Born in Sarajevo, Jenkins is the elder of two children in a middle-class Bosniak family. Her mother was an accountant and her father was an economist. She grew up in the concrete-block apartments that characterized communist-era Yugoslavia. Jenkins studied economics at the University of Sarajevo, but the outbreak of war in 1992 forced her to flee her home and spend more than a year in Croatia as a refugee before emigrating to London.
Sanela Diana Jenkins established The Irnis Catic Foundation in 2002 in memory of her brother who was killed during the Bosnian Conflict. The foundation provides essential funding to the medical facilities at the University of Sarajevo. In 2009, Diana Jenkins was awarded the Peace Connection prize by the Center for Peace and Multi-Ethnic Cooperation. On May 5, 2018 Jenkins was honored at the Advisory Council for Bosnia & Herzegovina Gala in Washington, DC for her continued support and philanthropic activities in the country. She established the Sanela Diana Jenkins Human Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles in August 2008. The clinic concentrates on legal advocacy, political advocacy and documentation. It is the first endowed program on international justice and human rights at any law school in the western United States. Immediately following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Jenkins and actor Sean Penn established the Jenkins-Penn Haitian Relief Organization to deliver hospital supplies and provide medical care to thousands of displaced Haitians. She compared the long-term recovery in Haiti to that in Bosnia, highlighted the need for basic humanitarian aid, and argued that the U.S. military should not leave the country prematurely. In March 2010, Jenkins posted bail for former Bosnian PresidentEjup Ganić, who was detained in London on a Serbian extradition request. Sanela was honored with the Enduring Vision award by the Elton John Aids Foundation for her activism in the fight against AIDS. Sanela produced a photography book entitled "Room 23", photographed by Deborah Anderson. Many of the celebrities in the book are friends of Jenkins, including George Clooney and Elton John. Proceeds from the sale of the book benefit several philanthropic programs.
Personal life
In 1999, she married Roger Jenkins who was a prominent executive at Barclays Bank. The couple met at the gym at the Barbican, where Jenkins was living after the end of his marriage to his first wife, a banker at Barclays. They have two children together and later divorced. Roger Jenkins was acquitted of fraud charges and cleared of wrongdoing by the Serious Fraud Office on April 28, 2020.
