAFG, Inc. since its founding in 2011. Mr. Greathead has over 30 years of experience investigating and litigating human rights cases, including acting on behalf of the families for the murders of four U.S. churchwomen who were serving refugees and victims of the conflict in El Salvador in December 1980. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Human Rights First (formerly the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights), which he co-founded in 1978. He has visited more than a dozen countries on human rights fact-finding missions for organizations such as Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch and the International League for Human Rights and has written extensively on human rights and corporate social responsibility in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and other publications. From 1984 to 1990, Mr. Greathead served as the the First Assistant Attorney General of the State of New York.
Fredy Peccerelli
Executive Director
Fredy Peccerelli serves as Executive Director of Friends of FAFG, Inc. where he is a founding board member. Mr. Peccerelli has dedicated his life to upholding human rights and dignity through the application of forensic sciences and is an internationally renowned and recognized Forensic Anthropologist and Human Identification expert. Mr. Peccerelli is a founding member of the Fundación de Antropología Forense de Guatemala (FAFG, Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala) where he leads the development and implementation of a Multidisciplinary Human Identification System.
Mr. Peccerelli has testified as an expert witness presenting expert forensic reports and pattern analysis in the Genocide case against Ríos Montt in Guatemalan National Court, in the International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), and in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. In recognition of his expertise and decades of dedication to applying forensic sciences to the search for the disappeared, he received an Honorary Doctorate of Laws (LLD) from the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC), and an Honorary Doctorate of Sciences (DSc) from Queen’s University. Some of his international recognitions include the Distinguished Alumnus Award from his alma mater Brooklyn College in 2017 and becoming the first recipient of the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) Human Rights Award, as well as being recognized as Time Magazine and CNN’s 50 Latin American Leaders for the New Millenium.
Dr. Jo-Marie Burt
Director
Dr. Burt is a Senior Fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), professor at George Mason University, and was recently named President of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Executive Council. Dr. Burt has extensive experience covering issues of human rights, political violence and justice with special interest in the Peruvian and Guatemala contexts. In recent years, Dr. Burt’s research has focused on the ways post-conflict societies confront demands for justice and accountability after atrocity. She currently researches and writes about war crimes trials in Guatemala for International Justice Monitor, a project of the Open Society Justice Initiative, and Plaza Pública. She has engaged in research and advocacy in relation to several high-profile human rights trials in the region, including the 2009 Fujimori trial in Peru and the 2013 Rios Montt genocide trial in Guatemala. She is a member of the international advisory boards of the Peruvian Forensic Anthropology Team (EPAF) and the Observatorio Luz Ibarburu, which monitors human rights prosecutions in Uruguay. Dr. Burt was a researcher for the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2001-2003) and has served as an expert witness in human rights cases in courts in the United States, in domestic courts in Peru, and before the Inter-American Court for Human Rights.