Our Team

Michael is based in Washington, DC and is the Global Grants Director. This is a new position at Outright International, responsible for the overall design and implementation of Outright’s grantmaking strategies.

From 2015 - 2021, Michael Heflin was the Director of the Equality Division of the Human Rights Initiative at Open Society Foundations leading grant making strategies to advance equality in several areas including LGBTQI rights and the rights of persons with disabilities. During his tenure, the program secured new resources to initiate support for movements advancing racial and ethnic justice in key countries in Latin America and Southeast Asia including Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia and Myanmar and developed a new global intersectional portfolio focused on women facing multiple layers of discrimination.

Michael came to Open Society Foundations in 2009 to launch a global initiative on LGBTQI rights focused on supporting emerging LGBTQI rights groups in the global South and East. Under his leadership, the foundation became one of the largest donors in the global fight for LGBTQI rights, supporting the development of burgeoning organizations and movements in 50+ countries and leading strategic global initiatives to support local activists that earned historic victories in the areas of decriminalization, family recognition and legal gender recognition.

Prior to joining Open Society Foundations, Michael was Managing Director of the Campaigns Unit for Amnesty International USA. He also served as the founding Director of Amnesty International’s first LGBTQI rights program. Michael also worked at Amnesty’s International Secretariat where he was the Interim Director of the International Mobilization Program. Michael started his human rights career as the Deputy Director of the organization’s Midwest Region Office in Chicago.

Michael holds a law degree with a focus on human rights from the University of Cincinnati where he held a fellowship at the Urban Morgan Human Rights Institute and was an editor of the Human Rights Quarterly.