Leila Lorenzo

Policy Director, SWANA Regional Director

Leila Lorenzo is the Director of Respond Language Democracy Project, our grassroots policy program. She is a policy advocate, activist, translator, educator and project manager, with a focus on the intersection of immigration reform, trauma studies, economic inequality and opportunity. Her commitment to language access stems from her background as a daughter of two immigrants who fled two revolutions and her public diplomacy and educational work with Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Afghan students in the Republic of Tajikistan. These experiences imbued her with deep commitment to better outcomes for displaced, underserved, and traumatized populations both within the US and diaspora and asylum communities. She previously led the Iranian languages team at Respond Crisis Translation, for which she oversaw the translation of asylum evidence documents, crisis resources, interpretation projects, and spearheaded the recruitment of volunteers for Persian, Pashto, and Kurdish projects. She also brings a background spanning the legal, educational, think tank, and nonprofit spaces where she has worked on interdisciplinary historical, economic and planetary governance research and policy. Her languages include Farsi, Dari, Tajik, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian and German.