Ian Kysel is the Aryeh Neier Fellow with Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union where he focuses on the solitary confinement of youth held in jails and prisons in the United States. He is also a volunteer with the International Migrants Bill of Rights (IMBR) Initiative, of which he was formerly a co-coordinator. While a law student at Georgetown, Ian worked with the Georgetown Center for Applied Legal Studies, the United States Department of State Office of the Legal Adviser, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Amnesty International USA and Shearman & Sterling, LLP.

Prior to law school, Ian worked with non-citizens seeking asylum in the United States at Bromberg, Kohler Maya & Maschler, PLLC and lived in both Moscow and Algiers. Ian received a B.A. with high honors, Phi Beta Kappa, from Swarthmore College in 2004, where he was a member of Sixteen Feet and helped create a pilot Outdoor Orientation Program with Swarthmore, Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges, and received a J.D., magna cum laude, with a Certificate in Refugees & Humanitarian Emergencies from Georgetown University Law Center in 2011, where he was a Global Law Scholar, recipient of the Bettina E. Pruckmayr Memorial Award and an Articles Editor of the Georgetown Journal of International Law.