Jayne Fleming is a human rights attorney who has worked with survivors of torture and sexual gender-based violence from Central America, Greece, Jordan and Haiti. She became a lawyer in 2000, and while working at Reed Smith, she developed and led a pro bono humanitarian program.

Fleming left the law firm at the end of last year and now is the global director of the Patricia Fleming Foundation, which she established in 2010 in honor of her late mother. It provides sanctuary for women and children, among other services. Recently, Fleming, 61, helped relocate asylum-seekers by driving them to safety during a snowstorm.

Fleming recently spoke about her career and foundation with the ABA Journal. The conversation was edited for length and clarity.

When did you know you wanted to be a human rights attorney?

It’s a question that I have been thinking a lot about lately; thinking how I started down this path and deciding whether it is a calling or a sense of purpose or a job. I think very much it’s a calling and a sense of purpose. I don’t think I had real clarity on that in the beginning. But I grew up with a mom who is a survivor, and I think the influence of growing up with someone who has a history of trauma shapes who we are as individuals.  I became a lawyer and took my first pro bono case in my first year representing a woman from Guatemala. And once I took that case, it was like something shifted into place for me. A little bit like I understood what I wanted to do as an advocate in the world and in my life as a lawyer.  I somehow felt there was an intersection between that and my own history and my mom.

What model did you use to build the humanitarian pro bono program?

The way that I built the program that I lead now is based more on deficiencies in current systems.  For example, the UNHCR [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees] does resettlement of refugees. And they do a good job. They have a ton of expertise. I am not going to criticize the UNHCR, but it’s one thing, which is resettlement of refugees from country to country. And they don’t do all of the other services that someone may need on that longitudinal journey from point of flight to point of being able to be safe and self-reliant in a safe country. I was looking at different programs that were around the world—there is MSF [Médecins Sans Frontiérs (Doctors Without Borders)] that does medical. … There are organizations that do legal. And nobody was sort of doing everything in an integrated way.

Is that what you did in Haiti?

We started that model in Haiti. When we went to Haiti, which was right after the earthquake, we took doctors, we took lawyers. We had local Haitians working with us on our teams. And we began to create this model, where we were providing safe housing in Haiti for women who had experienced violence. We were providing legal representation to help them identify safe areas where they could live in Haiti or outside of Haiti … for women who had been raped or needed medical care. That was where we started to shape this idea of a holistic model.

Your humanitarian program has been in place in the Middle East for 11 years. How did you navigate being a woman in Jordan, where women’s rights are often violated?

I went to Jordan for the first time in 2015, and it was sort of an overlap with Haiti. I wanted to find out if the model we created in Haiti, which included that kind of wraparound support system—safe houses and legal representation and accompaniment—was transportable. When I first went to Jordan, I was going with an Iraqi engineer. I said to him, “Can I come along and just kind of shadow you and watch how things are done in Jordan?” I had never worked in the Middle East; I had never worked in a Muslim country. I didn’t speak Arabic. He said, “What are you trying to do?” I said, “Where we have these programs where we protect women who have experienced sexual gender-based violence.” … He said, “Absolutely not. There is no way this program will ever work. This is the Middle East. No way can you go into a Muslim country and say that you are advocating for women who have experienced violence.” … Finally, he relented. … I also hired a local team at that time. I had a male driver; I had female Arabic-speaking interpreters to work with me.

Talk about the Patricia Fleming Foundation and the work it does.

I set up a foundation in memory of my mom; she died of breast cancer in 2010. It’s how we funded our Safe House Project in Haiti. The name of our program under that foundation is called Walking With Women. The whole idea is that we are accompanying women on their journey. We provide them with love and support and companionship that they need in order to self-actualize and be safe. That’s important because one thing we have always emphasized is [we are] not a rescue mission. We are not saving anyone.

You could write a book about your life’s work. What would you title it?

That is my big dream: to write a book about this. I kind of do—21 Rents. My mother, when she was a child, was living with her family, and there was a tenant who was living in the house with them because they needed the money from his rent to pay the bills. This tenant was the person who abused my mother. I now have 21 cases of women who need housing, so that they can be safe and so they aren’t forced into survival sex, and they aren’t abused in a housing situation or a homelessness situation. So the book, 21 Rents, kind of ties together this idea of safety and physical security because I am trying to raise the money to pay these 21 rents for these 21 women.