Stefánia Kapronczay

Stefánia Kapronczay currently serves as the Director of Strategy at the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (since April 2023). Previously, she had been the Executive Director of the HCLU for ten years during transformative years for the organization. During these ten years, the organization has adapted to the closing democratic space in Hungary by broadening its previously predominantly legal tools and topics addressed. During these ten years, the HCLU has also seriously diversified its budget from being dependent on one institutional donor to having several institutional donors and 30% of its funding from Hungarian private donors.

Kapronczay graduated cum laude from the Faculty of Law at ELTE as a lawyer and completed a five-year master's program in sociology in 2010. Stefania started working at the HCLU in 2005. She was the Head of the Patients’ Rights Program from March 2008 to August 2012; as program director, Kapronczay led HCLU's effort to stop restrictions on reproductive rights and criminalization of homelessness and to foster the rights of persons with disabilities.

Between August 2012 and July 2013, she was a scholar at Stanford University, attending courses on human rights and public interest work and graduating as Master of the Science of Law. Stefania wrote her dissertation on the sexual and reproductive rights of people with disabilities. She was elected co-chair of the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations in May 2014.

Currently, she is a member of the board of the digital rights organization Access Now and the advisory board of Lakmusz, a Hungarian fact-checking website. She was a German Marshall Fund fellow in 2015. Stefania is an advisory board member to the School of Public Life, a community-based research and training center, and a former member of the Rajk László College for Advanced Studies advisory board. She is a 2018 European Young Leaders (EYL40) program class member.