Maureen McTeer is a respected Canadian lawyer and author and a leading health advocate and symbol of gender equality in Canada. She holds graduate degrees in law from the University of Ottawa; in Health Law from Dalhousie University in Halifax, and in biotechnological law and ethics from the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom. She has been awarded three honorary doctorates - from Carleton University and Athabasca University for her work on behalf of women's equality and health policy, and from the University of Sheffield in recognition of her pioneering work in the fields of law, science and public policy.
Ms. McTeer heads the international health and maternal health policy group within Joe Clark & Associates Limited. During the past three decades she has met and worked with community groups and visited development projects in several countries in the developing world. She is the lay member of the National Council of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada and the Canadian representative of the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood. As a community activist, Ms. McTeer has been a founding member of Canada's Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies, a candidate for election to the House of Commons of Canada, coordinator of Calgary's bid to be designated a National Centre of Excellence in Women's Health, a panelist at the Ministerial Conference of the Community of Democracies in Santiago in 2005, and Chair of the community advisory Board of the Shirley E. Greenberg Women's Health Centre in Ottawa.
In 1989, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Ms. McTeer co-founded and became the first Chair of the Canadian Bar Association's Eastern and Central European Legal Internship Programs which brought young lawyers and judges from Eastern and Central Europe to work and learn in Canadian law firms, courts, and regulatory agencies. For her work to promote the rule of law and an independent judiciary, she was awarded both the CBA's Louis St. Laurent Award for Legal Excellence, and the Hungarian President's Cross.
Committed to democratic institution building, she has worked as an Election Observer with the Washington, D.C.-based National Democratic Institute in elections in Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, and the Dominican Republic.
Fluently bilingual, she has published four best-selling books, including a personal memoir, and taught at the Universities of Dalhousie, Calgary and British Columbia in Canada, and at the University of California at Berkeley, American University and George Mason University in the United States.
Ms. McTeer is currently an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Common Law at the University of Ottawa, and a Distinguished Scholar in Residence in the Department of Government at the School of Public Affairs and in the Women and Politics Institute at American University in Washington D.C.
