personal journey

Banafsheh Akhlaghi is a pioneering civil and human rights attorney, educator and social entrepreneur. She has learned through her work how decisions we make globally affect us locally. She immigrated to the United States from her native Iran with her parents at the age of five and started her career as a professor of Constitutional Law at the John F. Kennedy School of Law. Banafsheh has worked with the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM and was the director of the West Region for Amnesty International.

She has won several awards for her work, including the Fred Korematsu Civil Rights Award and was nominated for the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award. Banafsheh was named “Top 100 Leading Lawyers in California” and “Top 100 Most Influential Lawyers in California” by the Daily Journal. She was also nominated for the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award in 2008 and received a Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition from the U.S. House of Representatives the same year.