Kelsey Romeo-Stuppy has been a leader in global tobacco control since 2013. As Managing Attorney, Kelsey leads ASH’s program on liability, including pursuing criminal and civil cases against the tobacco industry for the harm they cause. Of note, she led ASH’s successful involvement in suing the FDA, with partner organizations, for their inaction regulating menthol in tobacco products. Kelsey also leads ASH’s human rights program, which includes reporting, intervening, and advocating within the entire United Nations system and the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
In particular, Kelsey focuses on the United Nations Human Rights Council, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the Committee on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), and the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) among other human rights treaty bodies. She is a subject matter expert on using human rights mechanisms to strengthen tobacco control polices and accelerate progress to end the tobacco epidemic.
Over the last decade, Kelsey has been active in advocacy work around the WHO FCTC Conference of the Parties (COP). Her expertise at COP matches that of her programmatic work at ASH: liability (Article 19), human rights, and the environment. In 2019, Kelsey launched ASH’s Tobacco and Human Rights Hub as a training resource for other advocates looking to incorporate human rights into their tobacco control work.
Kelsey trains advocates to use legal and human rights arguments to further their tobacco control efforts. She regularly publishes articles in peer reviewed journals. One such article, published in the American Bar Association’s International Law News on Tobacco and Human Rights in Latin America was chosen by another ABA Publication, GP Solo Magazine, to be included in a “Best of the ABA” feature issue.
Kelsey is frequently sought after as a speaker on the topics of public health, tobacco control policy, human rights, liability, the environment, global mechanisms, and other intersecting topics for events around the world. She has presented at several World Conferences on Tobacco or Health and numerous regional and national conferences, including ASH’s Global Forum on Human Rights and a Tobacco-Free World, hosted by the Romanian President in the Presidential Palace in Bucharest, Romania. And she serves on the External Advisory Board for the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California – San Francisco.
Kelsey strives to continue learning and has completed numerous continuing education programs including earning a certificate from Georgetown Law’s O’Neill Institute Summer Program on Health Rights Litigation. Kelsey holds a J.D. from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, where she also earned a certificate in International and Comparative Law, and centered her coursework around human rights.