Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in Mogadishu, Somalia in 1969. As she grew up, she embraced Islam and strove to live as a devout Muslim. In 1992, Hirsi Ali fled to the Netherlands to escape a forced marriage. There she was given asylum, and in time citizenship. She quickly learned Dutch and was able to study at the University of Leiden.

From 2003 to 2006, Hirsi Ali served as an elected member of the Dutch parliament. She then moved to the US, and in 2007 founded the AHA Foundation to protect and defend the rights of women in the US from harmful traditional practices.

Hirsi Ali is a Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, the Founder of the AHA Foundation, a Senior Fellow with the Future of Diplomacy Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at The Harvard Kennedy School, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Founder of Restorationbulletin.com, where she explores the forces of subversion plaguing Western society. She is the best-selling author of Infidel (2007) and Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now (2015).