Leila joins RSN with a background in law, migration and policy. A former RSN Board Member, she has worked vigorously on refugee protection and legal matters with UNHCR in the Middle East, Washington, D.C., and in New York. Leila helped prepare appeals of refugee status determination rejections in Istanbul with the Helsinki Citizens Assembly. She investigated and wrote about international country conditions for refugees in the World Refugee Survey for USCRI. Leila worked on U.S. immigration matters domestically in both the private sector at a Manhattan law firm, and in the public sector for the largest property service workers’ labor union in the U.S.
Displacement has been closely woven into Leila’s family story and her passion for understanding the legal underpinnings of migration led her to law school. Leila earned her Juris Doctor on full scholarship from the City University of New York. In law school, Leila conducted immigration research as a graduate fellow; she was also a judicial intern assisting a New York Immigration Court judge in drafting complex asylum decisions; and she conducted international legal trainings in Haiti for various local community organizations with her law school’s human rights clinic. Leila received her Master’s in International Affairs from Sciences Po in Paris, France, with part of her graduate studies at Columbia University in New York; and she earned her Political Science Bachelor’s from McGill University in Montreal.
Most recently, Leila has been a legal fellow with the global human rights organization, WITNESS. There, she investigated how video evidence of immigration enforcement abuses may be used to support immigrants in deportation cases in U.S. Immigration Court. She has conducted a training around this research for the New York-based public defenders’ organization, The Bronx Defenders; and her findings will soon be released in a guide for lawyers and community members.
For the past seven years, Leila’s legal and policy backgrounds have converged with her interest in documenting human stories through new mediums in art, especially film and photography. Her projects have exhibited at the Institute for Peace and Justice in San Diego, the McCord Museum in Montreal, and most recently, she developed a multi-series short film campaign on resettled refugees for UNHCR Canada.
Leila is thrilled to continue working to advance refugee legal rights through RSN’s unique approach, priorities, and partnership model.