Gabrielle Apollon
Director, Haitian Immigrant Rights Project
Global Justice Clinic

Gabrielle Apollon directs Rights without Borders: Haitian Immigrant Rights part of the Global Justice Clinic, through which she is building a hemisphere-wide coalition of Haitian activists, lawyers and allies, collaborating to combat the anti-Black racism, exclusion and cyclical displacement Haitians have faced as they’ve migrated throughout the Western Hemisphere.

She is also co-leading the Clinic’s work on climate migration, documenting and challenging anti-Blackness as it relates to Haitians’ experiences of climate harms, in Haiti as well as in transit and destination countries. Gabrielle previously served as Managing Attorney at The Door: A Center for Alternatives, where she represented young people in immigration and family law matters. While at The Door, Gabrielle expanded services for Francophone immigrants and became a New York Community Trust Leadership Fellow. A 2015 graduate of NYU School of Law, Gabrielle was an AnBryce Scholar and served as a student advocate in the Global Justice and Children’s Rights Clinics. As a student, Gabrielle earned a Ford Foundation Public Interest Law Fellowship to work with Conectas in Brazil in 2013, documenting human rights violations of Haitian migrants en route to Brazil.

Prior to law school, Gabrielle worked at the United Nations Office of the Special Envoy to Haiti as a research specialist. She holds a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of International Affairs from Columbia University, where she was awarded the J.W. Saxe Memorial Award for Public Service and Harry J. Carman Fellowship. While studying political science and international development, Gabrielle interned with the Council on Foreign Relations and Haiti’s presidential commission, Groupe de Travail sur l’Education et la Formation (GTEF). Gabrielle speaks French and Haitian Creole. She serves as the Vice President of the Board of Directors of St. Hope Leadership Academy.