2020 Speaker
Founder & Executive Director, Climate Refugees

Amali Tower is the Founder and Executive Director of Climate Refugees. Impacted by conflict and instability herself, she has worked the past 15 years to promote the protection of refugees and forcibly displaced persons in a variety of contexts, including in refugee resettlement, protection, evaluation and research with the UN Refugee Agency in Kenya and in Jordan on Syria response, various NGOs throughout Africa, Asia, the Middle East and the US, and as a sub-contractor and consultant to the US Department of State's overseas US Refugee Admissions Program.

Amali has interviewed and resettled countless refugees, as well as worked with internally displaced persons over the years in urban and camp contexts and has strong field research and advocacy experience in human rights, humanitarian programming and conflict risk analysis.

Amali is a frequent consultant in the human rights and humanitarian fields. Some of her human rights campaign work includes immigration detention policy, where she’s written successful legislation to prevent detention expansion and provided legislative guidance in various public interest fields. She provides subject matter expertise and serves on expert deployment rosters in the humanitarian field.

She holds a Master of International Affairs focused in Human Rights from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, a Bachelor of Arts in International Development Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles, and an International Diploma in Humanitarian Assistance from Fordham University.