NIIC 2011 Presentations Available

Many NIIC 2011 participants requested access to the various presentations made during conference plenaries and sessions. We've uploaded them here for you.

Whether you attended NIIC 2011 or not, dive into this impressive array of resources on immigrant integration topics ranging from naturalization to education, English Language Learning to workforce development.

About The National Partnership for New Americans

The National Immigrant Integration Conference is a signature event of the National Partnership for New Americans, which advances the integration and active citizenship of immigrants to achieve a vibrant, just, and welcoming democracy for all.

The New Americans Partnership vision is an authentic and welcoming democracy in which new Americans achieve equal opportunity and are a powerful and organized constituency. Policies and programs at all levels will foster a high quality of life for all, and new Americans will vote, hold office and participate fully in civic life and economic prosperity. 

The New Americans Partnership logo

The National Immigrant Integration Conference is made possible by generous support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Four Freedoms Fund.


 

 

 

Speaker Bios

 

[email protected]

Kasar was born in Kurdistan of Iraq. When former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein waged war on the region in 1988, Kasar lost several family members and she was forced to become a refugee. Initially, Kasar and her family lived in the Refugee Camp in Meriden, Turkey until September 1992, where her family was brought to America. Kasar graduated from Tennessee State University with Bachelor's degree in Sociology in 2005. While at TSU, Kasar worked with the TSU Health Research Center, served as a President of Muslim Student Association, and was on various panels. Kasar joined TIRRC in January of 2006. She has served in many interfaith dialogues, on her experience as a refugee, Kurdistan and its people, the role of a Muslim Women, life after September 11 as a Muslim in the United States, and the Next Door Neighbors Documentary Little Kurdistan: USA with Nashville Public Television. In her capacity as an activist, Kasar servers on many boards and is currently the Director of Advocacy & Education. She works in the areas of policy research and advocacy, strategic communications and movement-building, education and training in the area of immigrant integration, leadership development, and advance the issues and campaigns prioritized by the membership. She is fluent in Kurdish and English.

[email protected]

As executive vice president of SEIU, Mitch Ackerman leads the union's efforts in the South and Southwest, the fastest-growing region of the country that is home to the nation’s deepest economic and racial inequality. In his 21 years in SEIU, Ackerman has led Denver area janitors to win their first family-supporting wages, health care and full-time jobs. He helped negotiate two groundbreaking national labor-management agreements with health care workers at Kaiser Permanente. And as the elected leader of SEIU in Colorado, Ackerman helped bring about the state’s political transformation that won 32,000 state employees the ability to vote for a union for the first time ever. Mitch Ackerman is a first-generation American. Described as "not your father's union boss" by the Denver Business Journal , much of his work has been with immigrant workers, fighting both for better jobs and comprehensive immigration reform.

[email protected]

David Acosta, M.D. is the Associate Dean for Multicultural Affairs at the University of Washington School of Medicine (UWSoM), and Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Family Medicine. He completed his medical school training at the University of California, Irvine College of Medicine in 1979, and completed his residency in Family Medicine at the Community Hospital of Sonoma County (an affiliate of the University of California, San Francisco) where he served as Chief Resident. After residency, he developed and practiced in a rural community health center, Northeastern Rural Health Clinics, in Susanville, CA for 8 years where he provided care for a large underserved, rural and migrant farmworker population. He then spent 16 years on the faculty at Tacoma Family Medicine Residency Program (affiliate of the University of Washington) where he initially served as Associate Director, and subsequently Residency Director and Director of the Rural Health Fellowship Program. He is the Principal Investigator for a new NIH/NHLBI grant that will allow the integration of cultural competency into the medical school curriculum. With this grant, the UWSoM is developing a new Center for Cultural Proficiency in Medical Education (CC-PriME) which will be the SOM's first cross-cultural resource center. He has been certified as a diversity trainer by the National Multicultural Institute, and has taught a number of cultural competency/diversity workshops for medical students, residents, faculty and staff.

[email protected]

Nisha Agarwal is the Director of the Health Justice Program at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, a non-profit civil rights legal organization based in New York City. She came to NYLPI in September 2006 on a Skadden Public Interest Fellowship, and her work since that time has focused on bringing a racial justice & immigrant rights perspective to health care advocacy. In collaboration with community-based organizations and coalitions across New York City, Nisha is working on campaigns on language rights in pharmacies, racial discrimination in hospitals, medical deportation and the closure of community hospitals and clinics in medically under-served areas. Nisha received her BA, summa cum laude, from Harvard College and received a British Marshall Scholarship for study at the University of Oxford. She received her JD from Harvard Law School in 2006.

Leticia Alanis hails from Monterrey in Mexico, where she worked for eighteen years as a youth educator and directing several educational programs. Leticia Alanis has been active in the human rights movement since her arrival from Mexico in 1996, especially in the rights of migrants. She has been organizing in Sunset Park, Brooklyn first with the Fifth Avenue Committee and then with La Union (UCL, Inc.) since 2005. Leticia co-founded and now directs La Union, a membership-led organization in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. La Union is working to advance social, cultural and economic justice for transnational families living in Brooklyn and for their communities of origin. La Union promotes the leadership of women, youth, and families. Their programs include an environmental justice committee that has improved housing conditions that aggravate asthma, a women’s collective advancing respect and opportunities for women, an intergenerational parents and youth initiative to improve educational opportunities for Mexican American youth, and a food justice initiative that is creating a community garden and chicken coop in Sunset Park. Leticia is also the Vice-president of the newly formed New York State Immigrant Action Fund, a new civic and social justice organization that aims to promote the rights and well-being of immigrants and refugees in New York and around the nation.

[email protected]

Anna Anderson is the Manager of Immigrant Integration Programs at CASA de Maryland. She joined CASA as an AmeriCorps VISTA in 2008 and developed the New Americans Citizenship Project of Maryland, a statewide AmeriCorps program dedicated to supporting eligible Marylanders on their path to U.S. citizenship. Additionally, she was instrumental in creating an innovative citizenship loan fund to offset the financial burden associated with the naturalization process. She holds a B.A. in International Studies from Kenyon College and is a Non-Profit Management Certificate candidate at the George Washington University.

[email protected]

Antoinette is a public health practitioner and activist committed to building healthy communities for everyone – most recently in the areas of food justice and active community design. She oversees preventive health services and efforts to provide culturally-tailored health promotion to Sea Mar’s diverse patient population throughout Western Washington State. Her programs produce bilingual innovative media tools such as radio novelas, liberation theatre, and digital storytelling to raise awareness of various health-related issues in a culturally-relevant manner and mobilize communities to address these priorities with key decision makers. Over the past 15 years, Antoinette has worked in the areas of health care reform, chronic disease, the built environment, diversity in leadership, tobacco prevention, and worksite safety. She earned her Masters of Public Health degree at the University of Washington in the area of Social and Behavioral Sciences with concentrations in Health Promotion and International Health. She currently lives, works, and plays in Seattle.

[email protected]

David Ayala-Zamora was born in El Salvador. His desire to achieve peace, justice and democracy in his homeland brought him from a Christian youth church leadership position to being an audacious labor organizer during the US-backed Salvadoran Civil War in the 1980s. He was arrested by the El Salvador government, and jailed and tortured. He arrived in the United State in 1990. Since then, he has committed himself to organizing and working on immigrant issues. His experience includes working for the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project as a paralegal, talking to immigrants and employers across Washington, Oregon and Idaho about employement-based discrimination; helping to organize CASA Latina, a Seatle center for day laborers; and being one of the founders of the Comite Pro Amnestia y Justicia Social, which sought to bring more attention to immigration issues, including beginning the May 1st march in Seattle. Most recently, he has spent many years working for SEIU Local 6 in Seattle and Local 49 and 503 in Portland, helping to organize several successful campaigns in the private sector, most recently Service Master on Swan Island, Oregon. David tells organizers he leads that "The organizer's job is to help people discover the power they have when they work together." In this context, he has helped hundreds of janitors, immigrants, and U.S. Citizens take risks in order to achieve common goals as members of society. He has three kids who keep him young.

[email protected]

Evan Bacalao is the Senior Director of Civic Engagement at the NALEO Educational Fund; the leading nonprofit organization that facilitates full Latino participation in the American political process. Evan leads the organization’s community-focused initiatives, which include direct naturalization assistance; information dissemination on citizenship and voting; GOTV; technical training and assistance; research; and mass media outreach.The program operates out of offices in Houston, Los Angeles, New York, and Orlando, and in collaboration with local non-profit partners across the country. The program runs the year-round civic engagement hotline 888-839-8682 (VE-Y-VOTA) and its companion websites at yaeshora.info. Evan joined NALEO in 2005 as Research Associate, where he worked on a range of advocacy issues and research projects. Prior to joining NALEO, Evan was a fundraiser for a statewide political committee. Born in the UK to British and Venezuelan parents, Evan naturalized as a U.S. citizen in the 2007 ya es hora ¡Ciudadanía! campaign.

[email protected]

I have been an educator for the past thirty six years. I attended Colorado University (Boulder) and have a BS and MA in Education/Bilingual. I taught four years for Boulder Valley Schools , then moved to New Mexico and taught for Albuquerque Public Schools for fourteen years. I returned to Colorado and have been teaching as a Bilingual Teacher for Denver Public Schools for the past seventeen years. I presently teach at Cole Arts and Science Academy which is a school with innovative status. I am authorized to teach Literacy for ages 0-25 through the Colorado Department of Education. i taught Adult ESL for many years for two non-profits, Summer Scholars and Focus Points Family Resource Center. For the past seven years I have been a Board Member for Focus Points. This Family Resource Center is one of the largest providers of ESL for immigrants in the metro Denver area. We have a Early Childhood program which helps parents in teaching their children. We offer "Open Book" a Literacy program for adults at or below 8th grade level. We offer Adult Basic Ed/GED, Parenting, nutrition and Health Care education. Focus Points serves immigrants from Africa, Europe, Asia and mexico.

[email protected]

Stuart Barger, RN, MSN, has degrees in nursing and secondary education. He has invested the last 28 years in higher education at Everett Community College. At EVCC he has served in a variety of roles from classroom instructor, to faculty Federation President, to Vice President of Instruction. His focus has been on education for Careers in Health Care. His most recent efforts have been directed toward securing grant resources and leveraging funding sources to provide support services for immigrants and non native English speakers so that they can successfully enter and, more importantly, complete health care programs. With diminishing traditional funding resources, securing alternative grant funding is central to the ability of colleges to develop and sustain programs to educate the most at-risk and under-served populations.

[email protected]

Matt A. Barreto is a political science professor at the University of Washington, director of the Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity and Race (WISER), and on the executive committee of the Center for Statistics & Social Sciences. His research examines the political participation of racial and ethnic minorities in the United States and has published more than 30 articles in the leading political science journals, and is the author of the book, Ethnic Cues: The role of shared ethnicity in Latino political behavior. Matt specializes in Latino and immigrant voting behavior, and teaches courses on racial and ethnic politics, Latino politics, immigration, and voting and elections. In addition to his work at UW, in 2007 Barreto co-founded Latino Decisions, a political polling firm surveying and analyzing the Latino vote and has regularly been invited to the White House to brief the Administration on immigration and the Latino community.

[email protected]

Born in Stockholm, Sweden and raised in the U.S. and elsewhere, I have seemingly always been moving across borders and integrating. My professional interest in immigration began in earnest upon moving to Berlin, Germany in 1999 and witnessing the bewilderingly contentious debates around easing citizenship restrictions for immigrants and their children who had been in Germany for decades or were born there. I am fortunate enough to now be working on these issues in Los Angeles with CHIRLA, and I look forward to continuing advocating for immigrant justice as long as is necessary.

[email protected]

Rob Berkeley has been Director of the Runnymede Trust, the UK’s leading race equality think tank, since January 2009. He was Deputy Director of Runnymede between 2005 and 2009. His doctoral studies focused on exclusion from school. He has been Chair of governors at a South London primary school, Chair of Naz Project London (which provides sexual health and HIV prevention and support services to various minority ethnic communities), and a Trustee of Stonewall, and the Equality and Diversity Forum, and a member of the Commission on 2020 Public Services.Publications include ‘Home Alone: Unaccompanied Minor Return to Somaliland’ (2010), ‘Right to Divide? Faith Schools and Community Cohesion’ (2008) ‘Identity, Ethnic Diversity and Community Cohesion’ (Sage: London 2007), ‘Britain; challenges for race equality’ (2006) and ‘Connecting British Hindus’ (2006), and the film ‘Number Games; Race Equality in the Big Society’ (2011).

[email protected]

Rachel is the Associate Director of Washington Community Action Network. Prior to joining Washington CAN!, she was the Executive Director of the SEIU Washington State Council where her primary focus was coordinating the union’s joint political and legislative programs. From 2000 - 2006 Rachel was a lead organizer with the Working Families Party, a labor and community-based grassroots political party in New York State.

[email protected]

Deepak Bhargava is Executive Director of the Center for Community Change, a national non-profit organization whose mission is to develop the power and capacity of low-income people, especially low-income people of color, to change the policies and institutions that affect their lives. Mr. Bhargava is also the executive director of the Center's 501(c)(4) sister organization, the Campaign for Community Change. Under his leadership, CCC has played a leading role in campaigns to achieve universal health care coverage, improved jobs and safety net policies and Comprehensive Immigration Reform. Prior to his appointment as Executive Director in 2002, Mr. Bhargava served as the Center's Director of Public Policy. Mr. Bhargava has emerged as a leading progressive thinker and strategist, and has written and spoken widely about issues such as poverty, immigration, and community organizing, including influential articles in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, and The American Prospect. Born in Bangalore, India, Mr. Bhargava immigrated to the United States when he was a child. He grew up in New York City and graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College. He lives in Washington DC with his partner Harry Hanbury, a documentary filmmaker.

[email protected]

Sayu Bhojwani is the founding director of The New American Leaders Project (NALP), the only national organization specifically focused on preparing first- and second-generation immigrants for civic leadership. She has worked on immigrant integration in various capacities for over 15 years. From 2002 to 2004, she served as New York City’s Commissioner for Immigrant Affairs under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. In 1997, she founded South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!), the only organization of its kind in the country, and served as its Executive Director for five years. Just prior to starting NALP, she worked in philanthropy for five years, at Bloomberg LP in London and at Bloomberg Philanthropies in New York. From 2001-2002, she was a Charles H. Revson Fellow at Columbia University and has received numerous awards for her community work. She currently serves on the boards of the National Immigration Forum and The Afterschool Corporation and blogs for The Huffington Post. Sayu is also a doctoral candidate in politics and education at Teachers College, Columbia University.

[email protected]

Irene Bloemraad is Associate Professor and Associate Chair of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley as well as a Scholar with the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. Her work examines the intersection of immigration and politics, with emphasis on citizenship, immigrants’ political and civic participation, and multiculturalism. Her books include Rallying for Immigrant Rights (edited with Kim Voss, 2011), Civic Hopes and Political Realities (edited with Karthick Ramakrishnan, 2008) and Becoming a Citizen (University of California Press, 2006). In addition to her academic work, Bloemraad also speaks to and writes for more general audiences and for public policy makers.

[email protected]

Robert Bray has worked at the intersection of strategic communications and social justice for more than 30 years. He is Director of Communications at Public Interest Projects (PIP), where he oversees the Strategic Communications Initiative (SCI) at PIP’s Four Freedoms Fund (FFF). The initiative focuses on building the capacity of the immigrant rights field to engage the debate and move forward immigration reform and integration in America. In that capacity, Bray develops and funds strategies including message focus group and polling research; new media and digital social networking campaigns; alliance building communications efforts between African American, youth, faith, LGBT (Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender) and immigrants; and responses to harsh enforcement. FFF also supports campaigns to change “hearts and minds” about immigration in receiving communities, including Welcoming America. Prior to PIP, Bray was director of communications for the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund in San Francisco. In 1997, Bray founded the SPIN Project, a media training resource for grassroots advocates. Before that, Bray was communications director for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the Human Rights Campaign Fund, in Washington, DC.

[email protected]

Jennifer serves as Director of the five-nonprofit consortium IMPRINT, whose purpose is to identify and promote best practices in the integration of immigrant professionals on a national scale. Its ultimate goal is to foster initiatives that can lead to a multiplier effect on people served and placed - professionals such as physicians and scientists experiencing unemployment or working in low-skill jobs. Jennifer is also Influence & Impact Manager at Upwardly Global, where she works to assess barriers and best practices in this same field, including guiding creation of multi-state web-based licensing guides for 10 popular licensed careers. She has held diverse positions in the fields of refugee resettlement, consulting, teaching and translating, and holds an M.B.A. from the University of Quebec in Montreal and a B.A. from the University of Michigan. Jennifer experienced immigration firsthand over nearly a decade of residence in the Dominican Republic and other countries.

Suzette Brooks Masters

Suzette Brooks Masters oversees immigration-related grant making at the J. M. Kaplan Fund, a private family foundation in New York City.  Prior to joining the Fund, she consulted with non-profit organizations working on behalf of immigrants and published extensively on immigration policy subjects. She also studied the organizations comprising the immigrants’ rights movement with funding from the Ford Foundation, and published her findings as Networking the Networks: Improving Information Flows in the Immigration Field in 2001.

A graduate of Harvard Law School, Ms. Masters practiced corporate and environmental law at various major New York City firms until 1999 when she decided to focus exclusively on immigrants’ rights work.  She has been active in civic matters since the late1980’s when she co-founded New York Cares. Ms. Masters has served on a number of non-profit boards, including the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the National Immigration Forum, Lawyers Alliance for New York, and New York Cares. Ms. Masters also obtained degrees from Kings’ College, Cambridge University and Amherst College.

[email protected]

Joanna Brown is Lead Education Organizer at the Logan Square Neighborhood Association in Chicago, where she worked in 1993-94 and again from 1997 to the present. She was involved in Chicago’s first school reform elections, serving two terms (1989-93) as a Local School Council member. Her two children attended Inter-American, Chicago’s first dual-immersion elementary school. Joanna will discuss how LSNA transformed the relationship between 10 public schools and their immigrant families, developing community schools and opening the doors to hundreds of low-income Latina mothers who became volunteers and classroom tutors, then program managers and bilingual teachers. In the process, the parents improved the education of 8,000 students, changed their own lives, and developed a deeper form of parent participation. This work is the subject of A Cord of Three Strands: A New Approach to Parent Engagement in Schools by Soo Hong. (Harvard Education Press 2011) and Grow Your Own Teachers (Skinner, Garreton, Schultz ed.(Teachers College Press 2011).

[email protected]

My name is Ricardo Campos. I'm 22 years old, I'm college student and I'm on my second year at College Montgomery College. For the past year I have been an active member of Casa de Maryland, and I have been part of Casa's youth committee. Along with thousands of students and Casa, I have fight to pass legislation that affect the immigrant community positively. Most recently, I have been pushing and taking the necessary steps to pass the Maryland Dream act. This law allow undocumented student's to pay in-state tuition at state universities in Maryland.

[email protected]

Nicole “Nikki” Cicerani, is the national Executive Director of Upwardly Global. Nikki first joined Upwardly Global in January 2007 as Managing Director of the New York office. Under her leadership, the organization has expanded its reach from one to three cities, quintupling its program and financial results, and tripling its staff. A 2004 MBA graduate of Columbia Business School, Nikki also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Policy Analysis from Cornell University. Prior to Upwardly Global, Nikki enjoyed seven years of experience in the financial sector, including: Ernst & Young in the Economics Consulting Practice and in the Office of the Chairman; and Morgan Stanley in the Private Wealth Management group. Her passion, however, has always been driving social change. Prior to Upwardly Global, her leadership in the space includes roles on the founding team at SEED Public Charter School in Washington DC and in workforce development at the Women’s Venture Fund.

[email protected]

Ryan Clayton is a communications specialist who recently developed a new message framework on immigration that embraces the American identity of immigrants. In addition to working at a political advertisement agency in Washington D.C., he regularly serves as a spokesperson for Progressive causes and has recently appeared on MSNBC, CNN, FOX News, BCC, & RT. With previous experience working for elected officials, non-profit organizations, and federal candidates, his background gives him a broad understanding of how message strategies are put into practical application on the campaign trail and in public policy debates. In addition to incorporating insights from social science, his current work on immigration represents the culmination of a year-long process of discussions with immigration activists, labor union officials, & fellow Progressive wordsmiths.

[email protected]

Martha N. Cohen - is a Washington State Court Certified Spanish interpreter and Manager of the Office of Interpreter Services for King County Superior Court in Seattle, a program recognized by the National Center for State Courts. She provides instruction to interpreters and bilingual staff for interpreter training programs at Seattle University Law School, University of Washington Law School, the Translation and Interpretation Institute in Bellevue, Washington, and a number of community-based organizations serving refugees and immigrants. Ms. Cohen is a national consultant on court-based interpreter programs and has presented information on how to work effectively with interpreters at the national, state and local levels for judges, attorneys and court personnel.

[email protected]

Kristin Collins joined Uniting NC as its first director in March 2010. Kristin is a native of Delaware and graduated in 1996 from the University of Delaware. A career in newspapers brought her to North Carolina, where she found her first job as a crime reporter in the rural eastern North Carolina town of Kinston. In 1999, she joined the News & Observer in Raleigh, where she spent 11 years writing about a broad range of topics, including local government, education, rural issues and agriculture. Most recently, she was the paper’s immigration reporter. To her role with Uniting NC, she brings a commitment to fostering civil and humane conversation about immigration. Kristin lives in Raleigh with her husband, Todd Silberman, her daughter, Amelia, and her dog, Ruby.

[email protected]

Rick was born in Village Mills, Texas on the 27th of February 1937. He graduated from Magnolia High School, Magnolia, Texas in May 1955. Upon graduation, he entered the United States Navy serving from June 1955 through August 1978. He served honorably for twenty-four years being awarded; the Meritorious Service Medal, the Joint Service Commendation Medal, the Navy Commendation Medal, the Navy Achievement Medal, Good Conduct Medal Sixth Award (indicating 24 years continuous good conduct) and the National Defense Service Medal. Rick has served the immigrant community in Albuquerque, New Mexico and Vancouver, Washington for over fifteen years. He became a member of One America in the Spring of 2009 following his friend being profiled, unlawfully arrested and confined in the Tacoma Detention Center. He is totally devoted to the Constitutional guarantee of freedom and justice for all.

The Reverend Luis Cortés, Jr., is president and founder of Esperanza, the premiere Hispanic evangelical network in the United States. Esperanza was founded in 1987 with support from the Hispanic Clergy of Philadelphia; today, through community development, educational institutions, and its national network of over 12,000 clergy and faith-based organizations, Esperanza is one of the leading voices for Hispanics in America. Reverend Cortés earned master’s degrees in economic development from Southern New Hampshire University and in divinity from Union Theological Seminary. He has been conferred three honorary doctorates. He has received numerous awards, among them being featured as one of Time magazine’s “25 Most Influential Evangelicals” in 2005. He has appeared in a wide variety of television, radio, and print media outlets, including the Lehrer News Hour, the O’Reilly Factor, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. He has authored five books published by Atria Books (a Simon and Schuster corporation) as well as numerous articles for publication.

[email protected]

Sarah Davis works as the Time Bank Liaison for Maine’s refugee resettlement agency, building refugee participation in reciprocal service exchange through two local member organizations. Since June 2010, Sarah has coordinated over 140 exchanges between new and native Mainers including language lessons, citizenship tutoring, companionship, cooking classes, transportation, and storytelling. She has built grassroots structures in two local Time Banks, supporting side-by-side leadership from refugees and native Mainers. Sarah facilitates the New Mainers Community Collaborative and its Bias Prevention Team plus two weekly English Conversation Circles. Sarah came to this position after graduating from Bates College in May 2010 with a self-designed major entitled “Difference, Inequality and Conflict” and a community-based thesis entitled, “The Role of the Time Bank in Facilitating Refugee Integration.” Now, Sarah works to build refugee involvement in Time Banking, embracing the idea that refugees have as much to provide as they have to receive.

[email protected]

Susan Downs-Karkos is Director of Integration Strategies at the Spring Institute for Intercultural Learning, where she leads efforts to strengthen immigrant integration policy and practices across Colorado and nationally, with a focus on health, education, language, workforce and community building. She also directs Colorado Welcome Back, a statewide effort to help foreign trained health professionals reestablish careers in the health care sector. Prior to joining the Spring Institute in 2008, she served for 13 years at The Colorado Trust, a grantmaking foundation where as a senior program officer she designed and implemented the Supporting Immigrant and Refugee Families Initiative, a $10 million effort to promote immigrant and refugee integration across 19 Colorado communities. Ms. Downs-Karkos was formerly national board co-chair of Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees, a network of foundations working to address the challenges facing newcomers and receiving communities. Ms. Downs-Karkos holds a BA in psychology from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine.

[email protected]

Howard Duncan received his Ph.D. in Philosophy in 1981 from the University of Western Ontario where he studied the history and philosophy of science. He was a post-doctoral fellow there and subsequently taught philosophy at the University of Ottawa and the University of Western Ontario. In 1987, Dr. Duncan entered the field of consulting in strategic planning, policy development and program evaluation. In 1989 he joined the Department of Health and Welfare in Ottawa where he worked in program evaluation, strategic planning, and policy. His final year at Health Canada was spent managing the department's extramural policy-research program. In 1997, Howard joined the Metropolis Project as its International Project Director, and became its Executive Head in 2002. He has concentrated on increasing the geographic reach of Metropolis, enlarging the range of the issues it confronts, and increasing its benefits to the international migration policy community by creating opportunities for direct and frank exchanges between researchers, practitioners, and policy makers. Howard is also an amateur jazz guitarist.

[email protected]

Burna L. Dunn, is Director Workforce Services at Spring Institute for Intercultural Learning. Ms. Dunn has been a presenter at numerous events. She has coordinated a national teacher training technical assistance project through the Office Refugee Resettlement since 1996. She has conducted teacher trainings and served as coordinator for Spring’s WorkStyles pre-employability training, ABE/ESL, and was the Director of the Ft. Dix ELT Program. She was a writer for a project to develop a vocational English series for a company in Saudi Arabia. In the past several years, Ms. Dunn has helped to develop and teach English classes in China and Mongolia. She also traveled to Bosnia to staff a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Civil Society Initiative. Last May Ms. Dunn was part of a team doing training at the US Embassy in Yangon, Myanmar. Ms. Dunn has been a presenter at numerous state, regional, and national events.

[email protected]



[email protected]

Paul Feltman is Director of the Global Talent Bridge program for World Education Services (WES), a non-profit organization that helps immigrants gain recognition of their academic qualifications earned abroad. He directs and develops Global Talent Bridge outreach and education programs, community partnerships, and policy initiatives designed to help immigrants successfully integrate into academic and professional settings in the U.S. In this role, he works closely with community-based organizations, government agencies, academic institutions, employers, and policy makers and makes frequent presentations on issues related to immigrant integration and credential recognition at professional conferences, workshops and public forums. Paul serves on the National Blue Ribbon Panel of the Community College Consortium for Immigrant Education (CCCIE) and on the Advisory Committee of the New York City Welcome Back Center at LaGuardia Community College. He also serves on the steering committee of IMPRINT, a coalition of organizations active in the emerging field of immigrant professional integration.

[email protected]

Stephen was named the second Executive Director of TIRRC in June of 2008, and previously served as Policy Director after joining the organization in 2004. He holds a Master’s in public administration from the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs, having completed his thesis work studying the impact of US public policy on English acquisition among immigrants. After graduate school, he served for five years as a logistics officer in the United States Navy, living and working overseas. Stephen sits on several boards and advisory committees dealing with immigration and integration, including the Mayor's New Americans Advisory Council (Chair) in Nashville, the Tennessee Alliance for Legal Services (Task Force on Immigrants and Refugees), the Tennessee Supreme Court's Access to Justice Commission (Disability & Language Barriers Subcommittee), the DC-based Rights Working Group (Executive Committee), the Fair Immigration Reform Movement (Executive Committee), and the National Partnership for New Americans (Executive Committee).

[email protected]

Luis Ricardo Fraga is Associate Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement, Russell F. Stark University Professor, Director of the Diversity Research Institute, and Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington. Dr. Fraga ha authored and co-authored number books including Latino Lives in America: Making It Home (Temple 2010), United States Government: Principles in Practice (Holt McDougal 2010), Multiethnic Moments: The Politics of Urban Education Reform (Temple 2006), and Democracy at Risk: How Political Choices Undermine Citizen Participation, and What We Can Do About It (Brookings 2005). He has also published in journals and edited volumes including the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, and Perspectives on Politics. He is co-principal investigator of the 2006 Latino National Survey. Dr. Fraga is also the president of the board of OneAmerica and of New Futures. He is a member of the Board of the Fulcrum Foundation and of the Public Education Network. He has received fifteen awards for mentoring and advising. His latest co-authored book Latinos in the New Millennium: An Almanac of Opinion, Behavior, and Policy Preferences is forthcoming with Cambridge University. In 2011, President Barak Obama appointed him to the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics.

[email protected]

Joe Fugere is the founder of Tutta Bella, the Pacific Northwest’s first certified authentic Neapolitan pizzeria. Joe opened his first restaurant in 2004 and currently has four locations in and around Seattle. The success of his business can be attributed to a passionate focus on building a business respected by employees, customers and peers and he works tirelessly on creating shared value for these constituents. In 2010, Tutta Bella beat out 33,000 of its peers nationally by being named “Independent Pizzeria of the Year” and received “Business of the Year” recognition by the Greater Seattle Business Association. In August 2010, Joe had the honor of being selected to represent small business owners in a meeting with President Obama. One month later he was invited to the White House for the signing of the 2010 Small Business Lending Act, at which time the President personally recognized Tutta Bella.

[email protected]

Walter began his forty-year career in education as a VISTA volunteer on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota where he and his coworkers worked with the tribe to establish the Ogalala Lakota College. He worked for Colorado Mountain College as a teacher and administrator for thirty years and is presently teaching English as a Second Language. Four years ago Walter created “Immigrant Stories” an oral history project that records the stories of the valley’s immigrants and their families. The goal of the project is to foster thoughtful communication and a better understanding of immigrants, past and present. The stories are aired weekdays on KDNK, the Roaring Fork Valley’s community access radio station and published in the Post Independent, the valley’s daily newspaper. Walter has been traveling from Aspen to Parachute, Colorado collecting stories of immigrants from all over the world.

[email protected]

As the Director of Programs for Welcoming America, Ellen’s primary responsibilities include supporting current Welcoming affiliates and reaching out to new local affiliates. Prior to becoming the first staff person of Welcoming America, Ellen coordinated Welcoming Massachusetts for the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition (MIRA). In this role, she worked extensively on the initiative and helped create several tools and approaches which are now used across the Welcoming movement. Ellen joined MIRA after working for a member organization, the International Institute of Rhode Island (IIRI) for several years. At the International Institute and as the coordinator of a state-wide immigrant rights advocacy group, Ellen experienced first-hand how immigrants can become scapegoats when proactive steps are not taken to welcome immigrants and refugees. Ellen holds a bachelors degree in Sociology from Grinnell College and lives in the Boston area.

[email protected]

Ricardo Gambetta is the manager for immigrant integration programs at the National League of Cities, Washington DC. Gambetta previously served as the mayor’s director of Latino affairs and executive director of the Mayor’s Commission on Latino Affairs (2000-2007) in Indianapolis. He was a senior member of the mayor-elect’s transition team, and former commissioner of the Indiana Governor’s Commission on Hispanic Affairs. Gambetta is a former radio and television political analyst and political consultant with extensive experience in mayoral, senatorial and gubernatorial campaigns. Gambetta holds a BA in political science from Garcilazo College. Gambetta has participated in specialized trainings in the areas of municipal management, immigrant integration and immigration policy in the United States, Canada, Latin America and Europe. During the past year, Gambetta was a guest lecturer at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University and the Danish National Police Academy. Recently, Gambetta was invited to present NLC’s innovative strategy in the International Metropolis Conference in The Hague, Netherlands, National Immigrant Conference in Bucharest, Romania and the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France.

[email protected]

Professor Gonzales’ research focuses on the ways in which legal and educational institutions shape the everyday experiences and the transitions to adulthood of poor, minority, and immigrant youth and young adults. He is currently writing a book-length manuscript based on a 4½ year study of undocumented immigrant young adults in Los Angeles. Among his publications, his work has been published in the American Sociological Review, Current Anthropology, International Migration, and The Peabody Journal of Education. He has also authored policy reports, for the Migration Policy Institute, Immigration Policy Center, The College Board, and the Police Foundation that continue to impact policy debates locally and nationally. He is a co-founder of Video Machete, a youth media organization in Chicago, and has served on several local level and national boards, including the Crossroads Fund and the American Friends Service Committee. He earned his Ph.D. in the department of sociology at the University of California, Irvine.

[email protected]

Sojourners Director of Mobilizing, Ms. Harper was the founding executive director of New York Faith & Justice, an organization at the hub of a new ecumenical movement to end poverty in New York City. Her writing has been featured in The National Civic Review, God’s Politics blog, The Huffington Post, Urban Faith, Prism, and Slant33 where she has written extensively on tax reform, comprehensive immigration reform, health care reform, poverty, racial justice, and transformational civic engagement. Ms. Harper’s faith-rooted approach to advocacy and organizing has activated people of faith across the U.S. and around the world to address structural and political injustice as an outward demonstration of their personal faith. Having earned her masters degree in Human Rights from Columbia University in New York City, Ms. Harper's forthcoming book, Left, Right & Christ: Evangelical Faith in Politics, was co-written with D.C. Innes (an evangelical Republican who is also a Tea-Partier). Harper and Innes explore their philosophies of government and business as well as six major issues the next generations of evangelicals must wrestle with to be faithful witnesses in the public square. (Forthcoming October 2011)

[email protected]

Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin is a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Guatemala. Reginaldo studied agriculture at the Central National School of Agriculture and at the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala. In the U.S. He graduated from Augsburg College with an undergraduate degree in International Business Management. His training includes agricultural research, business planning and economic development. Reginaldo has worked on economic development for Guatemalan Indigenous communities since 1988. He is a co-founder and served as vice-chair of the Fair Trade Federation, he worked for the United Nations Development Program’s Bureau for Latin America on the Indigenous People’s Development Initiative and advised the World Council of Indigenous Peoples on fair trade. In Minnesota he has worked on developing international and local fair trade partnerships. Reginaldo’s founded Peace Coffee among other businesses, and was awarded one of the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and Saint Paul) International Citizen of the Year Awards in 1996. Reginaldo lives in Northfield MN, is a farmer, and the founder and current Director of the Rural Enterprise Center, a program of Main Street Project. He serves on the boards of the Northfield Area Foundation and the Northfield Area United Way, is married to Amy Haslett-Marroquin and is father to William, Ana Nicktae, and Lars Decarlo Marroquin-Haslett.

[email protected]

Christoph Hauschild is the Director and head of the Unit for Integration Policies in the German Federal Ministry of the Interior in Berlin. He is in charge of federal legislation and policy programs and is actively engaged in European and international cooperation. His work concerns the integration of newcomers and settled immigrants. Prior to this, Christoph worked in different sections of the Ministry, which he joined as a career civil servant in 1991. Additionally, Christoph is the Secretary General of the German Section of the Brussels based International Institute of Administrative Sciences. His interest in public administration issues goes back to his work as a scientific researcher at the National School of Administrative Sciences in Speyer. He is a lawyer by education and holds a PhD in law of the Free University of Berlin.

[email protected]

Director of Fundación Bertelsmann since 2004. She is member of the Círculo Directivo de la Bertelsmann Stiftung (Germany); vice president of the Fundación-Biblioteca Can Torró in Alcúdia, Mallorca and second vice president of the Coordinadora Catalana de Fundaciones.

[email protected]

Maggie Herzig is a founding associate of the Public Conversations Project in the Boston area (www.publicconversations.org). She is co-author with Laura Chasin of Fostering Dialogue Across Divides. With the Jewish Dialogue Group of Philadelphia, she wrote a similar guide focused on facilitating dialogue in Jewish communities about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Recently, she wrote a guide for Welcoming America practitioners (www.welcomingamerica.org) for facilitating dialogue between immigrants and people born in the US. Maggie has facilitated dialogues on many topics including abortion, sexual orientation, religion, race and ethnicity, intra-group conflicts in places of worship, and forest management. She also has facilitated several arts-based dialogues. Maggie’s interest in dialogue across faith communities is both professional and personal; her immediate family has representatives of all three Abrahamic faiths. Maggie has extensive experience as a facilitator and trainer and has won awards from the Boston Dialogue Foundation and the Cambridge Peace Commission.

[email protected]

Marcia Drew Hohn, EdD in Human and Organization Systems, is Director of the Public Institute for The Immigrant Learning Center, Inc. (ILC) in Malden, Massachusetts. In this role since 2003, she has developed a multi-pronged program to raise the visibility of immigrants’ economic and social contributions through 1) research studies about New England immigrants as entrepreneurs, workers and consumers; 2) developing an education program for K-12 teachers on teaching immigration across the curriculum; 3) working with an Immigrant Theater Group at The ILC and 4) initiating an immigration website for comprehensive information about immigrants. With a specialty in immigrant entrepreneurship, Marcia has made many presentations and published articles that describe the positive impact of immigrants. She works extensively with economic policy developers, social planners and immigrant organizations in Massachusetts and across the nation. Marcia is also a member of the Massachusetts Governor’s Advisory Council on Immigrants and Refugees.

[email protected]

Chung-Wha Hong is Executive Director of the New York Immigration Coalition, an umbrella advocacy organization made up of approximately 200 groups throughout the state that work with immigrant and refugee communities. As the coordinating body for organizations that serve one of the largest and most diverse newcomer populations in the United States, the NYIC has become a leading advocate for immigrant communities on the local, state, and national levels. The NYIC’s membership includes grassroots community organizations, not-for-profit health and human services organizations, religious and academic institutions, labor unions, and legal, social, and economic justice organizations. With its multi-ethnic, multi-racial, and multi-sector base, the NYIC provides both a forum for immigrant groups to share their concerns and a vehicle for collective action to address these concerns. She lives in Flushing, NY with her three children.

[email protected]

Ju Hong came from South Korea to the United States when he was 11 years old. Ju attended Laney College in Oakland, California, where he was elected as very first Asian American undocumented Student Body President. Currently, he is a fourth year at UC Berkeley where he serve as a student government Senator, and he hopes to graduate with a major in Political Science in 2012.

[email protected]

Margaret Huang, an experienced advocate for racial justice and human rights in the United States, is the Executive Director of the Rights Working Group (RWG). The RWG coalition of more than 320 member organizations was formed in the aftermath of 9/11 to restore civil liberties and human rights protections that have been eroded by national security policies. In 2009, RWG launched a campaign, Racial Profiling: Face the Truth, working with members and allies around the country to enact legislation and win policy reforms that ban racial and religious profiling by law enforcement agencies. Ms. Huang sits on the Steering Committee of the Human Rights at Home Campaign, which seeks to promote a domestic human rights agenda in the U.S., and she serves on the Board of Directors for the US Human Rights Network, which is dedicated to promoting U.S. government accountability to human rights standards.

[email protected]

Tarsha Jackson began organizing around prison reform in 2003 when her 11-year-old, mentally ill son was sentenced and served over three years in the Texas Youth Commission for a class C misdemeanor. In her work as an organizer with Grassroots Leadership Texas Reconciliation Project, the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, and the Houston chapter of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, Jackson has become a leading local activist who engages communities in the struggle to halt anti-immigrant policies and reform the juvenile and criminal justice systems. Jackson reconciliation efforts to unite black and brown communities on shared issues —particularly criminal justice, police brutality, and immigration; helped to prevent the City of Houston from implementing the 287(g) program, which deputizes local law enforcement officers to do federal immigration enforcement duties. She spearheaded the Texas Families of Incarcerated Youth partnership with the Texas Youth Commission to develop a Parent’s Bill of Rights and helped push the Texas legislature to reduce incarcerating nonviolent youth and increase family-focused, evidence-based interventions and sentencing options. Jackson is a 2011 Soros Justice Fellow, an active participant in the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative in Houston, and sits on the Texas Task Force for Youth with Special Needs board.

As an activist and organizer, Trina Jackson has facilitated numerous trainings, workshops and dialogues on racial justice, anti-oppression organizing, and reproductive justice for women of color. In addition to coordinating the work of NIAAS (Network of Immigrant and African Americans in Solidarity), she works as an organizational development consultant to social justice nonprofits in Boston. She has served as an advisory board member of the Mass CEDAW Project, is a founding member of Boston Incite! Women of Color Against Violence, Boston Women of Color Coalition for Reproductive Justice, and serves on the Board of Directors for Alternatives for Community and Environment (ACE), an environmental justice organization. Born and raised in Kentucky, Trina also studies African American women's environmental activism and recently completed a paper on African American women's gardening traditions from slavery to the present. She is also a writer, amateur nature photographer, loves yoga, and talking daily walks around the pond in her neighborhood.

[email protected]

Erik Jacobson is an Assistant Professor in the Early Childhood, Elementary and Literacy Education Department at Montclair State University. Over his career, Erik has focused his efforts on issues facing adults who need support in literacy or language learning, working as a teacher, a professional developer, and a researcher. He worked in community-based adult education in the greater Boston area for ten years, teaching a variety of classes (e.g., ESL, Citizenship, Family Literacy) for a number of immigrant organizations (including Haitian, Somali, and Capeverdean centers). His professional development work includes being on the staff CALPRO in California for two years and consulting with several states on workshops and webinars. Research interests include reading comprehension, technology and adult basic education in Japan. Erik is one of the founding members of the Adult Literacy Education Wiki and he has served as President of the New Jersey Association for Lifelong Learning since 2010.

[email protected]

Mr. Jama is the Executive Director of the Center for Intercultural Organizing. Mr. Jama has led an incredible journey, fleeing war torn Somalia as a teenager to become a well recognized and influential community organizer in Portland, Oregon. Mr. Jama was born into a nomadic family Northern Somalia. When he was nine, his family moved to Mogadishu, where he emerged as a youth leader. In 1991 he fled the violent civil war, which had engulfed Somalia, finally finding sanctuary in Portland Oregon in 1999. After Mr. Jama arrived in Portland, he returned to school and immediately started working as a social worker for Lutheran Community Services Northwest serving as the African Youth Coordinator. After the September 11 attacks, he decided to leave social work and founded Center for Intercultural Organizing. The Center for Intercultural Organizing was originally created to fight Islamophobia in the wake of September 11, and has become an important center for community education, civic engagement, community organization, intergenerational leadership, and political activism.

[email protected]

Azadeh Khalili is a consultant with the New York Immigration Coalition and a few national foundations. She is the former Deputy Commissioner for the New York City Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs under the Bloomberg Administration. Azadeh was one of the original writers of the New York City language access law which mandates over 50 agencies to ensure meaningful services to non-English speakers. From 1994 to 2001, Azadeh served as the CEO of the Youthbase, an agency that worked in collaboration with the New York City Department of Education to stop the spread of HIV among young people. This successful program was replicated in 7 other cities in the United States. Prior to founding Youthbase, Azadeh worked on behalf of marginalized communities and individuals serving prisoners, former-offenders, and inner-city youth. During the last two decades, Azadeh has facilitated national and international workshops on effective leadership skills for activists. Born in Iran, Azadeh holds an M.P.H. from Columbia University and was a fellow with the Annie E. Casey Foundation and with the Charles H. Revson Fellowships. Azadeh has served on numerous boards including the New York Community Media Alliance, the New York AIDS Coalition and Terra Moto, Inc.

Celinda and her colleagues at Lake Research Partners have conducted extensive research on the topic of immigration reform, reunification, and adult English Language Learning, including working with organizations like the California Immigrant Policy Center, National Immigration Forum, American Immigration Law Association, LIUNA, UFCW, and Change To Win. In projects for America’s Voice and The Opportunity Agenda, LRP conducted focus groups devoted to understanding voters’ perceptions of immigration and the economy and their opinions on comprehensive immigration reform proposals. In addition to the current research on behalf of The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on English Language Learning, Celinda and her colleagues have also conducted studies on behalf of the Asian American Justice Center to explore attitudes and perceptions related to adult English as a Second Language programs.

[email protected]

Rev. Eric Lee is the CA State President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Following the guiding principle of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”, Rev. Lee has committed his life to fighting for justice against oppressive forces that hinder people from achieving equality, freedom and dignity, regardless of social status, religious belief, gender, sexual orientation, or ethnicity. Rev. Lee is an outspoken advocate for education reform, immigration reform, LGBT equality and racial and economic equality.Rev. Lee has participated in immigration reform panels at the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission, USC, and was a guest presenter in Washington, D.C. for a Fair Immigration Reform Movement conference. Rev. Lee has a Bachelor from U.C. Berkeley, a Masters from Azusa Pacific University, and a Masters of Divinity from Bible Believers Christian College and Seminary.

Ruby Lee joined the Northwest Area Foundation (NWAF) in 2006. In her role as Program Director, she provides leadership, management, and oversight of special initiatives and grants in areas of asset-building, capacity and leadership development and public policy solutions that reduce poverty. Ruby also assists the Vice President of Programs in ensuring high quality operations for Program staff and alignment with the Foundation’s strategic direction. Prior to coming to NWAF, Ruby worked as a Program Officer at The Saint Paul Foundation for ten years where she managed grants and initiatives in the areas of neighborhood and community development, organizational capacity building, arts and humanities, immigrants and refugees, race and racism, adult literacy and higher education. She also previously worked for the State of Minnesota as a liaison between state government and Minnesota’s Latino community. Ruby has a bachelor’s degree in communications and public relations from Minnesota’s Metropolitan State University. Ruby was born and raised in Guatemala City, where her mother and siblings still reside. She is married and has two children. In addition to family, Ruby’s life-time commitment has been focused on advancing the interests of underserved communities of color and immigrants.

[email protected]

National Director of Project SHINE, an E Pluribus Unum award prize winner for Exceptional Immigrant Integration, headquartered at the Intergenerational Center at Temple University. Over the past decade, Mrs. Lehrman has developed and led a wide-range of initiatives with local and national organizations serving youths, low-income adults and immigrants/refugees. She is a first generation immigrant from Cameroon, West-Africa. A leader in community service, workforce development and immigrant integration, Mrs. Lehrman recently received a designation from the White House as a “Champion of Change” for immigrant integration. She frequently presents at conferences sponsored by national organizations such as the American Society on Aging/ National Council on the Aging, Generations United, and AARP. She has also given presentations at universities and community organizations across the country about the benefits of promoting immigrant integration through multi-sector collaboration. She holds an Executive MBA from the Fox School of Business, Temple University.

[email protected]

Dr. Tiffany J. Lightbourn is Chief of the Research & Evaluation Division in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Office of Policy and Strategy. She is responsible for overseeing and conducting research, analysis, and impact assessments on immigration-related issues. This Division incorporates information from external and internal research and evaluation efforts into the USCIS policy deliberations and decision making process. Dr. Lightbourn graduated with a Doctorate in Social Psychology from The University of Michigan, in 2000. Upon graduation she served as an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York where she taught psychology and classes in the multidisciplinary programs of Urban Studies and Africana Studies. In 2004-06 she won a fellowship from the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, DC, and began work at the Department of Homeland Security. As a fellow, she worked on immigration and border security issues as a member of the Border and Transportation Security portfolio. Later as a federal employee, of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate, Office of University Programs, she established several Centers of Excellence in the Social Behavioral Sciences and managed a grant program to encourage Minority Serving Institutions to become involved in homeland security research and education. Dr. Lightbourn was asked to help lead the Department’s efforts to transition leadership after the Presidential election in 2008.

[email protected]

Lavinia Limón has more than 30 years of experience working on behalf of refugees and immigrants. Prior to joining USCRI in August of 2001, Ms. Limón was Director of the Center for the New American Community, a project of the National Immigration Forum. During the Clinton Administration, Ms. Limón served as the Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, Department of Health and Human Services, designing and implementing programs to assist newly arriving refugees in achieving economic and social self-sufficiency. She served simultaneously as the Director of the Office of Family Assistance for four years, helping to devise policies and strategies for implementing national welfare reform. Ms. Limón was previously the Executive Director of the International Institute of Los Angeles.

[email protected]

Jen Lleras, the Project Coordinator for Basic Rights Oregon's Labor Project joined the team in early 2011. The Labor Project is the first of its kind in the nation and brings together SEIU local 503 and Basic Rights Oregon to build support for Marriage Equality and other issues facing LGBT workers. Jen graduated from the University of Oregon with degrees in Ethnic Studies and Spanish where she developed organizing skills and a committed framework for social justice. Before joining Basic Rights Oregon's team, she was the Organizing Director for the Oregon Student Association (OSA).

[email protected]

Patricia Loera currently serves as a senior program officer for Education at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation where her responsibilities include making grants aimed at dramatically increasing the number of minority youth who graduate from high school ready for college. Patricia focuses on human capital management to ensure low-income and minority students have consistent access to effective teachers. Throughout her 16 year career, Patricia has built a strong record as an advocate for civil rights and educational opportunities. She was the legislative director for the National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE) where she led advocacy efforts to improve services for English language learners and immigrant students. As a legislative staff attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) in Washington, DC, she worked to improve access to higher education for Hispanic students. She also served as an assistant attorney general with the Washington State Office of the Attorney General representing the Department of Social and Health Services in child abuse and neglect cases. Patricia was raised in the Yakima Valley in eastern Washington and is part of a large immigrant family who believed that education was the only way to create a better future. She learned English as a second language in elementary school and was the first in her family to graduate from college at Central Washington University. Patricia also earned a law degree from the University of Washington School of Law and is licensed to practice law in Washington state.

[email protected]

Francisco López is a Salvadoran-American that came to the United States in 1985 as a refugee from the war in El Salvador. Francisco is a member of Queen of Peace Catholic Church in South Salem. Francisco is the Executive Director of CAUSA, Oregon's immigrant Rights Coalition. In 2008 he was the Field Director with Voz Hispana Vote Project in Oregon. He earned his bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of El Salvador. In addition, he serves on the Board of Directors of the SHARE Foundation and The Western States Center He has 30 years of experience in community organizing, leadership development, and social service program design in the Unites States and Latin America. Mr. López is a recipient of the 1997 Mexican Government Ohtli Medal; 1998 Hispanic Heritage Award from the Austin Independent School District; Providence Portland Medical Center Mission Leadership Award 2000; and the Oregon Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers 2006 Citizen of the Year Award.

[email protected]

Mari Lopez is the Health Policy Specialist for the California Partnership. In her capacity, she tracks health legislation at the federal and state level, provides health system training to the organization's members, and organizes around health legislation. She represented the California Partnership on the national level during the country's movement for health care reform, and is currently involved in its implementation at various levels including training outreach workers, clinicians and health advocates on the Affordable Care Act. Before joining California Partnership Mari served with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights Los Angeles (CHIRLA) as the director of State Immigrant Access. She served as development associate for Clinica Monsignor Oscar Romero -- a nonprofit clinic that serves the uninsured -- and there Mari found her passion for health and access to comprehensive and affordable care that led to her career today. Fortunately the beginning of her career was nurtured and developed at the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) where she quickly moved from organizer of U.S. Citizenship application workshops to Director of Civic Participation. She has volunteered for numerous campaigns for candidates, ballot initiatives and almost everything electoral. She has served on various boards for LGBTQ issues, and has used her time to support women's shelters, helping homeless programs, and projects that support children. She is a lifelong resident of Los Angeles and the daughter of Salvadoran immigrants.

[email protected]

David Lubell is the Executive Director of Welcoming America, the first national organization in the U.S. that focuses its efforts exclusively on addressing the fears and concerns that native-born Americans often have in the face of rapid local immigrant growth. We do this work by empowering supportive residents of local communities – immigrants and U.S.-born neighbors together. Previously, David was the Founder and Executive Director of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC). In seven years, he helped turn TIRRC from an idea into one of the largest and most respected state-based immigrant rights organizations in the country. David holds a B.A. in history from Wesleyan University, and a Masters in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where he was a Reynolds Social Entrepreneurship Fellow. In 2008, David was named “Advocacy Affiliate of the Year” by the National Council of La Raza, the largest Latino civil rights organization in the U.S.

[email protected]

Ms. Maduro has worked in the field of training and workforce development for the past 30 years in both the public and private sectors. She has served as Oregon’s Pathways Initiative Statewide Director for the past five years. Prior to this appointment she served as Workforce Development Director at Portland Community College, overseeing the Career Pathways Training Program. Ms. Maduro is a member of the National Council for Workforce Education and the National Skills Coalition Leadership Council.

[email protected]

Shannon is the Organizing Director for One Colorado, a non-profit organization dedicated to securing and protecting equality and opporutunity for lesbian, gay bisexual and transgender Colordans and their families. Shannon has been a social justice organizer for over seven years and worked on campaigns to stop predatory lending, police brutality, violence against women, anti-immigrant initiatives and anti-equal opportunity initiatives in both Colorado and Illinois. She has fought to increase rights, equality and access for women, people of color, immigrants, people with disabilities, youth, low-income communities and LGBTQ communities. In previous work Shannon has organized young people through music with the hip-hop band, the Flobots, organized low-income women in Denver’s Housing Authority, lead youth leadership summer programs, worked as a counselor in a domestic violence shelter and a legal advocate in the Cook County Criminal court system. As a queer-identified woman, Shannon is grateful for the opportunity to organize within the LGBT community.

[email protected]

M Ed in TESOL from Seattle University. Director, Puget Sound Welcome Back Center. Ms. Mason has 25 years of immigrant integration experience teaching workplace, business, and job search English to non-native English speakers in corporate settings as well as educational institutions. At Highline Community College, assisted immigrants to transition into training programs for healthcare professions, including the nationally recognized I-BEST model. In 2008, helped create a Welcome Back Center at Highline Community College assisting immigrants trained in healthcare in their countries to navigate the licensing process for re-entry to healthcare sector in Washington State. To date, the Welcome Back Center at Highline has served over 520 participants. Ms. Mason currently works with local healthcare employers to create employment pathways, mentorship opportunities, apprenticeships and job shadowing to better prepare immigrants for success and retention on the job.

Alejandro Mayorkas is Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Nominated by President Obama, and unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate, Mayorkas leads the agency within the Department of Homeland Security charged with operating the largest immigration system in the world. He is responsible for an 18,000 member workforce throughout more than 200 offices worldwide and oversees a $3 billion annual budget. Prior to his appointment, Mayorkas was a partner in the law firm of O'Melveny & Myers LLP. He advised boards of directors and executives, led internal investigations, and litigated cases across a wide array of industries. In 1998, Mayorkas was nominated by President Clinton and confirmed by the United States Senate to serve as U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California. There, he led an office of 240 Assistant U.S. Attorneys and oversaw the prosecution of cases of national and international significance. Alejandro Mayorkas is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and holds a J.D. from Loyola Law School.

[email protected]

Veronica Melvin serves as the Chief Operating Officer for Communities for Teaching Excellence. For the past decade, she served as the Executive Director of the Alliance for a Better Community (ABC), an organization that promotes equity for Latinos in the areas of education, health, economic development and civic participation for the betterment of the Los Angeles region. As its first Executive Director, Veronica led the organization through various community based advocacy campaigns that included: promoting the college preparatory curriculum for all Los Angeles Unified (LAUSD) high school students; seeking greater access to quality preschool for L.A.'s children; and, banning junk food and sodas in schools. ABC achieved its goals by organizing local communities in policy advocacy and by facilitating the development of model programs that demonstrate innovation and excellence. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Political Economies of Industrial Societies from UC Berkeley and a Masters of Public Policy from UCLA's School of Public Affairs.

Stephanie@ fairfinance.org.uk

Stephanie has a background in development; she completed a Master degree in Urbanisation and Development at the London School of Economics in 2006 after a year in Cambodia where she was a Communication Officer for a local NGO supporting street children. Prior to joining Fair Finance’s team, Stephanie worked for 2.5 years for a Microfinance Institution in Madagascar where she held various positions such as Branch Manager and Operation Coordinator. In addition, Stephanie attended a field training program at the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. She joined Fair Finance as Head of Business in 2009 and is working on Fair Finance’s development in the following fields: operations management, information systems, staff management, geographic expansion and organisation growth.

[email protected]

Jackie came to the United States when she was 14-years-old, from El Salvador, alone with her 9 year-old younger sister to reunite with their mother. Since her arrival she and her family have struggled to make ends meet while attending school and overcoming language barriers. Despite these obstacles and the odds Jacqueline has managed to transform into an outstanding high school student. She has a 3.5 GPA and was recently chosen to represent her school as a member of the National Honor Society. A senior in high school, Jacqueline will be the first in her family to go to college. She wishes to become a psychologist focusing on young women. She is very active in her community and sets an inspiring example for her younger sister and her peers.

[email protected]

Eva Millona is the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, the largest advocacy organization in the Commonwealth representing the foreign born. She has been with the organization for over ten years, working as the director of Policy and Advocacy and as Deputy Director. Prior to joining MIRA in July, 1999, Eva directed the resettlement program in central MA. In her native Albania, she practiced civil and criminal law. From 1989-1992, Eva served as a judge in Tirana’s District Court. Outside of MIRA, Eva is also the co-chair of the Governor’s Advisory Council on Refugees and Immigrants and also serves on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Eva is a graduate of Clark University and of Tirana University, School of Law. She is the recipient of the 2009 U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service’s Outstanding American by Choice Award, the 2007 Political Asylum Immigration Representation Project (PAIR) Detention Attorney Award, and the 2007 National Lawyers Guild Legal Professional Award. Most recently, Wainwright Bank awarded her the prestigious 2010 Social Justice Award. She is a frequent speaker on immigration policy and immigrant integration.

[email protected]

John Miyasato is the founder and managing principal of Crossroads Campaigns Solutions, a political consulting firm that specializes in managing operations and public affairs in a variety of settings. He has over 20 years of experience with operational and strategic planning. At Crossroads, John has worked with a broad array of clients from around the country ranging from high profile U.S. Senate and Presidential races to campaigns for city council, national issue advocacy organizations to local ballot initiatives. Crossroads Campaigns offers a variety of services ranging from traditional and online communications to civic engagement and political outreach. Some of Crossroads’ current clients include Immigrant’s List, the National Immigration Forum, the New American Leaders Project, and We Are America Alliance. Crossroads also works with a number of elected officials and candidates including Congresswoman Colleen Hanabusa, Senator Daniel Inouye, Senator Robert Menendez, and Dr. Ami Bera of California

[email protected]

>Jessy is a graduate from Harvard College and Yale Law School. Jessy Molina is the Outreach Director for Welcoming America. Jessy’s responsibilities include new affiliate recruitment and support, launching Welcoming America’s exciting online project “Friends of Welcoming”, and building alliances with regional and national partners. Prior to joining Welcoming America, Jessy served as National Coordinator of Quality Education as a Constitutional Right (QECR), a national organization working to pass a Constitutional Amendment guaranteeing all children the right to a high quality public education. Before leading QECR, Jessy worked for the John Gardner Center for Youth and their Communities at Stanford, directing a youth-led research and community organizing project. In 2002, Jessy received a Soros Justice fellowship to work at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in San Francisco, where she worked for the Books not Bars project.

[email protected]

Dr. Nicholas V. Montalto is president of Diversity Dynamics, a consulting firm that has designed and implemented solutions to the policy and service challenges caused by America's ever-changing diversity. He previously served as president of the International Institute of New Jersey, where he helped develop many innovative programs to address the needs of immigrants and refugees and to speed their integration into American society. Dr. Montalto has successfully completed consulting assignments with many public and private organizations. He is currently involved in a major project for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to improve immigrant access to disability-related services. He has served as special advisor to the Program on Immigration and Democracy at Rutgers University, as chair of the Board of Directors of the New Jersey Immigration Policy Network, and as a member of the Hispanic Advisory Committee of the NJ Department of Human Services. In 2008, Diversity Dynamics launched the New Jersey Immigrant Policy Portal, a web site dedicated to the dissemination of research-based knowledge in the immigrant policy field. He is currently a consultant for the National Center for Cultural Competence at Georgetown University and is the incoming president of the New Jersey Association for Lifelong Learning.

[email protected]

Dave Montez is a senior program officer at the Gill Foundation, one of the nation's leading funders of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) advocacy efforts. Dave heads the foundation's Latino Initiative, which is designed to build lasting alliances between the LGBT and Latino communities. He also works with the Director of Ally Engagement to manage a grants portfolio focused on building broad support for LGBT equality. Before joining the Gill Foundation in 2007, he was a research development officer at the University of Colorado, Denver, where he researched and reviewed funding opportunities, grant proposals, and funding contracts for faculty members seeking funding from for-profit, federal, state, and local nonprofit agencies. He also worked for the Latino/a Research & Policy Center as the events and publications coordinator, where he planned, coordinated, and implemented all center-sponsored events.Dave speaks Spanish and holds a BA in journalism/public relations from Metropolitan State College of Denver. He is dedicated to community involvement, and is a gubernatorial appointee to the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District (SCFD), which oversees an average of $40 million in grant funding annually. He is a graduate of Leadership Denver, where he helped raise money and resources to remodel Urban Peak, a youth homeless shelter in Denver.

[email protected]

Nicole Montojo is the Health Access Project Director at the Korean Resource Center in Los Angeles. KRC’s Health Access Project works to empower low-income and Limited English Proficient (LEP) immigrant communities through a holistic organizing model that combines direct services with organizing and advocacy. Nicole and the Health Access Project team work directly with the KRC Community Health Promoters, a group of 50 Korean American seniors, to build their leadership and organizing skills to advocate for equitable health policies that protect the rights of immigrant communities. In recent years, they have mobilized the Korean American community for a variety of issues, including state budget cuts to health and human services, immigrant inclusion in health reform, and language access for LEP immigrants.

[email protected]

Catherine leads the Immigration Field Project and other public education campaigns at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights Education Fund. The Immigration Field Project seeks to build leadership and multiethnic coalitions to effectively move the country toward comprehensive immigration reform while at the same time build a multi-issue civil and human rights agenda for the future. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights public education campaigns focus on building multi-faceted coalitions that can proactively impact an issue for the betterment of low-income and communities of color. These initiatives leverage Ms. Montoya’s expertise in grassroots organizing, advocacy, communications and organizational development to build proactive civil and human rights coalitions across the country that have the tools they need to make progressive change in their communities. Prior to her work at the Leadership Conference Ms. Montoya managed the Emerging Latino Communities Initiative at the National Council of Raza.

[email protected]

Consul Alejandro Garcia Moreno of Mexico, a career diplomat, joined the Foreign Service in 1983 and has held the rank of ambassador since 2004. He has had several positions at the Foreign Ministry and abroad. In the Ministry he has been Director General for Latin America and the Caribbean, Director for Border Affairs and adviser to the Undersecretaries for Latin America and North America, among other positions. Abroad, he has been posted to the Mexican embassies in Guatemala and Belgium, the Mexican Consulate in San Antonio, TX and the Mexican Observer Office to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France. His last post abroad prior to arriving in Seattle was as ambassador to the Organization of American States in Washington, D. C. Consul Garcia Moreno has a BA in International Relations from El Colegio de Mexico and was a Fulbright scholar to the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Relations in Washington D.C. where he received an MA in International Relations with specializations in US Foreign Policy and International Trade. He also holds and MA degree from the National Defense College of Mexico in National Security. In additions to his diplomatic career, he has taught International Relations Theory, the History of Mexico-US Relations and US Foreign Policy at various universities in Mexico, and has given numerous conferences both in Mexico and abroad.

[email protected]

Kasra Movahedi, Deputy Director, Programs, oversees all direct-service efforts of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in San Diego – a refugee service agency operating in the community for 35 years. Mr. Movahedi began his tenure with IRC as part of the Microenterprise Program in 2004, and provided direct service to disadvantaged entrepreneurs for two years before being promoted to manage the program. He has since helped to design and launch many of the additional programs presently operated by the IRC’s Center for Financial Opportunity. The Center is modeled after the Annie E. Casey Centers for Working Families concept, which emphasizes bundled delivery of economic development services through a “one stop shop” approach.

[email protected]

Diane Narasaki is Executive Director of Asian Counseling and Referral Service (ACRS), which offers behavioral health and human services supporting immigrant integration for 23,000 Asian Pacific Americans, primarily immigrants and refugees, in 38 languages. Diane chairs the King County Asian Pacific Islander Coalition, which launched an Asian Pacific Islander comprehensive immigration reform campaign. She served on the Washington State Asian Pacific American Affairs Commission, and chaired the Minority Executive Directors Coalition, Asian Pacific Directors Coalition, Committee to Reverse the Japanese American Wartime Internment Cases, and the Asian Pacific Women’s Caucus. She co-founded the National Asian American and Pacific Islander Mental Health Association and serves on the Center for Mental Health Services National Advisory Committee. Diane has been recognized for her contributions by the Ford Foundation “ Leadership for a Changing World Award,” Seattle Magazine “Most Influential People of the Year,” Puget Sound Business Journal “Women of Influence Award,” National Association of Asian American Professionals, Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, International Examiner, and Northwest Asian Weekly.

[email protected]

Lindsay Neil has dedicated her career to giving children a better future. A dedicated education advocate, she has been responsible for passing some of the most progressive education legislation in Colorado. As the government affairs director for the Colorado Children’s Campaign, Lindsay was instrumental in passing the Innovation Schools Act. In her first year as the executive director of Stand for Children Colorado, Lindsay developed the strategy and led the coalition to pass the groundbreaking Senate Bill 191, the Great Teachers and Leaders Law. Born and raised on the Western Slope of Colorado, Lindsay began her work in education just after college, when she raised money to build a school in Nicaragua and later managed it. After returning to Colorado, she spent several years providing direct service for students and families and later directed legislative work for the Colorado Children’s Campaign, resulting in numerous achievements for early childhood and K-12 education, children’s healthcare, and child welfare. Currently, as the executive director for Stand for Children Colorado, Lindsay oversees the affiliate’s operations, including finance, state and local advocacy, electoral work, and organizing, in order to give Colorado’s children the excellent public education they deserve.

[email protected]

Jennifer Ng’andu joined the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) in 2004. She currently serves as Deputy Director of the Health Policy Project, where she oversees NCLR’s efforts to improve the health status and outcomes of Latinos through national policy change. She worked on many collective efforts to advance health care access for Latino immigrant communities including the enactment of a major children’s health initiative, which led to the restoration of critical benefits for legal immigrant children and families. As a result, more than 250,000 uninsured children are expected to receive access to insurance, and Congress restored at least $1 billion of public health insurance to legal immigrant children and expectant mothers. Prior to joining NCLR, Ms. Ng’andu worked at the National Immigration Law Center, helping to advance legislation that improves health and expands access to social services for low-income immigrants, as well as increasing educational opportunities for immigrant students. She was born in Lusaka, Zambia and hails from southeastern Connecticut.

[email protected]

Alex Nogales, President and CEO of the National Hispanic Media Coalition, collects over thirty commendations for excellence in television production and three Emmy Awards earned during his thirteen-year tenure at KCBS TV. Elected NHMC’s President in the late nineties, Alex has led high-profile demonstrations against major media corporations for their exclusion of American Latinos. Likewise, Alex has been instrumental in the signing of agreements with the major television networks to guarantee their commitment to diversity. When Latinos were undercounted by the A.C. Nielsen Research Company, Alex led efforts to force Nielsen to address this shortfall, so Latinos would be taken into consideration. Under Alex’s leadership NHMC has increasingly engaged on media and telecommunications policies that impact Latinos, and has filed over fifty petitions to deny broadcast licenses with the FCC. He recently was one of the seven Latino leaders who negotiated a MOU with Comcast diversity to include the American Latino community.

[email protected]

Ali Noorani is the Executive Director of the National Immigration Forum, one of the nation's preeminent pro-immigrant advocacy organizations. Before coming to Washington in June of 2008, Noorani was with the Boston-based Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition (MIRA), where he served as Executive Director since 2003. Born in California, Noorani is the son of Pakistani immigrants and one of the few national leaders of Muslim heritage. He is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and received his Master's in Public Health from Boston University, where he received the University's Young Alumni Award in 2007.

[email protected]

Herman Nyamunga is the Small Business Technical Assistance Coordinator for the Welcoming Center. He provides technical assistance to entrepreneurs and business owners to successfully establish stabilize and expand their microenterprises. Prior to joining Welcoming Center, He worked as a consultant providing technical assistance to businesses and nonprofits. His services included, market analysis, business planning, organizational development supply chain management, import/export, strategic planning, and marketing. Herman is a Licensed Consultant for the Standards for Excellence Program - advancing ethics and accountability standards in nonprofit management nationwide. Previously, He served as Program Manager for Africa Tobacco Media program and also as a Logistics Officer for the International Federation of Red Cross where he managed the procurement and distribution of relief materials. As a business man, Herman owned and managed procurement and Supplies Company which specialized in government contracts, import and exports. He has an MBA and a Bachelor’s degree in Education.

Anne O’Callaghan is the founding president and chief executive officer of the Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians, a centralized employment and resource center for immigrants in the Philadelphia region. She has been a prominent advocate for immigrants for over three decades. Trained as a physical therapist in Ireland, Anne came to the United States in 1970 and worked in the field for 20 years as a practitioner, college-level instructor, and service director. She brought her entrepreneurial skills to the founding and building of a software development company which served the home health care industry. Following the sale of that company, she focused her attention on the economic and workforce contributions of immigrants, and founded the Welcoming Center in 2003, choosing as its mission the social, political and economic integration of immigrants in Southeastern Pennsylvania. To date, the Center has helped more than 8,000 people through small business, employment, legal and referral services, and placed more than 1,100 work-authorized immigrants in jobs, boosting their incomes while broadening the region’s tax base. Anne received her training and certification at the University of Dublin (Trinity College) School of Medicine and the Oswestry and North Staffordshire School of Physiotherapy. She is active in the Alliance for the Mentally Ill, the Visiting Nurses Association of Greater Philadelphia, and the Southwest Community Enrichment Center. In 2006, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services recognized her contributions with an Outstanding American by Choice award.

[email protected]

Ratna Omidvar is President of Maytree, a private foundation that promotes equity and prosperity through its policy insights, grants and programs. The foundation is known for its commitment to developing, testing, and implementing programs and policy solutions related to immigration, integration and diversity in the workplace, in the boardroom and in public office. Ratna serves as a director of Greater Toronto CivicAction Alliance (formerly Toronto City Summit Alliance), the chair of the Board of Directors of TRIEC, and a director of Connect Legal. She has been appointed to a number of taskforces, including the Transition Advisory Board to the Premier of Ontario in 2003 and to Prime Minister Paul Martin’s External Advisory Committee on Cities and Communities. In 2006, Ratna was appointed to the Order of Ontario. In 2010, the Globe and Mail profiled Ratna as its Nation Builder of the Decade for Citizenship.

[email protected]

Patrice O’Neill, Executive Producer and Director Not In Our Town: Light in the Darkness Patrice O’Neill is an award-winning producer dedicated to creating inspiring stories which spark audience members to become change agents in their own communities. As Executive Producer of the non-profit media company The Working Group (TWG), she has produced successful national series on PBS for fifteen years and led a multi-platform approach utilizing documentary film, grassroots engagement, educational outreach and social media to ignite dialogue and action. TWG’s 1995 special about a town responding to hate, Not In Our Town, set a standard for television impact and launched a movement that continues to thrive on the ground and at NIOT.org.

Scot Osterweil

Scot Osterweil is a founding member, and Creative Director of the Learning Games Network and a research director at The Education Arcade in the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program. He is a designer of award-winning educational games, working in both academic and commercial environments, and his work has focused on what is authentically playful in challenging academic subjects. He has designed games for computers, handheld devices, and multi-player on-line environments. Scot is the creator of the acclaimed Zoombinis series of math and logic games, and leads a number of projects at LGN and The Education Arcade, including the Hewlett Foundation’s Xenos Open Language Learning Initiative (ESL), Vanished: The MIT/Smithsonian Curated Game (environmental science), Labyrinth (math), Kids Survey Network (data and statistics), Caduceus (medical science), and iCue (history and civics).

[email protected]

Gaby Pacheco is an undocumented student leader from Miami, Florida who want to be musical therapist and work with children with autism and Down syndrome. She has an AA in Music Ed. AS in Early Childhood education, and a BA in Special Education K-12. In 2010, she walked 1,500 miles in support of the DREAM Act, to bring to light the plight of immigrants in this country, and to urge President Obama to stop the separations of families and deportations of DREAM act eligible youth. This walk was dubbed the Trail of DREAMs. She is currently the END (Education not Deportation) Project National Coordinator for the United We Dream network. END is a project that seeks to stop the deportation of DREAM Act eligible youth! You can find out more at endourpain.com.

[email protected]

Chhandasi Pandya is a Policy Analyst and Program Coordinator with the Migration Policy Institute's National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy. Her work focuses on assessing immigrant integration policies and practices, including those related to the provision of language access services by federal, state, local and community agencies. She also manages MPI's Language Portal, a digital resource for language access practitioners from across the country and she hosts a webinar series that explores current issues in language access and immigrant integration. Prior to joining MPI, she served as a Senior Analyst with the US Government Accountability Office (GAO). She has also worked as a financial journalist for Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal online. Ms. Pandya holds a master's degree in international affairs from Columbia University; she completed her undergraduate work in journalism and economics at the University of Maryland at College Park.

[email protected]

Luis Pastor has been President and CEO of Latino Community Credit Union (LCCU) since 2001. He oversaw the organization’s expansion to over 54,000 members and 10 branches statewide, making it the fastest growing credit union in the U.S. During his tenure, LCCU has become a national model for institutions seeking to provide financial education and services to unbanked and low-income immigrant communities. LCCU has received numerous awards including the E Pluribus Unum award for its exceptional immigration integration initiatives as well as the first Wachovia NEXT Award designed to propel high-potential CDFIs to a next level of growth, success, and staying power. Pastor, a native of Spain, has a degree in Economics and Business Administration from CUNEF (Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain), a Masters in Human Resources from CEF (Centros de Estudios Fiancieros, Madrid, Spain) and an MBA from Instituto de Empresa (Madrid, Spain).

Dr. Manuel Pastor is Professor of American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. Founding Director of the Center for Justice, Tolerance, and Community at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Pastor currently directs the Program for Environmental and Regional Equity at USC and is Director of USC’s Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration. He holds an Economics Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and has received fellowships from the Danforth, Guggenheim, and Kellogg foundations and grants from the Irvine Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the California Environmental Protection Agency, the W.T. Grant Foundation, The California Endowment, the California Air Resources Board, and many others. Pastor’s research has generally focused on issues of environmental justice, regional inclusion, and the economic and social conditions facing low-income urban communities. His most recent book, Uncommon Common Ground: Race and America’s Future (W.W. Norton 2010; co-authored with Angela Glover Blackwell and Stewart Kwoh), documents the gap between progress in racial attitudes and racial realities, and offers a new set of strategies for both talking about race and achieving racial equity. Another recent book, This Could Be the Start of Something Big: How Social Movements for Regional Equity are Transforming Metropolitan America (Cornell University Press 2009; co-authored with Chris Benner and Martha Matsuoka), suggests how regional organizing is charting a new path for progressive politics and policies in America’s urban areas.

[email protected]

José Ramón Fernández-Peña, MD, MPA is the founder and director of the Welcome Back Initiative (WBI) a program developed to assist internationally trained health professionals through the necessary steps to enter the US health workforce. The WBI currently includes centers in California, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Washington, Maryland, New York, Texas, and Colorado. The WBI received the E Pluribus Unum Prize in 2011. Dr. Fernández-Peña is an Associate Professor of Health Education at San Francisco State University where his works focuses on program planning, health workforce diversity and cross cultural communication in health. He is the recipient of the 2011 Champions of Health Professions Diversity award from The California Wellness Foundation, and the White House’s Champions of Change award for his work in immigrant integration. Dr. Fernández-Peña has degree in medicine from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and a masters’ degree in public administration from New York University.

[email protected]

As Director of Education, Postsecondary Success & Special Initiatives, at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Hilary Pennington leads the foundation's postsecondary education initiative as well as efforts around one-time opportunities to respond to unique challenges and unanticipated events in the United States. Before joining the foundation, Pennington served as a Senior Fellow at the progressive think tank the Center for American Progress and as President and CEO of Jobs for the Future (JFF), a research and policy development organization she co-founded. In her twenty-two years as President and CEO of JFF, Pennington helped the organization become one of the most influential in the country on issues of education, youth transitions, workforce development, and future work requirements. She also served on President Clinton's transition team and as co-chair of President Clinton's Presidential Advisory Committee on Technology. Pennington is a graduate of the Yale School of Management and Yale College. She holds a graduate degree in Social Anthropology from Oxford University and was a Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government in 2000.

[email protected]

Martine Pierre-Louis manages an interpreter/translator department in a large Seattle-area teaching hospital. She holds a master in public health with a focus on international health. A Haitian Creole and French interpreter for over a decade, she is a founding member and past board member for both the Society of Medical Interpreters and the National Council on Interpreting in Health Care. She has been involved for years in community-based public health efforts with a focus on access to health care and equity for refugees and immigrants.

[email protected]

In her role as Senior Vice-President for Programs, Delia Pompa oversees Community Development, Education, the Institute for Hispanic Health and Workforce Development. Throughout her career Ms. Pompa’s work has focused on creating new responses to the needs of Hispanic and immigrant families and children within leading local, state and federal agencies and national and international organizations. She is the former Director of the Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Languages Affairs in the U.S. Department of Education and the former Executive Director of the National Association for Bilingual Education. After teaching and directing programs for immigrant children she also served as Assistant Commissioner of the Texas Education Agency. Ms. Pompa is also the former Director of Education, Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention, and Youth Development for the Children’s Defense Fund. She serves on a number of national boards and committees for a wide range of institutions that address the needs of children.

[email protected]

Ai-jen has been organizing immigrant women workers in New York since 1996, where she started as the Women Workers Project organizer at CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities. In 2000 she helped start Domestic Workers United, an organization of nannies, housekeepers and elderly caregivers in New York organizing for power, respect, fair labor standards and to help build the social justice movement. DWU led the way to the passage of the first Domestic Workers Bill of Rights in 2010, historic legislation to extend basic labor protections to over 200,000 domestic workers in New York State. DWU helped to organize the first national meeting of domestic workers organizations at the US Social Forum in 2007, which resulted in the formation of the National Domestic Workers Alliance. In April 2010, she became Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance. Ai-jen also serves on the Board of Social Justice Leadership, the Seasons Fund for Social Transformation, the Labor Advisory Board at Cornell ILR School, Momsrising, National Jobs with Justice and the New Labor Forum Editorial Board.

[email protected]

Jenny Pool Radway is the Program Coordinator for the Original Aurora Community Integration Collaborative (OACIC), a program run by Aurora Mental Health Center. She has been working for the past eleven years in community engagement and organizing, focusing on work with the immigrant and refugee populations. Jenny specializes in cross cultural communication, outreach and advocacy for immigrant and refugee groups and healthcare for minorities. As part of her work with the OACIC program Jenny works with community members and local organizations to build understanding and a sense of community regardless of language or culture through a variety of successful programs including a health fair, neighborhood watch and women's health education group. Jenny holds a Bachelor's degree from Ripon College and is currently working on her Master's degree from Capella University.

[email protected]

Nora A. Preciado, Staff Attorney, National Immigration Law Center, Los Angeles office. Ms. Preciado focuses on promoting the rights of low-income immigrants through litigation, technical assistance, and administrative advocacy. Her main areas of focus include immigration enforcement and workers’ rights issues. Before joining NILC, Ms. Preciado was an Equal Justice Works Fellow at the Orange County office of the ACLU of Southern California, where she litigated cases dealing with immigrants' rights issues and conducted extensive community outreach and education. She then joined the ACLU/SC's Los Angeles office, where she focused on immigration detention litigation and advocacy on conditions of detention. Ms. Preciado holds a juris doctor degree from the University of California at Berkeley (Boalt Hall).

[email protected]

José Quiñonez is the founding Executive Director of the Mission Asset Fund, a neighborhood-based asset building organization working to expand access to financial services, savings and investment opportunities for low-income and immigrant residents in San Francisco’s Mission District. MAF is leading the asset building filed by creating innovative and culturally relevant financial products to help immigrants transition into the financial mainstream. José’s background includes working as a legislative assistant for Congressman Ruben Hinojosa, as a policy advocate for various nonprofit organizations in Washington, D.C., including the Center for Community Change and Bread for the World, where he worked on a variety of issues including immigration, hunger, and welfare reform. Most recently, José worked for the Center for Responsible Lending, advocating against predatory mortgage and payday lending practices that strip assets from hard-working families. José is a graduate of the University of California at Davis and Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School.

[email protected]

Julie holds a B.A. from Brown University and has received both a Certificate in teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages and a M.A. in the Science of Teaching from the New School for Social Research. Julie came to Make the Road New York in 2004 to oversee the creation of the organization’s adult literacy program. Currently she teaches ESOL classes to low level Latino immigrants, and in her capacity as Director supervises a staff of 10 full time and part time teachers, raises funds, and serves as a link between MRNY's adult education and community organizing projects, as well as a liason to other adult ed allies citywide on the New York Coalition for Adult Literacy's Steering Committee. Before MRNY Julie taught and did curriculum development, media education, and teacher mentoring work at a number of small alternative high schools in New York City for almost 10 years. Previous to her work with NYC’s Department of Education, Julie worked as a labor organizer and community-based environmental health educator.

[email protected]

Suman Raghunathan, Director of Policy and Strategic Partnerships at Progressive States Network, coordinates PSN's work across numerous policy areas. Specifically, she seeks to develop and broker partnerships with key progressive groups focused on advancing and expanding opportunity via innovative state policies that shift the national debate. She also coordinates PSN's efforts to advance progressive state immigration policy in close collaboration with state legislators and advocacy organizations. Suman has deep experience advancing immigrant rights via grassroots, advocacy, and policy organizations. The daughter of Indian immigrants and the former Interim Executive Director of Chhaya Community Development Corporation, where she now serves on the Board of Directors, Suman’s expertise lies in crafting policy platforms and advocacy strategies. She has also developed programs to engage immigrants in the electoral process at the NY Immigration Coalition and OneAmerica, including managing the nation’s largest voter registration project for new citizens. Prior to joining PSN, Suman was an immigration policy consultant, helping to create the immigration-focused blog Feet in 2 Worlds and developing progressive policy agendas for Demos and the Drum Major Institute. Suman holds a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Brown University and a Master’s in Nonprofit Management from Milano The New School for Management and Urban Policy.

[email protected]

Bernardo Ramirez is the Executive Director of the Hispanic Economic Development Corporation in Kansas City, Missouri. Established in 1993, HEDC is a non profit economic development corporation that exists to improve economic opportunities in the greater Kansas City area. Formerly, Mr. Ramirez was a Deputy V.P. for the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) in Washington, D.C. Mr. Ramirez has conducted training sessions throughout the United States including trainings in Quito, Ecuador, in 1993 and a presentation on Businesses in the U.S.A. in Chihuahua, Mexico in September, 2009. Mr. Ramirez currently sits on the boards of the Economic Development Corporation (EDC) of Kansas City, the EDC Loan Corporation, Kansas City’s Workforce Investment Board, the local United Way of Greater Kansas City, and the National Association of Latino Community Asset Builders headquartered in San Antonio, Texas.
In 1996 Mr. Ramirez obtained his MBA from Rockhurst College in Kansas City, Missouri.

[email protected]

Jill Reese joined the Alliance for a Just Society staff team in April 2003 after serving three years with Alliance’s affiliate, Idaho Community Action Network. As field organizer in Idaho, Jill played a leadership role in passing the state’s landmark Farmworker Minimum Wage and Farm Contractor Bonding laws. Currently, Jill coordinates the Health Rights Organizing Project, a coalition of 35 organizations in 23 states that was instrumental in winning many of the health equity provisions contained in the historic Affordable Care Act of 2010. As training director, Jill oversees the Alliance’s efforts to develop the leadership, skills and political analysis of affiliate staff and leaders.

[email protected]

Rigo Romero is a Captain on the Los Angeles Police Department and is the Assistant Commanding Officer of Gang and Narcotics Division, as well as the Latino Community Liaison for the Chief of Police. Captain Romero was born in Michoacan, Mexico. In 1967, his parents decided to seek a better life and moved their 16 children to Los Angeles, having procured legal immigration status through the Federal Government. He grew up in Los Angeles, obtained his Bachelor’s Degree at California State University, Los Angeles, and then joined the Los Angeles Police Department in 1989. Captain Romero has served a variety of assignments, which included patrol, traffic, Internal Affairs, Rampart Task Force, and prior to his current assignment to Gang and Narcotics Division, he has been the Commanding Officer of Newton Division, Special Operations Division, and Community Affairs Division. He is also a graduate of the Federal Bureau of Investigation National Academy. Captain Romero married his wife Maria in 1985 and they have four children: Gracy, Victoria, Gabriela and Alexa. Captain Romero shares a wonderful story of successful immigration to Los Angeles to seek a better life, and is proud to be an outstanding representative of the Latino heritage community in the City of Angels.

[email protected]

Executive Director and Co-Founder of MomsRising, Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner has been deeply involved in grassroots engagement and policy analysis for more than two decades, and is also an award-winning author of books and articles on subjects covering women and families, public policy, motherhood, economic security, equality, health, civic engagement, and new feminism. Started in May 2006, MomsRising is an on-the-ground and online organization with over 1 million members, as well as more than a hundred aligned national organizations, working together to increase family economic security and to help ensure all children can thrive. In addition to being a grassroots force, in both 2010 and 2011, Forbes.com named MomsRising's website one of the “Top 100 Websites For Women.”

[email protected]

Shaady Salehi is Deputy Director of Active Voice, a nonprofit media strategy organization that uses film, television and multimedia to spark social change. With eight years of experience working at the intersection of media and social change, Shaady specializes in using film as a strategic communications tool to support movement building. As Deputy Director, she provides consultation to filmmakers, foundations and nonprofit organizations and oversees many of Active Voice's campaigns on topics such as immigrant integration, youth empowerment, sustainability and education. She has spoken at a range of conferences about the use of film in social movement building, including the Silverdocs Film Festival, the Media That Matters conference at American University and the PolicyLink Regional Equity Summit. She holds an M.S. in strategic communications from Columbia University and an M.A. in cultural anthropology from the University of California, Davis.

[email protected]

As grantmaking director, Manuel is the primary liaison to the Donor Engagement, Business Services and Community Initiatives, Convening and Research departments, with the primary responsibility of linking donor engagement staff to community organizations, regional needs and grantmaking best practices. In his role, he also leads the Immigrant Integration strategy. Previously, he served as a program officer with education and community building issues for Silicon Valley Community Foundation. Manuel joined Peninsula Community Foundation in 1999 and managed the nine community collaborative sites of the Peninsula Partnership for Children, Youth and Families™, which brought together city-, school- and community-based organizations in San Mateo County. Manuel helped launch and manage community-wide initiatives that improved the health and well-being of children ages 0-8 years old. Prior to his work with the community foundation, he developed and led initiatives for a network of family resource centers; helped develop education programs for children and adults; and has worked with local organizations that advocate for the protection of immigrant rights. Manuel is a bilingual and bicultural facilitator with extensive community-based teaching and organizing experience. Manuel has worked with people of all ages, religions, cultural backgrounds, sexual orientations and political inclinations. He holds a bachelor's degree in international relations and a master's degree in public administration.

Michael Schutzler

Michael Schutzler is a respected business leader with more than 25 years of proven operational success in the telecommunications, enterprise software, printing, and internet sectors. Prior to Livemocha, Schutzler led the consulting firm CEOSherpa, where he served for three years as a CEO advisor and executive coach for startups and mid-sized companies in the financial, pharmaceutical, and technology industries. He has also served as the senior executive at RealNetworks and As senior vice president at Monster.com. Prior to that, Schutzler served as CEO of Classmates.com, the service is recognized as one of the first social networking sites.

[email protected]

Jessica Scruggs is the Washington New Americans Program Coordinator at OneAmerica. She is dedicated to helping empower immigrant communities and creating vibrant communities full of active, engaged new citizens. Prior to joining OneAmerica, Jessica worked as a Senior Analyst with the philanthropic consulting firm Global Philanthropy Group where she worked to help corporations, foundations and philanthropists to understand issues from maternal mortality to education to poverty eradication and help them create change through innovative philanthropic strategies. Jessica has also worked as a community development worker, grant writer and translator in Guatemala, Mexico and Argentina. Jessica currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Washington State Chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and continues to work for social justice in Washington and beyond. She holds a B.A. in Political Science and Public Policy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

[email protected]

Aparna Shah has worked for social change and expanded democracy with immigrant and low-income communities for over 15 years. She is the Director of Mobilize the Immigrant Vote (MIV), a statewide, multi-ethnic coalition of grassroots organizations that builds the power and capacity of immigrant communities through electoral engagement. Prior to MIV, Aparna worked to advance the self-determination and reproductive justice of women, people of color, and queer communities as well as spent several years working to transform a public middle school into a vibrant youth and community center in San Francisco’s Mission District. Aparna is an inaugural Fellow for a New California with the Rockwood Leadership Institute, sits on the Center for American Progress Women's Health Leadership Network, and holds a Masters of Health Sciences from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. She was born in Manila, grew up in Mumbai, and now lives with her family in Oakland, CA.

[email protected]

Lee is Executive Director and co-founder of Intercambio, a nonprofit that builds respect and friendship across cultures through volunteer-taught English classes for adult immigrants, life skills and citizenship courses, events and cultural trainings. Lee has helped Intercambio spread its model nationwide, train 3,500 volunteer teachers, and provide English classes to 7,500 immigrant adults since its inception in 2001. Lee authored "What Every Immigrant Needs to Know", a publication being used by over 250 organizations in 40 states to spread practical, simple and essential information to ease the integration process. He regularly leads cultural awareness trainings, orientations to life in the U.S., presentations on social entrepreneurship, and world dance party exercise classes. He has a BA in Business Administration from the University of Michigan.

[email protected]

Utah Attorney General Mark L. Shurtleff is now serving as the first three term attorney general in Utah history. In his first 8 years in office, the number of meth labs in Utah were reduced by 98% and more than 500 internet predators and child pornographers were arrested and convicted. Shurtleff set up Utah's AMBER Alert and he developed the first statewide Child Abduction Response Team. Shurtleff helped create the Utah Compact to address immigration issues with a comprehensive and compassionate approach. He innovated IRIS, a one stop resource for ID theft victims to file complaints online and clear their credit. He is the author of Am I Not a Man? The Dred Scott Story. Previously, Shurtleff served as a Salt Lake County Commissioner and prosecuted cases as an Officer and Attorney in the U.S. Navy. He and his wife, M’Liss are the parents of five children and three grandchildren.

[email protected]

Audrey Singer is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program. Her work currently focuses on the new geography of immigration, the social, economic, political, and civic integration of immigrants, and state and local responses to immigration. Prior to joining Brookings, she was an associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a faculty member at Georgetown University, and an analyst at the U.S. Department of Labor. She is the immediate past chair of the American Sociological Association International Migration section. She earned a Ph.D. in Sociology, with a specialization in Demography, from the University of Texas at Austin.

[email protected]

Navjeet leads the Applied Research and Evaluation (ARE) department at Commonwealth Corporation. Commonwealth Corporation is a quasi-state corporation that strengthens the skills of Massachusetts youth and adults by investing in innovative partnerships with industry, education and workforce organizations. ARE researches labor market trends, supports the design of innovative workforce development programs, and evaluates the effectiveness of workforce development and training programs. Navjeet lead the team that recently completed a landmark study to assess the demand for and supply of ESOL programs for immigrants in Greater Boston. The current work of the ARE team includes reporting on detailed evaluation of workforce programs measuring participant outcomes, business outcomes, partnership effectiveness and systems change and developing best practice guides for practitioners. Navjeet holds an M.S. in Science and Technology Studies from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, an M.B.A. from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and a B.S. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.

[email protected]

Joan Singler,(1934 - ) a college student and mother-to-be in 1961, was also a founder of Seattle CORE. Along with raising two daughters she served as CORE secretary, and Chaired the Housing Committee. After moving to San Francisco in 1965, Joan led the San Francisco Women for Peace in a boycott against the Dow Chemical Company, producer of napalm, used in the Vietnam War. Upon returning to Seattle, she completed her work for a bachelor’s degree in Psychology with an emphasis on Early Childhood Education. Along with her studies she spent time working on behalf of the Farm Workers Union in their fight for better working conditions and wages. In the 70s Joan became part of the campaign effort to elect Marvin Durning, Governor of Washington and was a staff member in his subsequent run for the U.S. Congress. While working as a travel consultant Joan also spoke out on behalf of victims of domestic violence, and continues to raise awareness of this issue today. In March 2011 the University of Washington Press published Seattle in Black and White, The Congress of Racial Equality and the Fight for Equal Opportunity a history of the 1960s civil rights movement in Seattle and the personal memoirs of Joan and the other three co-authors of this book. Currently she serves on the Washington State Executive Council for AARP.

[email protected]

Rebecca Smith was born and raised in the Yakima Valley in Washington State. For nearly 30 years, she has worked with unions, worker centers, community and faith-based organizations and others towards creating a society where work and workers are valued. As coordinator of the National Employment Law Project's Justice for Immigrant Workers Project, she has worked at the local, national and international levels to support worker organizing and workers' legal rights. Smith and her colleagues at NELP have played a key role in fighting wage theft across the country, providing legal, policy, strategic and communications support to anti-wage theft campaigns in about half of the states.

[email protected]

Matthew Soerens serves as the US Church Training Specialist for World Relief, the humanitarian arm of the National Association of Evangelicals. In that role, he helps evangelical churches to understand and respond in appropriate ways to the arrival of immigrants to the United States. Matthew previously worked as a Board of Immigration Appeals-accredited legal counselor at World Relief's local office in Wheaton, Illinois and, before that, worked with World Relief’s local partner organization in Managua, Nicaragua. Matthew earned his Bachelor's Degree from Wheaton College and a Master's Degree from DePaul University’s School of International Public Service. He is the co-author of Welcoming the Stranger: Justice, Compassion & Truth in the Immigration Debate (InterVarsity Press, 2009) and the co-creator of UnDocumented.tv, an online movement seeking to mobilize young evangelicals to champion the needs of immigrants. He lives in Glen Ellyn, Illinois with his wife Diana.

[email protected]

Claire is the founding Executive Director of Internationals Network for Public Schools. Internationals has almost tripled the number of affiliated International High Schools since 2004 while sustaining a dynamic network in order to ensure the schools’ continued success in providing recent immigrant English language learners (ELLs) with a high quality education and pathways to college. Claire has worked with immigrants for more than 30 years in diverse roles and settings: in the community, higher education and public secondary education. Claire has served on City and State Commissions and Task Forces on immigrants and English language learners and conducted research on language development programs. Claire attended both McGill University and Brooklyn College as an undergraduate and received her masters and doctoral degrees from Teachers College, Columbia University.

[email protected]

Damian Thorman joined the Knight Foundation in 2007 as National Program Director. The National program supports innovative ideas and leadership with the potential to drive transformative change nationally and in Knight’s resident communities. He helps develop new grant opportunities at a national level with a special focus on systemic or lasting change within the framework of informed and engaged communities. Previously he has been a reporter, entrepreneur, congressional aide, health care executive and prosecutor. Damian has been extensively involved in building a national collaboration on new Americans to support new programs and resources to help the more than 8 million green card holders in the United States become fully naturalized.

[email protected]

Steve Tobocman has spent the past two years spearheading Global Detroit, a regional economic revitalization strategy for the Detroit area focused on immigration and global connections. The Global Detroit study, published in May 2010, has helped to launch the Welcoming Michigan campaign, innovative grants to ethnic media, a nearshoring strategy, and a groundbreaking international student retention program. Global Detroit has served as the foundation for Michigan Governor Rick Snyder’s Global Michigan effort, an attempt to build upon these strategies on a statewide basis. From 2003-2008, Steve served as the State Representative from Michigan 12th State House District in Detroit and ended his term as the Majority Floor Leader, the second-ranking position in the House. Steve spearheaded efforts to protect immigrants from predatory immigrant service providers, fought for in-state tuition equity for undocumented students, and opposed attacks on immigrants obtaining Michigan drivers licenses. Steve splits his time with Global Detroit by co-directing the Michigan Political Leadership Program, as well as the Michigan Foreclosure Task Force.

[email protected]

Samuel Tsoi is the Policy Associate at the MIRA, providing research, analysis and advocacy on legislative, budget and administrative policies affecting Massachusetts’ foreign-born community. Prior to joining MIRA in 2010, Samuel wrote for Sampan Newspaper in Boston’s Chinatown, and worked in the Massachusetts State Senate and the field of corporate social responsibility. An immigrant from Hong Kong, Samuel is a graduate of Gordon College, and a Masters candidate at the University of Massachusetts Boston in Public Affairs.

[email protected]

Kim Turner, Project Leader, Cities of Migration, Maytree Kim Turner joined the Maytree Foundation to design and implement the Cities of Migration Project in 2008. Prior to joining Maytree, She led the national Nonprofit Library Commons project at Imagine Canada (formerly the Canadian Centre for Philanthropy), developing information sharing networks and tools to support capacity building in Canada's community sector. Ms. Turner's background includes working with Francophone and First Nations communities in Ontario's adult literacy sector, as well as thesaurus construction and related professional experience in academic, government and public libraries. She has a Master of Arts and a Master of Information Science from The University of Toronto.

Jalisco, Mexico-born Chief Venegas came to the U.S. in 1958 settling in Santa Maria, CA. A high school dropout, joined the Army at 17, serving with the 101st Airborne Division in the US and Vietnam. He began his policing career in 1969 with the Fresno Police rising to Deputy Chief until 1993 when he became Sacramento’s Chief, retiring in 2003.He is the Project Director of the Law Enforcement Engagement Initiative engaging policing executives in a sensible public dialogue over the need for comprehensive immigration reform. A proponent and instructor of Community Policing, he knows that public safety and national security can only be achieved with the trust and support of the entire community. At the invitation of the US State Department and its embassies, he has lectured on policing in a democratic society in Costa Rica, Belize, Panama, Ecuador and Venezuela. He has a BA from USF and a MS from Cal Poly, Pomona and a graduate of the FBI’s National Academy, National Executive Institute and the CA Law Enforcement Command College. He belongs to numerous national, state and local organizations; co-founder of the National Latino Peace Officers Association and past National President of the Hispanic Command Officers Association.

[email protected]

Jeff Wagnitz is currently vice president for academic affairs at Highline Community College, south of Seattle. His prior administrative positions have included director of adult basic education and division chair for developmental education. Before leaving the classroom, he taught developmental and college English for over a dozen years. Recently named an Achieving the Dream Leader College, Highline Community College today is Washington’s most diverse public two-year institution, with over 25 percent of its students identifying themselves as immigrant or refugee.

[email protected]

Claudia Walther, Senior Project Manager Bertelsmann Foundation, Programme Integration. Claudia Walther was born in 1963. She studied at University: RWTH Aachen in Germany – absolved with Magistra Artium. As Project Manager she is working at the Bertelsmann Foundation since 2001. Main Topics have mainly been strategic management in Cities and Communities, Integration of migrants, Integration and Education. Before she was leading a border crossing project in Aachen of the EUREGIO Maas-Rhein – a European Region connecting Belgium, Netherland, Aachen (1996-2000). In Vienna Claudia Walther was working in an international office on youth work (1994-1996). From 1993-1994 she was working in a federal Ministry of North Rhine Westphalia, Germany. Furthermore she is doing political work on local level on voluntary base.

[email protected]

Heath Wickline has spent the past decade helping nonprofits figure out who they need to be talking to, what to say, and how to do it with clarity, forcefulness, and style—all while staying within their budgets. Prior to becoming an independent consultant, Heath worked as a Senior Account Manager at Underground Advertising. Before that, he served as Director of the SPIN Project, a nonprofit communications capacity-building organization. In those positions, he worked with hundreds of nonprofit organizations, foundations, and government agencies across the country, including Welcoming America, the Nebraska is HOme and Welcoming Colorado initiatives, as well as the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and Earthjustice. His work has ranged from creating communications plans and messaging strategies to managing advertising campaigns; producing publications, websites, and viral videos; and training nonprofit leaders in the essentials of effective communications. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from Boston University and a Master’s in International Relations from San Francisco State University. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, Erica.

[email protected]

Cathy is a recent retiree from the Ontario Public Service where she was a Senior Manager. Her last 14 years were at the Office of the Public Guardian and Trustee where she was Director of Client Services and Deputy Public Guardian and Trustee. Cathy has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Mount St. Vincent University in Halifax, a Masters of Economics from York University and a Masters of Industrial Relations from University of Toronto. Cathy is currently Manager of Maytree’s DiverseCity onBoard program. She is a Member of the Allocations and Agency Services Committee of the United Way of Toronto Board of Trustees, a Member of United Way of Toronto’s Agency Review Panel, and is a Member of the Board of Directors of the Anne Johnston Health Station.

[email protected]

Pauline Winter holds a number of roles including the Director of Pasifika advancement at AUT University and of her consultancy INTERPACIFIC Ltd. She chairs OMEGA talent, the Pacific Peoples Advancement Trust and NACEW (National Advisory Board on Employment issues for women) She is the Deputy Chief Commissioner for the Transport Accident Investigation Commission and Commissioner for the Tertiary Education Commission. Pauline was recently appointed to the board of the Auckland City Investments board (CCO) and the Auckland City Business Advisory Group. She holds a number of community advisory positions including the Pasifika Advisory Group to the Auckland City Police. She is a former Chief Executive of Workbridge Inc. Pauline was the Pacific Business Trust, business woman of the year in 1997 and awarded a Queens Service Order (QSO) in 2008 acknowledging her work to business and the Pacific communities.

[email protected]

Teresita Wisell is Associate Dean and Director of the Gateway Center at Westchester Community College and Executive Director of the Community College Consortium for Immigrant Education. The Gateway Center houses programs that address the educational needs of the county’s increasingly diverse population. The Center provides targeted programs for new American and international students, as well as opportunities for global education, collaboration and exchange for all students. Gateway houses the English Language Institute, the Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies, the Professional Development Center, the Center for Financial and Economic Education, the business and modern language departments, a Welcome Center and the Community College Consortium for Immigrant Education (CCCIE). CCCIE is a national network of community colleges committed to immigrant education programs and services. By sharing ideas, speaking out on the importance of immigrant education programs and creating a repository of best practices in the field, the consortium raises the national visibility of the important role community colleges play to serve this population. Tere was born in Camaguey, Cuba and immigrated to the United States with her family as a child.

Heide Wrigley

Heide Wrigley is a nationally recognized expert in adult second language teaching. She has been a subject matter specialist on every national study on adult ESL in the US and is now a part of several technology-oriented projects, including the Dpt of Commerce funded Learner Web and One America’s English Innovations project. Her international experience includes work in China, Egypt, Poland, and most recently, Rwanda, Africa. She is a consultant for Jobs for the Future and with McDonald’s on their national adult ESL initiative that blends virtual teaching with on-line learning. Dr. Wrigley runs LiteracyWork International in Las Cruces, New Mexico and is a non-resident fellow with the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, DC.

[email protected]

Christina Mei-Yue Wong has devoted her professional career serving the Asian and Pacific American (APA) community within the broader immigrant rights movement. Her commitment to educational equity and social justice stems from her personal journey as an Asian and Pacific American, a community advocate, and now a parent. As a native of San Francisco’s Chinatown, she returned to the neighborhood where she lived with her immigrant family to join Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA), a 42 year old, civil rights organization. For over 10 years, she led CAA’s policy work on K-12 education including language access, multilingual programs, school integration, and parent leadership and engagement. Christina now serves the students of the San Francisco Unified School District as a Special Assistant to Superintendent Carlos A. Garcia. She oversees the implementation of the Master Plan for English Learners with the primary goal to effectively serve all English Learners and prepare them to succeed in the 21st century.

[email protected]

Joyce is the Program Associate at the National Korean American Service and Education Consortium (NAKASEC). She is primarily responsible for providing programmatic support for NAKASEC’s Immigrant Rights Project, youth organizing and assisting in developing grassroots mobilizing campaigns. Prior to joining NAKASEC, Joyce served as a Public Ally for two years in Chicago under Americorps, coordinating after-school programs at the University of Chicago – Donoghue Campus charter school her first year and then managing the volunteer program across five local sites at a local nonprofit called Christopher House her second year. Joyce was first introduced to immigrant rights work when she interned with NAKASEC in 2009 under the OCA internship program where she worked on immigrant inclusion in health care reform. Joyce graduated with a B.A. in Gender & Women’s Studies and minor in Sociology from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

[email protected]

Monona Yin, Director, Capacity Building Initiative, Four Freedoms Fund Monona Yin directs the Capacity Building Initiative of the Four Freedoms Fund, which provides grants, technical assistance and peer learning opportunities to strengthen the infrastructure of the immigrant rights movement. Most recently, she directed the launch of the Freedom from Fear Award, a national prize honoring "fifteen ordinary individuals who have committed extraordinary acts of courage on behalf of immigrants and refugees." As a consultant, Monona has worked for the Ford Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors for its American Red Cross 9/11 Recovery Grants Program. Previously, she was a program officer at the F.B. Heron Foundation, making grants and program-related investments to support asset development among low-income families. Monona has also served as Associate Director of the North Star Fund and is a co-founder of CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities.

[email protected]

Diane Zahn is the Secretary–Treasurer of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 21 headquartered in Seattle, a 38,000 member local union representing retail, grocery and healthcare workers in Washington State. The union’s mission is to build a more powerful union that fights for economic, political and social justice on behalf of its members, their families and their communities .Ms. Zahn has worked for the UFCW since 1982. She was elected Secretary-Treasurer in 1994. She also serves on the board of the Puget Sound Health Alliance.

Luz Zambrano

[email protected]

Luz Zambrano is a founding Co-Director of the Center to Support Immigrant Organizing (CSIO) where she has worked for the last 11 years. For the last 2 years along with Trina Jackson, Luz has coordinated the research, planning and implementation of one of the current major programs of CSIO, the Network for Immigrants and African Americans in Solidarity-NIAAS. For over 21 years, Luz has been active in many organizations and efforts dedicated to organizing immigrants for social and economic justice. She was the Latino organizer for the Immigrant Rights Advocacy, Training and Education Project (IRATE), an immigration counselor for the American Red Cross, a legal advocate at Greater Boston Legal Services (GBLS), a business agent for the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE), and an Education and Training Specialist at the Massachusetts AFL-CIO. As a researcher, Luz worked with Third Sector New England (TSNE) to design and write a Hyams Foundation-funded research report on the barriers to the recruitment and retention of organizers of color. She also collaborated on a research project with the Center for Community Economic Development (CCED) of the University of Massachusetts, Boston on a report documenting the effects of the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) on immigrant workers. Luz’ volunteer leadership includes a 4-year term as Board President of the East Boston Ecumenical Community Council, membership on the Massachusetts Coalition for Health and Safety (Mass COSH)’s Board of Directors and the Worker Environmental Justice Fund’s Advisory Board and three year terms as both the Parent Liaison for and President of the East Boston Early Learning Center’s School Site Council and 3 years term for the Board of Trustees of the Friends School in Cambridge, MA.