Before joining Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, Heffernan was the director of the Genocide Prevention Initiative at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. As a senior investigator with Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), he led three investigations to the Darfur region of Sudan and was the lead author of PHR’s report, Assault on Survival. Previously, he served as the Chief of Party for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs in Guyana. In 1995, Heffernan helped establish and run, as executive director, the Coalition for International Justice, a Washington, D.C.-based non-governmental organization created to support the work of the international war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.
As Country Representative for the former Yugoslavia, he directed the humanitarian relief program for the International Rescue Committee (IRC), and from 1990 to 1993, he managed IRC’s refugee resettlement program in Khartoum, Sudan. Prior to working overseas, Heffernan served as the vice president of the Business Council for the United Nations in New York City. Heffernan has written opinion articles for the New York Times, Washington Post, International Herald Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, and San Diego Union-Tribune, among other publications.
