Gwendolyn Albert, a native Californian, first came to Prague as a Fulbright scholar in 1989, participating in the Velvet Revolution as a translator for Civic Forum. Since returning to the Czech Republic in 1994 she has been an activist on Roma issues, starting with the cause of the Lety concentration camp in 1995. She co-founded the Kosovo Roma Refugee Foundation in 2002 and in 2004 was elected the first-ever Director of the League of Human Rights, a Czech civic association which addresses violent human rights violations in the Czech Republic through free legal aid to victims.