Kathy Guernsey (1984-94, Lancaster & Bevan) is a public international lawyer who has dedicated her career to the field of human rights, with an emphasis on disability inclusive development and diplomacy.
What are your strongest memories of the school?

I loved Taunton School and the enthusiasm of the teachers. I remember Dr John Lewis (TS 1981-93), Head of Science, showing us a video of cows chewing the cud simply because he said it was ‘delightful’. I was soon swept up because the teachers brought such a level of enthusiasm. Taunton School also built my confidence, I got involved in fencing, the DofE award scheme, and Adventure Training which included mountain climbing in Scotland.

How did you go from Taunton School to international law and a specialism in disability-inclusive development and diplomacy?

I’m one of those awful people who from a very young age knew what I wanted to do; in my case, be a lawyer. My Grandpa was an appellate judge in Ohio and when we would go out to the states to visit, he took me to the courthouse to meet the lawyers and sit in his chair on the court’s bench.

After Taunton School, I went to Ohio Northern University, then law school, and then I did my LLM at George Washington University. When I finally started working, I joined an NGO focusing on landmine survivors. I arrived there just as the drafting process for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was kicking off at the UN, and this organisation decided that the way they could contribute was via the expertise of their lawyers, so that’s what took me to the UN.

Later I was at the State Department as a political appointee for six and a half years during the Obama administration – I was the senior policy advisor to the Special Advisor for International Disability Rights, a woman by the name of Judy Heumann who you can see in action in the Oscar-nominated documentary film Crip Camp (2020).