Noura Erakat was born on January 16, 1980, in Alameda County, California. She attended the University of California, Berkeley and graduated with a baccalaureate in 2002, was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and was named a UC-Berkeley Human Rights Center Summer Fellow in 2003.[10] In 2005, she received her juris doctorate from the UC Berkeley School of Law and was awarded the Francine Diaz Memorial Scholarship Award.[11] She completed her L.L.M at Georgetown University Law Center in 2012.[4]