Ms. Irit Tamir is the Senior Campaigns and Advocacy Advisor for Oxfam America's Private Sector Department. In her role, she is focused on working with companies to ensure that their business practices result in positive social and environmental impacts for vulnerable communities throughout the world. Most recently, her work has been focused on the food and beverage industry and advocating for better policies and practices that will lead to food security for the 9 billion people expected in 2050.
Previously, Ms. Tamir worked in Oxfam America’s U.S. Regional Office on both campaigns and collaborations for better conditions and wages for migrant farm workers. Ms. Tamir also advised Oxfam America's Gulf Coast Program where she works with grassroots organizations in the Gulf to ensure that coastal communities are more resilient to climate hazards. She is the co-author of the recently published Oxfam America report, State of Fear: Human rights abuses in North Carolina’s tobacco industry and Weeding Out Abuses, Recommendations for a law-abiding farm labor system.
Prior to working at Oxfam, Ms. Tamir was the Director of Government Relations at the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, where she successfully lobbied for an extensive federal and state legislative agenda. She co-led the effort to pass the Sudan Divestment Bill in Massachusetts, which required the state pension funds to divest from companies doing business with the Government of Sudan in an effort to halt its human rights violations in Darfur. Ms. Tamir is an attorney with a masters in international law. A devoted human rights activist, she has spoken publicly about human rights, climate resilience, and the food system. Ms. Tamir has had years of experience in government relations and is a former prosecutor who supervised civil rights prosecutions and hate crimes.