Sonya Passi (she/her)

Founder and CEO 

FreeFrom

Sonya Passi is the Founder and CEO of FreeFrom, a national organization transforming our society’s response to gender-based violence so that survivors and their families can thrive. To date, FreeFrom has served over 30,000 survivors and successfully changed policy to support the financial security of over 5.3 million survivors in the US. Sonya has been an anti-violence activist since she was 16 years old. During high school, she started an Amnesty International Community Group and, while working on their global violence against women campaign, discovered her life’s work. While earning her law degree at UC Berkeley, she launched the Family Violence Appellate Project (FVAP). Based in Oakland, California, FVAP provides free appellate legal services to survivors of intimate partner violence in California and has fundamentally transformed the legal landscape in California. Sonya also holds a BA and MPhil from the University of Cambridge (Trinity College).

For her work in the field, Sonya was awarded the 2024 Elevate Prize, was listed in Forbes’ “30 Under 30 Class of 2017” for Law and Policy, and has served as an Ashoka, Roddenberry, Draper Richards Kaplan, and New America California fellow. She has presented on her work to the UN, the White House, members of Congress and federal agencies, several major corporations, and various city and state agencies and commissions. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, CNN, Marketwatch, Business Insider, and other leading news outlets.