Carolina Henriquez-Schmitz

Director, TrustLaw

Carolina Henriquez-Schmitz, Director of TrustLaw since April 2020, is an international attorney who has spent over a decade working to educate and empower lawyers to be proactive leaders in driving social change. Carolina is passionate about Access to Justice, Social Entrepreneurship and Human Rights.

Carolina joined the Thomson Reuters Foundation in 2014 and was Regional Lead and Legal Manager until 2018. In that capacity, she worked with social impact partners in the Americas and beyond to develop strategic resources and skills-building opportunities in the fields of Inclusive Economies, Human Rights and Media Freedom. She spearheaded the development of TrustLaw’s Social Enterprise and Impact Investing trainings in the U.S., and pioneered TrustLaw’s virtual learning workshops and global corporate pro bono initiative. After two years away, Carolina returned to the Thomson Reuters Foundation in 2020 as Director of the TrustLaw service, and now oversees TrustLaw’s strategy, team, relationships and impact around the world.

Prior to returning to the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Carolina was the founding Executive Director of the NYU Law Grunin Center for Law and Social Entrepreneurship –the first center of its kind at a law school–, which is dedicated to enhancing a community of lawyers and legal institutions engaged in social entrepreneurship and impact investing through education, resource development, and collaboration.

Earlier in her career, Carolina worked in private practice at two leading international law firms, where she specialized in international finance, dispute resolution, and business and human rights. She was also a legal expert for the ABA Center for Human Rights and previously worked as a legal fellow for the Zambian Law Development Commission and at the World Bank in Latin America.

Carolina is a dual-qualified lawyer in the U.S. and Venezuela, and holds an LLM from Harvard Law School, where she studied international finance and development.