Emily Arnold-Fernández was a social entrepreneur in residence during the fall 2012 quarter with CDDRL's Program on Social Entrepreneurship. She will be spending the 2013/14 academic year as a practitioner-in-residence with the Program on Social Entrepreneurship.

She is the founder and executive director of Asylum Access, is a social entrepreneur and human rights pioneer. Recognizing that refugees throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America – some of whom flee with nothing more than the clothes on their backs – were almost always unequipped to go into a legal proceeding in a foreign country, alone, and explain why they should not be deported, Emily founded Asylum Access to advocate on behalf of refugees seeking to assert their rights.

“For half a century, international law has given refugees the rights to live safely,
seek employment, send children to school and rebuild their lives. But those rights are
meaningless unless they are respected on the ground,” she says. “Asylum Access
provides a rare opportunity to fill a gaping hole in our human rights system – by making
refugee rights a reality for real people.”

For her innovative approach to the global refugee crisis, Emily was honored by the
Dalai Lama as one of 50 “Unsung Heroes of Compassion” from around the world (2009)
and Waldzell Institute’s Architects of the Future Award (2012). She has also been
recognized as Pomona College’s Inspirational Young Alumna (2006), awarded the
prestigious Echoing Green fellowship (2007), and recognized as the New Leaders
Council’s 40 Under 40 (2010), among others. Emily’s ground-breaking work with
Asylum Access has earned her international speaking invitations and widespread media
attention, including the Rotary International Peace Symposium (2008, 2009), the UN
High Commissioner for Refugees’ Annual Consultations (2008, 2009), a cover feature in
the Christian Science Monitor (September 2009), and the San Francisco Examiner’s
Credo column (July 2011). She holds a B.A. cum laude from Pomona College and a J.D.
from Georgetown University Law Center.

Committed to sharing her knowledge with young and aspiring social
entrepreneurs, Emily serves as an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco,
teaching a course in social entrepreneurship. In Fall 2012, Emily was selected as one of
three Social Entrepreneurs in Residence at Stanford where she participated as “expert
respondent” in Stanford Law School’s Law, Social Entrepreneurship and Social Change
course, and in Spring 2013, Emily led an intensive skills-building course on social
entrepreneurship at Pomona College.

A visionary human rights activist, Emily Arnold-Fernández takes her inspiration
from a line in a June Jordan poem: “We are the ones we have been waiting for.”