Awista Ayazi is an Afghan-American human rights defender, impact litigator, and legal strategist. Her expertise integrates experience in high-stakes litigation and advocacy, transnational investigation, and bridge-building with impacted communities to expose misconduct, advance accountability, and influence systemic reform. She is a former AmLaw 100 litigator with a career spanning diverse experiences across 15 countries on four continents.

From corporate accountability cases to multimillion-dollar projects with international NGOs and the U.S. Department of State, Awista aims to empower vulnerable communities. She has represented survivors of genocide and other atrocity crimes in mass human rights litigation against corporate giants like Meta and Exxon, and worked alongside frontline environmental and human rights defenders to amplify grassroots advocacy.

She currently serves as an adjunct professor at The George Washington University Law School, teaching a seminar on the intersection of human rights and environmental protection. Her recent research focuses on human rights and environmental failures in tourism-centered investments, particularly conservation-linked land dispossession and displacement of Indigenous communities in Southeast Asia. She also consults on corporate accountability litigation, conducting international fact-finding investigations and legal analyses for leading plaintiffs’ firms.

Awista earned her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center while serving as a judicial extern for the Hon. Emmet G. Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for D.C. She also holds an LL.M. in International Human Rights Law from Oxford Brookes University in the U.K. Outside of her work, Awista finds joy in nature, especially while rock climbing and kite surfing.