Biography

As Director of International and Government Relations, Tina Ramirez oversees all outreach to Congress and the various executive agencies, directs Becket’s Congressional International Religious Freedom Fellowship Program, represents the Becket Fund at the United Nations and other international organizations, and directs Becket’s international projects, such as the Legal Training Institute. She currently serves as the Vice President of the UN NGO Committee on Freedom of Religion or Belief based in New York as well.

Tina joined the Becket Fund after working as a foreign policy advisor and expert on international religious freedom for various members of Congress, including Congressman Gus M. Bilirakis, Senator Roger Wicker, and Congressman Trent Franks. She helped found and direct the Congressional International Religious Freedom Caucus for four years, a bi-partisan group co-founded in 2006 to address religious persecution for people of any or no faith based on Article 18 of the UDHR and in the spirit of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (IRFA). Prior to this, Tina worked as a researcher at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

In her various capacities, Tina has spoken before the United Nations Human Rights Council and before the U.S. Congress. She has traveled extensively throughout the world, meeting with government officials, civil society groups, and religious communities about many issues from democratic transition and constitutional development to counter-terrorism policies, sex-trafficking, refugees, and religious freedom. Her work has taken her to Algeria, the Balkans (Serbia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia), Bangladesh, Burma, China, Egypt, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Nigeria, Romania, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, Thailand, and Turkey.

Tina earned a B.A. in History and Political Science and an M.A. in education from Vanguard University (VU) in California and a M.A. in Human Rights from the University of Essex in the U.K. She also has a certificate from the International Institute for Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, where her studies focused on international religious freedom. Tina was also a teacher for three years, during which time she developed curricula to promote human rights and international religious freedom and undertook statistical research that supported implementation of the UN Decade on Human Rights Education. She has authored several articles and was a contributing author and editor of Human Rights in the United States: A Dictionary and Documents, which was published in 2010.