Archana Pyati

Archana Pyati

Archana joined Sanctuary for Families as a senior staff attorney in November 2007. As Deputy Director of the Immigration Intervention Project, Archana manages Sanctuary's gender-based asylum project, litigating asylum and other immigration cases and supervising attorneys at New York's top law firms in their handling of complex immigration matters on a pro bono basis. She serves as an expert on gender-based asylum to the legal community and the media. 

Archana is also a co-founder and co-chair of a nationwide coalition to stop female genital mutilation and lectures on the subject to physicians, educators, and members of the community. She also sits on the South Asian Task Force against Domestic Violence and is a co-author of the South Asian Power and Control Lotus, an innovative tool for counseling and interviewing survivors of domestic violence.

Before joining Sanctuary for Families, Archana was a senior associate with the Human Rights Defenders Program of Human Rights First from 2004 to 2007.  She conducted field research on gender-based human rights violations in a range of countries, authored reports, and advocated for foreign policy changes through lobbying and congressional testimony. From 2002 to 2004, she was an Equal Justice Works Fellow with the Asylum Program of Human Rights First, providing legal information to hundreds of asylum seekers detained in the New York area and advocating for detainees' rights through public education, national collaboration, and media campaigns.