Visiting Fellow Michelle Leighton

Michelle Leighton is chief of the Labour Migration Branch for the International Labour Organization, leading the global program on labor migration and mobility related to migrant workers and refugees. She is an expert in international law, human rights, climate displacement, and development, receiving her LLM degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1987. She serves as an expert on the UNFCCC's Warsaw International Mechanism Task Force on displacement related to climate change.

Leighton is a former member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Migration, was a Fulbright Scholar, and held the Munich Re Foundation Chair on Social Vulnerability at the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security. She also served on the German Marshall Fund’s Trans-Atlantic Study Team on Climate and Migration. She directed the Center for Law and Global Justice Human Rights Program at the University of San Francisco Law School and co-founded the Natural Heritage Institute in San Francisco leading programs on environment, migration, corporate social responsibility, and human and labor rights.