Dr. Amanda Dale is an international human rights activist, scholar and non-profit sector consultant. She began her work in the homeless women's shelters and drop-ins of Toronto. However, she is best known for her decade as the Executive Director of the Barbra Schlifer Clinic, Canada’s comprehensive gender-based violence legal, counselling and language interpretation clinic in Toronto. Under her leadership, the Clinic underwent an historic period of growth and influence, engaging in transformative policy change, legal challenges and service re-design. Previously, she was the Director of Advocacy and Communications at YWCA Toronto.  Dr. Dale specializes in the application of international human rights standards to national contexts, with a specialization in violence against women, access to justice and women's human rights. She is currently a Research Fellow at the Human Rights Research and Education Centre at the University of Ottawa's Faculty of Law, faculty at the Women's Human Rights Institute, and a recognized spokesperson and expert in the way law impacts marginalized people's lives and in women’s rights and violence against women.

Amanda has over 30 years’ experience working in municipal, provincial, national, international, multicultural, urban, and remote contexts. Her leadership was pivotal to the Jane Doe Audit of Toronto Police sexual assault investigations, the successful restriction of the use of religious arbitration in the settlement of family law matters in Ontario, the development of a women’s shelter in the Arctic, and the success of projects in Ghana and Sudan that resulted in increased women’s political participation.   Unger her leadership the Barbra Schlifer Clinic took on an advanced role in direct access to justice service development, test case litigation, and appellate work, as well as international human rights work. She identifies as Queer and has been out since the late 1970s. For three decades, Amanda has remained active in feminist movements contributing to many organizations, including Quimaavik Shelter (Nunavut), Nellie’s Hostel, St. Joseph’s Women Health Centre, YWCA Toronto. She is an Expert Group Member for the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women on rape as a grave and systematic human rights violation; Chair of the Board at Inter Pares; on the advisory board of the Canadian Centre for Legal Innovation in Sexual Assault Response (CCLISAR), and for three years was part of the Expert Advisory Panel of the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability. Amanda is the 2013 recipient of the YWCA Woman of Distinction Award for Social Justice. Amanda holds a Masters in Social and Political Thought from the University of Sussex, a Masters in International Human Rights Law from the University of Oxford and a PhD from Osgoode Hall Law School, and co-taught Ethical Lawyering in a Global Community at Osgoode for four years.

Recent consultations include: authoring legal analyses of the current protections regarding GBVAW in IHRL;  authoring a national action plan for public policy response to gender based violence, to guide the federal Ministry of Women and Gender Equality; guiding agencies on the international human rights protections of women and gender diverse people; assisting a Toronto-based women's service centre in devising an advocacy position paper, strategy, theory of change and staff engagement; developing curriculum for the Women's Human Rights Institute on intersectional women's human rights as a tool for rural, remote and indigenous women to advocate for their rights; a scoping project for future delivery of Independent Legal Advice for sexual assault survivors in two maritime provinces.