Chelsea HaleyNelson received her Bachelor of Arts in Political Science-International Relations and Global Peace and Security from the University of California at Santa Barbara, where as an undergraduate she studied economics of developing countries at the Universidad de San Jose in Costa Rica. She received her J.D. from the University of San Francisco School of Law in 2005, where she served as an Executive Editor for the Journal of Law and Social Challenges and president of both the International Law Society and the Pride Law Association.

Chelsea became interested in human rights and immigration law while working on asylum cases with the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and the National Center for Lesbian Rights. Through the International Human Rights Clinic, Chelsea presented human rights reports on the global trafficking of women and children to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women and the Commission on Human Rights, both of which became the basis of an article to be published in the William and Mary Journal of Women and the Law entitled Women in Peacekeeping and Peacemaking: Solutions to the Demand Side of Trafficking, Volume XII, Issue II (forthcoming Spring 2006). She has further published on international lesbian human rights in Sexualized Violence Against Lesbians, Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice and on juvenile human rights in Update on the Juvenile Death Penalty, ACLU International Civil Liberties Report 2004. During law school she also worked on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender human rights with the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

In 2005, she was awarded the Pro Bono Publico Award for outstanding pro bono legal service by the Public Interest Clearinghouse.

Prior to law school, Chelsea worked extensively in anti-violence programs, including assisting immigrant domestic violence survivors and their families on a variety immigration issues.

Chelsea is fluent in Spanish and conversational in Czech.