Kate Nahapetian

About Kate Nahapetian

KATE NAHAPETIAN is the Manager of Client Services at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, where she works primarily with the Securities Litigation & Investor Protection practice group.

Prior to joining Cohen Milstein, Kate practiced as a human rights attorney, as well as litigated class actions for a highly regarded plaintiff-side firm. Her more than 20 years of public policy experience includes working for then Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr., the U.S. Department of Justice, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Disability Rights International. She was Government Affairs Director for the Armenian National Committee of America, a grassroots nonprofit touted as one of the most effective ethnic lobbies, where she successfully led foreign policy lobbying campaigns in Congress and before senior White House officials. Moreover, she was the Founding Executive Director of the Armenian Legal Center for Justice and Human Rights, where she developed several joint human rights projects with law schools around the country, including Yale and University of Southern California.

Kate received a J.D., with a focus on international and human rights law, from the University of California at Berkeley School of Law and a B.A., magna cum laude, from American University. She was awarded a Konrad Adenauer Foundation Fellowship to pursue graduate studies at The University of Bonn in Germany and researched EU asylum policies for the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin. 

Her publications include, “Confronting State Complicity in International Law,” UCLA Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs, and “Selective Justice: Prosecuting Rape in the International Criminal Tribunals of the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda,” Berkeley Women’s Law Journal.

Kate was born to Armenian parents in Iran. Her family received asylum in the United States following the 1978 Iranian revolution.