It’s our great pleasure today to welcome Professor Natalie Nanasi as an IntLawGrrls contributor.

Natalie is the Director of the Judge Elmo B. Hunter Legal Center for Victims of Crimes Against Women at Southern Methodist University (SMU) Dedman School of Law. Prior to arriving at SMU, Natalie was a Practitioner-in-Residence and the Director of the Domestic Violence Clinic at American University, Washington College of Law (WCL), where she supervised students’ representation of survivors of intimate partner violence in immigration, protective order and related family law cases. She also taught a course in Refugee and Asylum Law.

Before joining the faculty at WCL, Natalie was the Senior Immigration Attorney and Pro Bono Coordinator at the Tahirih Justice Center, where she represented immigrant women and girls fleeing human rights abuses such as female genital mutilation, domestic violence, human trafficking, forced marriage, honor crimes and sexual violence. She also served as counsel in the landmark asylum case of Matter of A-T- and as an Equal Justice Works Fellow from 2007-2009, with a focus on the U visa. Prior to her work at Tahirih, Natalie was a law clerk to the Honorable Lynn Leibovitz of the District of Columbia Superior Court.

Natalie received her J.D. and a Certificate in Refugees and Humanitarian Emergencies from the Georgetown University Law Center. As a law student, she earned an Equal Justice Foundation fellowship for her work at the South Asia Human Rights Documentation Center in New Delhi, India and assisted in the representation of HIV-positive immigrants at Whitman Walker Clinic Legal Services. Prior to her legal career, Natalie was a rape crisis counselor and worked with single teenage mothers at a transitional residence facility in Boston. She is fluent in Spanish and Hungarian.

Natalie’s first post will discuss forced marriage. Heartfelt welcome!