Betsy Bennion joined BYU Law School’s International Center for Law and Religion Studies in 2025 as associate director for Latin America and the Caribbean. Previously, she served as a diplomat for the U.S. State Department in Mexico, Pakistan, Washington, D.C., and at NATO headquarters in Belgium.

Prior to joining the Foreign Service, she had a legal career. She worked on a prosecution team at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, clerked on both the Utah Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, taught at BYU Law School, and practiced at several large law firms. She also performed research for Human Rights Watch in San Francisco and provided appellate expertise for the federal public defender office in Salt Lake City.

Betsy’s degrees include a J.D. from UCLA and M.A. from Stanford University. She grew up in Palo Alto, California, and Geneva, Switzerland. Besides her tours abroad with the U.S. State Department, she has also lived in Brazil, England, Israel, and the Netherlands.