Regina Egle Liotta

Background and Motivation 

Regina was born and raised in Reggio Calabria, on the Mediterranean coast, where she was exposed to migration from a young age. Beginning around age ten, she studied English in London, an experience that shaped her understanding of different cultures alongside her own identity and roots.

Regina’s Christian upbringing, centered on helping the most vulnerable, also informed her approach.

Humanitarian Work 

In 2013, Regina co-founded MOAS (Migrant Offshore Aid Station), a humanitarian NGO created to assist people undertaking dangerous journeys across the Mediterranean, with her daughter and her former husband as a family-led maritime rescue effort. During MOAS’s Mediterranean search-and-rescue operations, she served as the organization’s spokesperson. In 2016, she became Director of MOAS, a position she held until 2023, contributing to the organization’s evolution from maritime emergency response towards broader humanitarian assistance, education, preparedness and community resilience.

In 2024, MOAS Italia was rebranded as the Mediterranean Aid Education Center (MAEC), carrying forward this humanitarian experience with a renewed focus on education, training and intercultural dialogue within the specific, diverse, and often conflictual context of the Mediterranean.

Central to Regina’s vision for MAEC is I³—Integration, Inclusion, Identity—three interconnected principles that she sees as the foundation of meaningful intercultural dialogue. For Regina, integration is reciprocal: welcoming societies should respect the dignity and identity of those they receive, while those who make a new country their home should respect its laws, values, culture and social fabric. Integration should neither erase identity nor impose one culture upon another, but create the conditions for people to live together through mutual respect. She also founded Art Bridge for Solidarity, connecting art with humanitarian action and fundraising.

Regina’s response to the 2017 Rohingya refugee crisis in Bangladesh was a significant chapter of her work, providing humanitarian and medical assistance to refugees and host communities. She spent time in the camps at Cox’s Bazar and Kutupalong, meeting with families and supporting the delivery of care at two primary healthcare Aid Stations that treated more than 90,000 people. Subsequent programs focused on disaster-risk reduction, water and flood safety, and emergency preparedness.

In Malta, Regina developed initiatives supporting refugee and asylum-seeking communities. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she designed the Info Learning Center project and a Remote Learning Programme to help refugee and asylum-seeking children maintain access to education despite the additional barriers created by the pandemic.

Throughout her humanitarian work, Regina collaborated with UNHCR and worked alongside local actors and organizations across the different countries in which she operated, with an emphasis on strengthening communities and developing responses grounded in local realities.

Awards and Recognition

Regina’s humanitarian commitment has received international recognition. In 2015, she was appointed Ufficiale dell’Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana by the President of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella, for her humanitarian work through MOAS. She was also named among Foreign Policy’s 100 Global Thinkers and shortlisted for the 2020 Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity.

Learn More 

Regina is the author of Raccogliere il Mare con un Cucchiaino (“Scooping the Sea with a Teaspoon”), drawing on her experiences and reflections from humanitarian missions in the Mediterranean.