Prior to her current role at NIJC, Yana spent around 2.5 years at The Immigration Project in Champaign, IL, as a staff attorney in removal defense and affirmative asylum. Yana holds her Bachelor of Laws (LLB) from the Moscow State Law University in Moscow, Russia, and Master of Laws (LLM) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. While in Russia, Yana represented peaceful protestors in administrative courts and engaged in other forms of political and civil rights activism. Throughout her life, Yana has been engaged in volunteering work at national and international organizations, such as Greenpeace, Transparency International and OVD-Info.