Natalie Petrucci

Natalie Petrucci is a Supervising Senior Staff Attorney in Human Rights First’s New York office. Her responsibilities include helping to administer Human Rights First’s pro bono refugee representation program, mentoring pro bono attorneys, supervising Human Rights First’s legal staff, and directly representing asylum seekers before the Immigration Court and USCIS Asylum Office.

Before joining Human Rights First, Natalie served as a Staff Attorney at A Better Balance, where she played a key role in helping to defend and implement several new workers’ rights protections in Colorado. In 2022, she was awarded the Pro Bono Champion award by her local chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) for her extensive pro bono work.  Previously, Natalie then served as a Supervising Attorney with ProBAR, a project of the American Bar Association located South Texas, and worked in private practice at a boutique immigration law firm specializing in asylum representation.  Natalie also worked with the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network in Colorado, where she represented children and families seeking humanitarian immigration relief before the immigration court, USCIS, and in custody and guardianship proceedings before Colorado state courts. She also managed the organization’s non-detained pro bono program.

Natalie received her Juris Doctorate from UCLA School of Law, with graduate certificates from the Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy and the Critical Race Studies Program. During law school, she advocated for detained asylum seekers in Arizona and Colorado and spent a semester working with a labor and human rights organization in Nicaragua. Prior to law school, Natalie served as a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Panama. She also worked at the Prison Law Office in Berkeley, California, where she fought for the medical and disability rights of people incarcerated in California prisons. Originally from Florida, Natalie is fluent in Spanish and is licensed in Colorado