Maya Aronoff

Bio/Description

Maya Aronoff ’19 MPA '23 of Mason, Michigan, graduated magna cum laude from the former Woodrow Wilson School, now known as the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, with a certificate in the History and Practice of Diplomacy. She was chosen to deliver one of the Class Day speeches at graduation and received two awards for her thesis,  “‘We Were All Once Refugees:’ The Battle Over Israeli Policies Towards African Asylum-Seekers,” one from the Center for Migration and Development and the other, the Drucker Prize, for the best senior thesis related to Judaic Studies.

As an undergraduate, Aronoff worked for Princeton Tutoring, as a Whitman Residential College Adviser and captained Princeton Mock Trial as a lawyer and a witness in her senior year.  In summer 2017, Aronoff taught ninth grade English and public speaking with Breakthrough Miami.  Maya interned with the Organization of Refuge Asylum and Migration and the Eritrean Women's Center in Tel Aviv, Israel in 2017.  Aronoff interned in summer 2018 as a Guggenheim Fellow with the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, assisting with case preparation and investigation. Throughout 2017 and 2018, Aronoff worked weekly with the New York City Anti-Violence Project to provide holistic legal representation for LGBT asylum seekers and refugees.

Maya is focused on immigration, gender-based violence, and human rights, and is supplementing her internationally focused undergraduate experience with a domestic policy-focused master’s education to better address these problems across and within borders.  She began her initial SINSI rotation in summer 2020, working remotely with the Federal Public Defenders' Office in El Paso, Texas. She then worked for the Energy Department, Office of  Economic Impact & Diversity and finished her fellowship as a Justice 40 Fellow. In fall 2022 she started her joint JD/MPA degree at NYU.