Fulbright Global Scholar Nikki Dryden ’05 Practices at the Nexus of Sports and Human Rights

Horizontal Photo credit: Thomas Søndergaard 
Inset Photo: Courtesy

Combining many years of experience in competitive sports with a commitment to defending human rights, attorney Nikki Dryden ’05 has built a singular career, and, as she recently shared on LinkedIn, the early encouragement she received at Brooklyn Law School played a key role.  

Dryden, who is based in Australia, knew she wanted to be a human rights lawyer before she started at the Law School, and was an Edward V. Sparer Public Interest Law Fellow, interning at Equality Now, researching and advocating changes to gender discriminatory laws around the world. She used this opportunity and her work with Professor Samuel Murumba to build a career fighting against gender discrimination in sport and other forms of athlete abuse.  

“When I first approached Professor Murumba with the idea of a law review article on sport and human rights, there weren’t any jobs in the field, and certainly no lawyers writing about it,” Dryden said. “I am grateful for the support he gave me to pursue my passion, which continues to be a lifelong learning journey.”  

The two-time Olympic swimmer (she participated on Team Canada in the 1992 games in Barcelona and the 1996 games in Atlanta) and medalist in the Commonwealth and Pan American Games founded Lex Athleta after graduating from Brooklyn Law to serve as an independent adviser, researcher, and consultant on issues concerning athlete rights, international human rights law, the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and gender inclusion and safeguarding. In 2021, she put together a team which evacuated over 80 female athletes and their families from Afghanistan to Australia. She has consulted with Sport Integrity Australia on human rights and international law, regularly provides pro bono legal support to athletes with human rights claims, successfully advocated for the International Olympic Committee to update their Charter rules on the rights to freedom of expression and due process, and served as an athlete ambassador for Right to Play, a humanitarian group that helps refugee children to rebuild their lives through sport.

Crowning these accomplishments, Dryden was chosen as a Fulbright Global Scholar to Canada and the United Kingdom from 2022 to 2023. Her Fulbright endeavors involved conducting research and working with Sport Resolutions UK and the Sport Dispute Resolution Centre of Canada to examine how sport disputes get resolved in cases of human rights violations. Dryden defines a human rights dispute as “any sporting matter that infringes upon or violates the athlete's fundamental human right” such as sex discrimination, restrictions of freedom of speech or expression, labor rights, and abuse cases. “Fulbright was important to understanding how domestic and alternative sport tribunals are managing sport and human rights cases,” Dryden said, in an interview with the Fulbright team. (Read the newly released Fulbright profile of Dryden here.)