Christina Fialho is an attorney and the co-founder/executive director of Freedom for Immigrants, a U.S.-based nonprofit working to abolish immigration detention. Christina is a proud bisexual second generation immigrant who has spent over 15 years advocating for immigrants. She has been awarded the 2016 Ashoka Fellowship and the 2012 Echoing Green Fellowship in recognition of her innovation and entrepreneurship. She also is a recipient of the 2020 John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award. Christina has worked to draft, introduce, and pass several state and federal laws such as the the first statewide legislation in the United States to stop the expansion of immigration detention, the Dignity Not Detention Act, in California. Christina has been named one of the top immigration keynote speakers, and she is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post, the Los Angeles Times, InStyle Magazine, Forbes, and The Hill among others. Her scholarly writings, published by Oxford University Press, the Forced Migration Review, and Springer Publishing, have focused on the intersection of international and immigration law. In 2017, Christina was featured in Grammy-winning artist Miguel's music video, “Now,” on immigration detention, and her organisation was featured in Netflix’s Orange Is The New Black. Prior to starting Freedom for Immigrants, Christina assisted in defending immigrants from detention and deportation before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the U.S. Immigration Courts. She also worked at organisations such as the Global Detention Project and Upwardly Global, and she served on the board of directors of the American Civil Liberties Union (SoCal) and the Detention Watch Network.