Rachel Pulfer

Rachel Pulfer is the President of Journalists for Human Rights (JHR). A journalist of two decades’ standing, she has fifteen years' experience cocreating, piloting, implementing, scaling and evaluating human rights and media development programs in Africa and the Middle East as well as in Canada. Under her leadership, JHR has expanded its award-winning human rights journalism work to four continents. She has personally been recognized for her leadership with the Human Rights Champion Award from Women’s eNews in 2026, the King Charles III Coronation Medal in 2025. Organizational recognition under her watch includes the PEN Canada Marie-Ange Garrigue Prize in 2024, the Michener-Deacon Award for Public Service Journalism from the Michener Foundation in 2022, the Bill Hutton Award for Excellence in Journalism from RTDNA Canada in 2018, and Ontario Heritage and Innovation awards for the Indigenous Reporters Program. Pulfer also received an honorary degree at Loyalist College and the Spencer Moore Award 2023 from World Press Freedom Canada. She appears on CTV and CBC News as a commentator on media, international development and press freedom issues and regularly contributes op-eds and feature articles to the Toronto Star, Globe and Mail and now Open Canada. Pulfer was the 2023-2024 Martin Wise Goodman Canadian Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. Prior to running JHR, she was the 2009-2010 Webster-McConnell William Southam Journalism Fellow at Massey College, University of Toronto. Prior to that, she was the US correspondent for Canadian Business magazine. She is a contributing editor to Corporate Knights magazine and a member of the Banff Forum.