Baljeet Sandhu

Biography

Baljeet Sandhu is a UK human rights lawyer, a Visiting Fellow at the Yale Law School Information Society Project, and Founder of the Knowledge Equity Initiative (KEI) at the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale University. Baljeet’s core interests span education, innovation, entrepreneurship and social and economic justice. She has spoken widely on the need for inclusive and equitable opportunities for changemakers with direct lived experience of the social and environmental problems we collectively seek to tackle in the world.

KEI is a ground-breaking interdisciplinary research, education, and practice program seeking to share knowledge and learning across local, national, and global communities. Through a broad range of multidisciplinary partnerships, KEI explores how institutions, investors, entrepreneurs and educators can meaningfully and equitably value both lived and learned experience to lead positive social change, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

Baljeet is an adviser to philanthropists, investors, and government departments, and is a founding partner of the 2027 Talent Programme, a collaboration with leading UK organizations and funders to diversify the UK philanthropic sector and bring community power into grant giving. Before joining Yale University, Baljeet was the founding director of the Migrant & Refugee Children’s Legal Unit (MiCLU) and founding partner of Kids In Need of Defense UK, successfully leading a wide range of national and global legal, policy and access to justice strategies to protect the rights of vulnerable migrant and refugee children. She has served as a Special Adviser to the UK Children’s Commissioner; the UK Home Office Children’s Asylum and Immigration sub-committee and has also served as an Expert Advisor to the Strategic Legal Fund for Vulnerable Young Migrants, where she helped shape and inform the design of an innovative funding program for strategic litigation and policy work in the UK.