Why you should listen
As the co-founder and executive director of the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), Becca Heller works tirelessly to improve refugee and immigration policy and practices. Together with a robust network of legal advocates, she equips displaced people seeking safety and refuge with legal information, knowledge and representation so that they might know and activate their rights and gain access to available help.
Heller co-founded IRAP in 2008, while she was still in law school, specifically to help Iraqi refugee families living in Jordan. Since then, she has pioneered the field of refugee rights and educated a new generation of lawyers and activists on the importance of access to counsel for those whose lives hang in the balance. She has received numerous awards for her work, including a MacArthur Fellowship in 2018. She was named Foreign Policy's "Citizen Diplomat of the Year" in 2017.
