RLO’s Founder and Owner, Donna Robinson, is licensed to practice law in Georgia and Florida, and she served as a Vice Chair on the Georgia Statewide Human Trafficking Task Force from 2015 until 2020. She holds a cum laude Juris Doctor from Florida A&M University College of Law and a Masters of Law in International Human Rights Law from American University Washington College of Law. Prior to launching RLO, Donna held positions with the Supreme Court of the Republic of Ghana, the World Bank International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, and the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. To date, she has lived and worked in Ghana, Uganda, Jordan, and Iraq.
A Florida native, Donna has over twenty years of experience in human rights advocacy, primarily genocide prevention and human trafficking. Early in her career, she founded an organization to advocate for the end of the genocide in the Darfur region of the Republic of Sudan. Through regular and targeted awareness campaigns and initiatives, Donna has maintained a solid network of U.S. and Sudanese activists that she continues to coordinate with on a weekly basis. She currently serves as the Legal Advisor for the Darfur Women’s Action Group, a survivor-led organization that promotes women’s empowerment in the face of mass atrocities.
In 2023, Donna received the Atlanta Business Chronicle’s Women of Influence award, and the State Bar of Georgia honored her with the 2024 Commitment to Equality Award One-to-Watch Award. Her work in human rights has been featured by the United Nations, the Florida Bar, and the Iraqi News Agency.
Donna previously served as the Migration Governance Expert for the United Nations International Organization for Migration – Iraq Office, where she trained government officials on human rights law and legislative techniques. From 2016 until 2019, Donna worked as a Senior International Legal Advisor for a private firm in Baghdad, Iraq, where she managed international projects related to economic reform, investment promotion, and sustainable development. In the lead up to the 2021 Iraqi elections, she designed the Iraqi Voter Engagement Initiative to improve accountability, governance, and transparency in a post-conflict society.
A dedicated advocate in the fight against modern-day slavery, Donna has held positions with anti-trafficking organizations in Florida, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. While in D.C., she worked with Shared Hope International and lobbied state representatives for stronger child protection laws, and she also served as the Co-Director of Training with D.C. Stop Modern Slavery. As a descendant of West Africans who were kidnapped, trafficked, and enslaved in the United States, Donna feels deeply connected to the problem of human trafficking and is determined “to abolish slavery…for good this time.”