In Rule of Law, Director Seeks Fairness for All

Growing up in rural Utah, Leanne Webster felt out of place. Hunting horrified her, as did eating lamb, even as her brothers geared up with their rifles and her father ranched sheep. In a place where “others” hardly existed, she gravitated to people different from her and despised bullies. She left town the day after high school graduation, armed with a sense of fairness and determined to do good in the world.

In May 2024, Webster joined The Carter Center as the director of its Rule of Law Program, which supports civil society organizations in advocating for their rights, while working with government entities to help make this aspiration a reality through improved accountability and transparency.

It means, for example, working with the justice sector in Sierra Leone to implement laws that improve the status and representation of women. It’s conducting trainings in Bangladesh, so marginalized groups are aware of their right to information and government officials strengthen their ability to provide it. It’s training police on gender sensitivity in Costa Rica and then seeing those officers train others. It’s empowering youth groups to conduct social audits to hold local governments accountable in Guatemala.

Webster’s path to the Center was circuitous. She first thought she’d make her mark as an environmental lawyer, but the introductory coursework in law school at University of Utah turned her off. After graduating, she joined a firm to do corporate litigation, where she was miscast but managed to pay off her loans. She hit reset, and grew “much happier, much more aligned,” she said, when she turned her attention to public interest work and headed to New York University for a master’s in nonprofit management.

While waiting for clearances to become a foreign service officer with the U.S. Agency for International Development, she served as a community organizer with Planned Parenthood in Utah and got a crash course in politics.

Webster’s more than five years with USAID as a democracy and governance officer took her to posts in El Salvador, Afghanistan, and Paraguay. After leaving the agency, she worked with implementers of U.S. government-funded programs, mostly in Latin America, for another decade.

What drew her to The Carter Center was its diversified funding, its ability to keep politics out of money and do more innovative work with fewer strings attached.

“I just thought there’s got to be another way,” she said. “I wanted to do more than just follow instructions.”

Success shows up in attitudinal shifts, she says, changes that improve people’s lives through a long-game approach. The work requires being OK with taking one step forward and two steps back and recognizing that having a seat at the table is often as important as producing immediate results.

For these reasons, she’s on a mission to push for continued financial support of the Bangladesh program, which took a major hit when the U.S. government slashed funding — leaving only a “skeleton team” behind just as a reform-minded interim government presents opportunities for inroads.

“We’ve made so much investment there, and we don’t want to lose those gains. We don’t want to give up our presence,” she said.

Fortunately, she knows she’s not alone in this fight.

“I find comfort and encouragement within The Carter Center because we all share this passion and dedication,” she said. “I have a lot of faith in our capabilities.”