Robin Runge

Professor Runge is an internationally recognized legal expert on preventing and addressing gender-based violence and harassment in the world of work and has extensive law school teaching experience, including clinical legal education.

Between 2004-2025, Professor Runge taught Domestic Violence Law, Public Interest Lawyering, the Domestic Violence Project Clinic and the Workers’ Rights Division of the Access to Justice Clinic at The George Washington University School of Law. She has also taught at the University of Virgina School of Law, American University, Washington College of Law, and the University of North Dakota School of Law from 2009-2013 where she co-taught a Housing and Employment Law Clinic as a tenure-track law professor. In 2012-2013, she received a Fulbright Research Scholar award to live in Beijing, China and study the legal system response to violence against women in China and participate in the development of the national anti-domestic violence law that was adopted in 2015. 

Professor Runge has written extensively on the employment rights of survivors of gender-based violence and has had articles she has authored or co-authored published in Catholic University Law Review, Clinical Law Review, Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal, American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law, and the Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law & Policy. She is co-author of the book, Stopping Gender-Based Violence in the World of Work (Aspen Publishing 2022), describing the landmark union women led global campaign culminating in the adoption of International Labor Organization Convention 190 (C190) the first ever binding international treaty to eliminate violence and harassment in the world of work including gender-based violence and harassment. She served on the technical drafting committee for workers at the negotiations for C190 in 2018 and 2019 in Geneva, Switzerland at the United Nations supporting the worker group. Professor Runge has consulted with domestic and international organizations to prevent and address gender-based violence and harassment in the world of work, and regularly provides workshops, keynotes and other trainings and presentations on these issues.

Professor Runge has held multiple leadership positions in the federal government and in public interest organizations including Director of Enforcement Policy and Procedures in the Wage and Hour Division and Senior Policy Advisor in the Civil Rights Center at the U.S. Department of Labor; Co-Director of the Equality and Inclusion Department at the Solidarity Center; Director of the American Bar Association Commission on Domestic Violence and Deputy Director and Coordinator of the Program on Women’s Employment Rights (POWER) at the DC Employment Justice Center. Upon graduation from law school, Ms. Runge received an Equal Justice Works Fellowship and created the Domestic Violence and Employment Project at the Legal Aid Society of San Francisco (now Legal Aid at Work), one of the first programs in the country devoted exclusively to advocating for the employment rights of domestic violence victims. 

Professor Runge has an extensive history of service and has received numerous awards in recognition of her leadership as social justice and public interest attorney. She is a board member of the Center for Social Law and Policy (CLASP) and was appointed to the ABA Commission in Domestic and Sexual Violence in 2026. From 2025-2026, she chaired Alumni Advisory Council of Equal Justice Works and served as the chair of the ABA Section on Civil Rights and Social Justice from 2023-2024.

She is a graduate of The George Washington University Law School and Wellesley College.