Tirana Hassan joined MSF USA as chief executive officer in January 2026. As a lawyer, social worker, and nonprofit executive, she brings to the organization decades of experience in humanitarian and human rights work, advocating for and with people affected by crises around the world.

From 2022 to 2025, Hassan served as executive director of Human Rights Watch, where she led one of the world’s most visible international organizations with more than 500 staff working in over 90 countries. In previous roles at the organization, she oversaw core advocacy, communications, legal, and program departments, and led dozens of international assignments documenting war crimes and attacks on civilians, including attacks on humanitarian workers and medical infrastructure.

Hassan first worked with Doctors Without Borders in Somalia in 2007, where she served as a humanitarian affairs officer. Hassan also led Amnesty International’s crisis response program and has worked as an independent consultant and advisor for UNICEF, Save the Children, and other organizations across East and West Africa and South and Southeast Asia. Early in her career, she was a founding member of a refugee legal service for asylum seekers in mandatory detention in Australia. As a social worker, Hassan worked with children in therapeutic residential care and in child and adolescent mental health services.

Hassan holds honors degrees in social work and law from Australia as well as a master’s in international human rights law from Oxford University.