Yoel Haile is the Director of the Criminal Justice Program at the ACLU of Northern California. In this capacity, he provides leadership to a team that works to end mass incarceration, criminalization, and police abuse by ending unjust and oppressive laws, policies, and practices that target and disproportionately harm Black, Brown, and other marginalized communities. 

 

Yoel grew up in Asmara, Eritrea, and moved to California in 2006. He attended the University of California, Santa Barbara as an undergraduate, where he received his degrees in Black Studies and political science in 2013. There, he helped initiate and negotiate Black student demands to the campus chancellor that resulted in more than $3.7 million in immediate and committed funding for the recruitment and retention of Black students, staff and faculty. 

 

As the founding Political Director of the Afrikan Black Coalition, Yoel helped lead campaigns that resulted in the University of California divesting all of its nearly $30 million in holdings from private prison companies and terminating $475 million in contracts with Wells Fargo for its discriminatory lending practices and financing mass incarceration. 

 

Yoel continues to work with African refugees in navigating the immigration and refugee systems. Yoel received his Master’s degree in public policy from the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley.  He joins PAN after working in various community support efforts!