Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and founder of the AHA Foundation. Previously, she served as a member of the Dutch Parliament from 2003 to 2006.

She was born in Mogadishu, Somalia but in 1992, Ayaan fled to the Netherlands to escape a forced marriage. There she was given asylum, and in time citizenship

In 2006, Ayaan had to resign from parliament when the then Dutch minister for Immigration decided to revoke her citizenship, arguing that Ayaan had misled the authorities at the time of her asylum application. However, the Dutch courts confirmed that Ayaan was indeed a legitimate Dutch citizen, leading to the fall of the government. Disillusioned with the Netherlands, she subsequently moved to the United States.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was named one of TIME Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” of 2005. She is the best-selling author of Infidel (2007) and Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now (2015).