Melissa Lefas

Melissa Lefas is Chief of Strategy for the Global Center, where she is responsible for organizational strategy and team development. She spent several years managing Global Center programs throughout East Africa, the Middle East, North Africa, the Sahel, and South Asia with a primary focus on human rights, capacity development, and due process in handling terrorism and related cases. Previously, she applied her international, human rights, and immigration legal expertise in fragile and postconflict regions in East Africa and Haiti working for a number of institutions, including the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Additionally, she led development programming for Engineers Without Borders in western and southern Africa. She holds a BS in civil and environmental engineering from McGill University and a JD from the Cardozo School of Law. She is a New York Peace Institute–approved mediator.