Engineering Cohesive Communities: Social Integration of Foreign-Born Americans

Catalina Cruz was born in Colombia and came to Queens at nine. She grew up as a DREAMer, living in the United States for more than ten years as an undocumented American. Cruz was raised by a single mother who, like many immigrants, had to work multiple and menial jobs to support her family. Inspired by her mother’s perseverance, Cruz has committed her career to fighting for our community to ensure our workers, neighbors, and families not only survive but thrive.

Cruz is an experienced attorney and a leader in tenant protection, immigration reform, and workers’ rights. Prior to becoming the assemblywoman for the 39th District, she practiced housing law. She served in various positions in city and state government, including chief of staff to former Council Member Julissa Ferreras-Copeland, counsel to the City Council’s Committee on Immigration, and director of the Governor’s Exploited Workers Task Force, among others. In these positions, she represented tenants in housing court, drafted legislation, and implemented initiatives to support women, protect workers, and champion small businesses.

Since taking office in 2019, Cruz has passed more than 24 new laws to combat food insecurity, curtail the high cost of healthcare, protect aging New Yorkers, and so much more. Cruz’s district office places a strong emphasis on constituent services. Her hardworking staff is proud to have helped thousands of constituents access legal services, small business support, unemployment insurance, health insurance, and pandemic assistance, as well as help with mortgage, rent, and utility payments.

Cruz lives in Jackson Heights, Queens. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a juris doctor from the City University of New York’s School of Law and is admitted to practice law in the State of New York.

Phara Souffrant Forrest represents the 57th Assembly District in Brooklyn, New York, which consists of the neighborhoods of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, as well as parts of Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights. She was first elected in 2020.

Forrest is the daughter of Haitian immigrants and a lifelong resident of the 57th District. She is a proud product of Brooklyn’s public school system, attending Philippa Schuyler Middle School and Benjamin Banneker Academy for Community Development. She then attended the State University of New York’s (SUNY) Geneseo, where she majored in international relations, before obtaining an associate’s nursing degree at City University of New York’s (CUNY) City Tech and a BSN at CUNY School of Professional Studies.

Forrest has held various jobs that help her connect with her constituents: working in New York City public schools, as an Uber driver, and doing youth advocacy work at Global Kids. Before being elected to the assembly, Forrest worked as a maternal child field nurse, caring for new mothers after they gave birth.

In addition to her work as a nurse, Forrest was president of her building’s tenant association before running for office. Tenant organizing, in particular the fight to pass the Housing Stability & Tenant Protection Act of 2019, was a major motivating force in her decision to run for office and stand up for tenants like herself across the state.

Since being elected, Forrest has continued to champion the rights of tenants, as well as expanding access to healthcare and reforms to the carceral system. In her first term, she passed the Less Is More Act, which made the state’s supervision system more just and equitable. She believes that working-class New Yorkers deserve stable housing, affordable healthcare, and the resources to pursue a good life.

Forrest lives in Crown Heights, New York, with her husband and son.

María Teresa Kumar is the co-founder and President of Voto Latino Foundation, a non-profit, non-partisan 501(c)(3) organization, and its sister 501(c)(4 ) advocacy organization, Voto Latino. Voto Latino Foundation and Voto Latino are the largest Latino voter registration and Latino youth advocacy organizations in the country, respectively. Together, Voto Latino Foundation and Voto Latino, jointly known as Voto Latino, have registered over 1.5 million Americans in key battleground states since 2004, 79% of whom went on to vote.

Latinos are the fastest-growing demographic in the United States, and Voto Latino’s work has directly led to a substantial expansion of the Latino electorate in key states like Arizona and Nevada. Voto Latino has pioneered the use of technology, social media, and influencers to effectively register voters and counter disinformation at an unprecedented scale. Voto Latino reaches over 6 million Americans each month and has spent more than $100 million to ensure all Americans can participate in our democracy.

For this work, Fast Company named María Teresa one of the 100 Most Creative Minds, and the Analyst Institute recognized Voto Latino with an Expy Award for expanding the field of voter registration.

A sought-after political leader and strategist, María Teresa advised President Barack Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, and she currently serves on the National Task Force on Election Crises and the Brookings Institution’s Working Group on Universal Voting. She is chair of the Latino Anti-Disinformation Lab.

María Teresa is also an Emmy-nominated analyst for MSNBC and serves on the boards of Steve Madden, Emily’s List, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Additionally, she is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. She has been named among Bloomberg’s 100 Influential Latinos, Washingtonian Magazine’s 100 Top Political Influencers, and Elle’s 10 influential women in Washington. The Hispanic Heritage Foundation, Hispanic Executive Magazine, Latino Leaders Magazine, and Hispanic Business have all honored María Teresa.

Raised in Sonoma, California, María Teresa lives in Washington, DC, with her husband, Raj Kumar, and their two children. She is a first-generation graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and the University of California, Davis.

Assemblymember Grace Lee represents District 65 in Lower Manhattan, which includes Chinatown, the Financial District, and the Lower East Side. She is the first Korean American woman to serve in the state legislature and serves as the Chair of the Assembly’s Asian Pacific American (APA) Task Force.

Robert Megna is president of the Rockefeller Institute of Government. He previously served as senior vice chancellor and chief operating officer of SUNY System Administration. In that role, he oversaw the operations of the chief information officer, the State University of New York (SUNY) Plaza business functions, capital facilities, campus energy management, and the Charter School Institute. He joined SUNY System Administration from Stony Brook University, where he served as senior vice president for finance and administration. Prior to joining Stony Brook, he served as executive director of the New York State Thruway Authority and New York State Canal Corporation.

Megna served as budget director for the New York State Division of the Budget (DOB), during which time the state achieved its highest financial rating in 40 years from three major credit rating agencies and passed four on-time budgets for the first time since the 1970s. He also chaired multiple governmental boards, including the Financial Restructuring Board, the New York Racing Association, and the Public Authorities Control Board. Megna has also served as commissioner for the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, director of the revenue and economics unit at DOB, assistant commissioner of the office of tax policy at the Virginia Department of Taxation, director of tax studies at the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, and deputy director of fiscal studies on the Assembly Ways and Means Committee.

Megna earned an MS in economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science at the University of London and received both his BA in Economics and MPA from Fordham University.

David Alexander Paterson became the 55th Governor of the State of New York on March 17, 2008. In his first address as Governor, he spoke about the challenges facing New York and his plans to build a better and brighter future for all citizens. He was ahead of the national curve in predicting and acting on the state’s fiscal downturn.

During Governor Paterson’s 2008 inaugural address, he foretold of an impending national fiscal crisis and collapse. This forecast compelled New York’s Legislature to convene for a special session in August 2008. As a result of this session, the state reduced its deficit by $2 billion and mitigated further devastating financial upheaval, allowing it to maintain its credit rating for the duration of his term. He enacted legislation attaching severe criminal penalties to predatory lending and reduced New York’s fiscal deficit by nearly $40 billion. One of his greatest achievements was establishing a new budget process that has yielded on-time budgets since he left office.

Governor Paterson embodies a rare combination of skills, including a unique understanding of marketplace drivers and surrounding events. He earned his B.A in History from Columbia University and his J.D. from Hofstra Law School.

Prior to becoming New York State’s 55th governor in March 2008, David began his political career when he was elected to represent Harlem in 1985 at the age of 31, making him the third youngest state senator in New York’s history. In 2002, he was elected as Minority Leader of the New York State Senate, becoming the first African-American and blind legislative leader in the state’s history. Among his many other accomplishments and distinctions, he was honored to address the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

In 2014, David was appointed as Chairman of the New York State Democratic Party and served on the Board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. He was previously an adjunct professor of government at New York University and later joined the faculty at Touro College. He consulted for three years for the Durst Corporation and the National Federation of the Blind and currently chairs the Board of the Achilles Track Club.

David hosts a popular drive-time talk radio show on WABC-AM, was formerly a host of a radio show on WOR-AM in New York City and is a highly sought-after speaker, frequently appearing as a guest commentator on nationally broadcast news-related programs.

Upon leaving his position as Director/Investments with the Stifel Investment Bank’s Moldaver Paterson & Lee Group, he joined Kivvit, a nationally acclaimed public affairs and public relations firm.

David is also Senior Vice President and Senior Advisor to Las Vegas Sands Corp. In his current position, he is helping lead the charge to help the casino and resort developer’s efforts to expand gaming downstate to create jobs and bring billions of dollars in immediate and sustainable revenue streams that will help people throughout New York.

In addition, Governor Paterson is Vice President for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging & Distinguished Professor at Touro University.

David recently published his autobiography, Black, Blind & In Charge, a story of visionary leadership and overcoming adversity.

In 2019, the Patersons—David and Mary—were married by former New York Mayor David N. Dinkins in New York City. Their family includes three children: Anthony, Alex, and Ashley.

David’s mother, Portia Paterson, who fought to make him one of the first blind students to attend public school, celebrated her 94th birthday before passing away peacefully in 2024.

Dina Refki is the director of the Center for Women in Government & Civil Society (CWGCS) at the University at Albany. Refki studies and researches the interplay of gender with institutional structures in the US and international context. She applies gender mainstreaming and budgeting analysis from transnational perspectives. Prior to assuming leadership at CWGCS in 2009, she held different positions at the Center, including as director of the Immigrant Women & State Policy Program, which facilitated interagency collaboration, promoted dialogues with civil society and immigrant women at the state level, and worked to identify and address barriers to the integration of immigrant women in the social, economic, and political fabric of local communities. Refki studies the challenges of migration, the barriers facing immigrant women and their families, and the structural changes needed to better respond to the needs of immigrant women.

Natasha Lay is a relationship-driven leader and expert in community-based change, known for convening cross-sector partners to turn complex social challenges into inclusive, actionable strategies. Grounded in a deep commitment to social justice, she believes in the transformative power of small, passionate groups working collectively to create lasting impact.

Lay currently serves as executive director of the Bow Valley Immigration Partnership (BVIP) in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, a community-led initiative operating at the intersection of research, community planning and action, and policy, to advance immigrant inclusion and social cohesion in the rural region of the Bow Valley, Alberta. With over a decade of experience in nonprofit leadership, community engagement, and intercultural practice, she has led the design and scale-up of multiple place-based inclusion strategies that are both evidence-informed and community-driven.

Under her leadership, BVIP’s flagship Workplace Inclusion Charter has more than doubled its reach. In 2024, the program engaged 70 local workplaces across sectors including municipalities, tourism, and construction, who collectively implemented over 830 inclusion actions, positively impacting nearly 6,000 employees. The Charter offers a tailored framework for measuring, incentivizing, and sustaining inclusive practices and serves as a replicable model for embedding equity goals into regional workforce development systems.

Lay’s expertise lies in translating complex social challenges into actionable strategies, particularly in small or rural and resource-constrained settings. Her work is rooted in applied research, participatory engagement, and a commitment to inclusion and equity. She led BVIP’s multi-year Integration Assessment, a mixed-methods study combining survey data and lived experience narratives to identify systemic barriers and inform regional planning. A key outcome of this research is the cross-sector, community-wide 2025-2029 Bow Valley Immigrant Inclusion Strategy.

Through initiatives like Community Week, Natasha has mobilized over 40 local organizations to co-design events and public education campaigns that celebrate diversity, build social capital, and reduce newcomer isolation. Her strategic approach to engagement has led to sustained partnerships with ethnocultural communities, municipal governments, business associations, national agencies such as Parks Canada, and more.

Natasha Lay has led initiatives across the non-profit, government, and community sectors in Australia and Canada. Her previous roles include leading a refugee microfinance mentorship program, coordinating youth engagement for Oxfam Australia, advancing policy advocacy with Youth Action (a statewide peak body for youth affairs), and facilitating economic development initiatives with Liverpool City Council in Sydney. She brings a strong track record of impact, including increasing event participation by 566%, growing volunteer engagement by over 2,700%, and securing significant sponsorships and in-kind support.

She holds a bachelor of arts in Communication (Social Inquiry) from the University of Technology Sydney and is a graduate of the Centre for Sustainability Leadership’s Fellowship program. Her work has been nationally recognized with awards including the Green Gown Individual Award of Excellence (2013) and Young Woman of the West by Western Sydney University (2016).

Born and raised in Sydney, Australia, with Chinese Hakka roots and a family history of migration from Timor-Leste, Natasha brings a deeply personal understanding of diasporic belonging and transnational identity. Now based in Banff, Alberta, she continues to explore how rural communities can serve as innovative sites for immigrant integration, inclusive community-building, and systems-level transformation.

At the 2025 Conference on Immigrant Integration, Natasha will share grounded insights into operationalizing social inclusion through employer engagement, evidence-based regional planning, and cross-sector governance. Her presentation will explore replicable strategies for scaling localized solutions to national challenges in immigrant integration.

Kapil Longani is the senior vice chancellor for legal affairs and general counsel for the State University of New York.

Kapil has had a distinguished career in public service, which he attributes to his immigrant parents who instilled in him a strong belief in the power of government to improve lives. His deep commitment to justice, fairness, and equity has taken him around the globe, from implementing South Africa’s post-Apartheid Constitution, to serving as the minority staff’s lead investigator for the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in the US House of Representatives’ most high profile and significant investigations, including the Flint water crisis, to serving 8.6 million New Yorkers as chief counsel to the Mayor of New York City.

In addition to serving as the solutions czar and top lawyer to the mayor of New York City, Kapil has worked as senior counsel to Ranking Member Elijah E. Cummings. Prior to his work in Congress, Kapil served as an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, where he prosecuted cases involving sexual assault, homicide, robbery, narcotics, and illegal firearms. He previously worked as a litigator in New York City at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, and served as a law clerk to the Honorable Judge Roger L. Gregory of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and the Honorable Judge Richard Smoak of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida. Kapil has also taught as an adjunct professor of law at Brooklyn Law School, and served as a policing project fellow at NYU Law School.

Kapil holds an undergraduate degree from Cornell University and legal degrees from the University of Florida, Yale, and Oxford University.

Alejandro Portes is the Howard Harrison and Gabrielle Snyder Beck professor of sociology (emeritus) at Princeton University and professor of law and distinguished scholar of arts and sciences at the University of Miami. He is the founding director of the Center for Migration and Development at Princeton. Portes has taught at Johns Hopkins University, where he held the John Dewey Chair, Duke University, and the University of Texas at Austin. In 1997, he was elected president of the American Sociological Association and served in that role from 1998 to 1999.

Born in Havana, Cuba, Portes immigrated to the United States in 1960. He was educated at the University of Havana, Catholic University of Argentina, and Creighton University, receiving his MA and PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Portes is the author of more than 250 articles and book chapters on national development, international migration, Latin American and Caribbean urbanization, and economic sociology. He has published forty books and special issues. Among his books are City on the Edge: The Transformation of Miami (University of California Press, 1993), co-authored with Alex Stepick, which won the Robert Park Award for Best Book in Urban Sociology and the Anthony Leeds Award for Best Book in Urban Anthropology in 1995; and Immigrant America: A Portrait (University of California Press, 2014), 4th edition, which was designated a Centennial Publication by the University of California Press in 1996. His most recent book, Spanish Legacies: The Coming of Age of the Second Generation, was published in 2016.

Portes’s current research focuses on the adaptation process of the immigrant second generation in comparative perspective, the role of institutions in national development, and the comparative study of global cities. In 2001, he co-authored Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation (University of California Press) with Rubén G. Rumbaut, and Ethnicities: Children of Immigrants in America (University of California Press). Legacies won the 2002 Distinguished Scholarship Award from the American Sociological Association and the 2002 W.I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki Award for Best Book from the International Migration Section of the ASA.

His books and articles have been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Chinese, and Japanese. Twelve volumes of his collected essays have been published in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. His recent articles have appeared in journals such as the Spanish Sociological Review, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Daedalus, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, International Migration Review, Population and Development Review, and the British Journal of Sociology.

His most recent books include The State and the Grassroots: Immigrant Transnationalism in Four Continents (Berghahn Books, 2015), co-authored with P. Fernandez-Kelly; Spanish Legacies: The Coming of Age of the Second Generation (University of California Press, 2016), co-authored with R. Aparicio and W. Haller; and The Global Edge: Miami in the Sixteenth Century (University of California Press, 2018), co-authored with Ariel C. Armony.

Portes is a former fellow of the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences and the Russell Sage Foundation. He has received honorary doctorates from the New School for Social Research, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Genoa (Italy), Roskilde University (Denmark), and the University of Lisbon. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Portes has been elected to Phi Beta Kappa and the American Philosophical Society, the country’s oldest honorary academic organizations. In 2010, he received the W.E.B. Du Bois Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award from the American Sociological Association. In 2012, he was named the James Coleman Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences. In 2019, he was awarded the Princess of Asturias Prize in the Social Sciences by the Kingdom of Spain.

Charlie Sherman is the manager of narrative strategy at the Opportunity Agenda. In this role, he helps advise staff and partners on how research and narrative insights can shape their projects, as well as collecting and synthesizing findings from the growing narrative change field for both internal learnings and external projects. Additionally, Charlie assists in the evaluation processes to track organizational metrics as well as the success of narrative change concepts and findings at large. Charlie has spent the last six years at TOA researching opportunities to advance a pro-immigrant narrative in states across the US. Charlie holds a master’s degree from UCLA’s Master of Social Science.

Joana Castro Simonini earned her BA in history from the University of California, Berkeley, and her JD from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. During law school, she worked as a fellow, clinical student, and later research assistant at the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at Hastings where she gained extensive experience in asylum law. After law school and prior to joining Canal Alliance, Joana was an intern at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Joana joined Canal Alliance in December 2014 as a staff attorney representing mainly recently arrived unaccompanied minors before the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in a variety of cases, including asylum and Special Immigrant Juvenile Status.

Shiyue Cui is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at the University at Buffalo. Her research focuses on international migration, refugee studies, and social inequality. Her dissertation combines quantitative data analysis with qualitative interviews to examine refugees’ resettlement experiences in New York State. The research demonstrates that family and gender practices play a crucial role in shaping their employment prospects and cultural capital accumulation. Additionally, Cui investigates displacement and mobility among immigrant populations more broadly.

Tsveta Dobreva is a fifth-year sociology PhD student at the University at Albany. Her research interests include immigration, immigrant integration, race, education, and belonging. As an immigrant integration fellow at the Rockefeller Institute of Government in the summer of 2023, she researched the role of universities in providing support to refugees and immigrants, with the goal of providing policy recommendations at the institutional, state, and federal levels. Prior to beginning her graduate studies, Dobreva worked at a New Jersey-based legal organization assisting Darfurian asylum seekers in navigating the immigration system to obtain refugee status, develop language skills, enroll in college, and find jobs. In her native Bulgaria, she worked with an international NGO that was actively involved on a community level in assisting asylum seekers with their economic, social, and civic integration.

Tim Doherty is CEO of Refugee Welcome Corporation. This is a mid career culmination, integration, and continuation of study and employment, twenty years of academic and professional efforts, punctuated by a series of migrant life and work experiences. It started with a ‘gap year’ in Crete, Greece in ’89-’90, followed by in Mexico, ’04-’06, and then China, ’10-’11. These gave Doherty a broad understanding of and deep engagement with the changing global economy on the personal and community levels from the end of the Cold War to today. Along the way, Doherty has learned the proper responses to and prevention of destabilization and displacement, local and global, are pragmatic ones, the capacity to welcome and provide hospitality to the stranger.

Maria Figueroa is director of labor policy at the Rockefeller Institute. Her areas of expertise include labor and employment policy, non-standard (gig economy) work, immigration, labor organizations, and workforce development. Her work appeared in academic journals and book chapters covering labor issues in the digital platform economy and in sectors such as construction, healthcare, and the arts and entertainment industry. Prior to joining the Rockefeller Institute, Figueroa was dean of the Harry Van Arsdale Jr. School of Labor Studies at SUNY Empire State. In that role, she oversaw the school’s academic programs and all other operational aspects, and she achieved new partnerships with labor organizations to provide opportunities for workforce development with pathways to college degrees for workers in industries across the economy, including low-wage sectors. Before joining SUNY Empire, Figueroa was director of labor policy research at The Worker Institute of Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR), where she worked on research and technical assistance projects commissioned by labor organizations, government agencies, joint labor-management entities, and private foundations. She also organized national and international multi-stakeholder convenings on labor and employment issues in the gig economy. Before joining Cornell, Figueroa worked as a researcher for the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and the UN Centre on Transnational Corporations. Figueroa has a doctor of law and policy degree from Northeastern University, an MPA from NYU Wagner, and a BA from the New School for Social Research.

Ken Irish-Bramble is an MA student in the international migration studies program at CUNY Graduate Center. He was born on the French side of St. Martin and grew up on the island of Montserrat in the Eastern Caribbean. He has worked as an educator for over twenty-five years in both K-12 and higher education. Irish-Bramble is a graduate of the CUNY BA program and holds graduate degrees from NYU and Pace University.

Irish-Bramble has a broad interest in immigrant issues including issues surrounding immigrant assimilation and acculturation, enduring relationships with countries of origin, and the impact of Caribbean-American immigrants on the political development of the United States. He is currently conducting research on diasporic/expatriate voting rights and voting patterns of naturalized citizens in the United States. Irish-Bramble currently serves as a member of the faculty at Medgar Evers College (CUNY) and campus director of CUNY ICORP at Medgar Evers College. He has published two books, Bricks, Ballots and Bullets (2012) and Violence and Power (2018).

Ahyoung Kim is the director of economic empowerment at the Asian American Federation (AAF). Since 2019, she has spearheaded the Small Business Program, aiding Asian American small businesses through technical and marketing assistance, as well as comprehensive support. As a fierce advocate for immigrant small businesses, Kim actively engages with city, state, and federal authorities while collaborating with foundations and corporations to secure necessary backing for local enterprises. Her efforts aim to enhance access to crucial information and resources, advocate for equitable business practices, and drive commercial revitalization in Asian Americans and immigrant neighborhoods.

Under her guidance, AAF has extended its presence across key commercial hubs in Queens, as well as expanding its technical support initiatives across New York City and the state. A first-generation immigrant and descendant of small business owners herself, Kim resides in Jackson Heights, Queens, with her spouse, Scott, and their cat, Tommy.

Jeong Taek (JT) Lim (he/him) is a PhD student in sociology at the University at Albany. His research draws on international migration and urban sociology, focusing on the corporate dynamics that shape ethnic settlement in new immigrant destinations in both the US and the Global South. Lim’s passion for this field stems from his personal experiences as a South Korean who has lived in both Vietnam and the United States, allowing him to develop comparative insights into Korean diasporas across different social and geographical contexts. His forthcoming co-authored publication explores the unique migration dynamics in the Global South, specifically Vietnam, and their impact on the ethnic identities of Korean-Vietnamese multicultural adolescents.

Guillermo Martinez is the deputy director and intergovernmental liaison for the Institute on Immigrant Integration Research and Policy. He brings over 20 years of significant leadership, management, and communications experience in both the nonprofit and government sectors. During his time in the New York State Legislature, he served as the director of policy development for the New York State Assembly Task Force on New Americans and legislative and communications director for the New York State Assembly Puerto Rican/Hispanic Task Force, having served in that role as the longest tenured staffer in the organizations 35-year history.
In those capacities, he helped research, draft, and negotiate over 200 pieces of legislation that are now state law, including programs such as the SUNY Hispanic Leadership Institute, the SUNY Office of Diversity Equity and Inclusion, the codifying of the Office of New Americans, the Immigration Services Fraud Prevention Act, the Idle-Free School Zone Act, Geriatric Mental Health Act, the Undocumented Immigrant In-State-Tuition Act, the School Energy Efficiency Collaborative Act, the establishing of the New York Latino Research and Resources Network (NYLARNet), and dozens of other laws, including consumer protection measures addressing online privacy, disaster preparedness, protecting children with disabilities, and the elderly. Prior to his time in the legislature, Martinez served as director of communications and legislative affairs for the Council of Community Services of New York State and worked at SUNY Oneonta’s migrant education program (ESCORT) assisting migrant farmworkers with the educational needs of their children in a region covering 23 states.

Christian Matheis serves as director of monitoring, evaluation, and training development for Every Campus A Refuge, and he is faculty in Community and Justice Studies in the Department of Justice and Policy Studies at Guilford College in Greensboro, NC. In 2015 he completed his PhD in the Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought (ASPECT) at Virginia Tech with a specialization in ethics, political philosophy, and philosophy of liberation. Matheis is co-editor of Migration Policy and Practice: Interventions and Solutions (2016), editor of Transformation: Toward a People’s Democracy – Essays and Speeches by Suzanne Pharr (2021), and editor of the second edition of Pharr’s In the Time of the Right: Reflections on Liberation (2025). At ECAR, Matheis specializes in designing community-engaged research and evaluation processes that help to gather the perspectives of newcomers and members of their broader communities in order to then influence positive changes in US resettlement infrastructure.

In addition to research and evaluation efforts, Matheis also co-designs and helps to deliver small-scale and large-scale training and professional development opportunities. To support ECAR’s transformative model of creating hyperlocal resettlement campus ecosystems nationwide, Matheis applies a familiar framework found in most liberatory social movements: “by us, for us, about us,” which is the idea that those who are most impacted by social change should be the first and strongest voices guiding that change. To ground ECAR’s research, evaluation, and training Matheis applies the framework “by newcomers, for newcomers, about newcomers” as the core design principle. In addition to his regular teaching and research, Matheis provides training in areas of human relations facilitation, intergroup dialogue, grassroots direct-action organizing, and on other topics.

David Monda is completing a PhD inpolitical science at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center.  His doctoral training is situated at the intersection of comparative politics and international relations with an emphasis on foreign policy and international migration. He was previously a research fellow at the Vera Institute’s Ending Detention Initiative, in Brooklyn, New York, studying the perverse incentives of state and local governments in the mass detention of undocumented immigrants in the United States. His research interests center on foreign policies of the Global South and securitization of narratives around migration. This research has included fieldwork in Belize, South Africa, Brazil, Kenya, and Argentina.

Mustafa Rfat is a PhD candidate in social work at Washington University in St. Louis and a McDonnell international scholar. His research focuses on the intersection of forced displacement, disability, structural inequities, and social determinants of health. Drawing on qualitative data and personal experience as a refugee with disabilities, his work explores barriers to healthcare, education, employment, and housing in the US, aiming to inform equitable policy and practice solutions.

Sasha Richardson serves as the assistant program coordinator for CUNY’s Innovative Career Opportunity and Research Program (ICORP) at Medgar Evers College. In her role, she leads undergraduates in the application of advanced data analysis and visualization techniques to social science research initiatives. Ms. Richardson possesses a BS in computer science from Fayetteville State University, an MS in business analytics from Baruch College, and is preparing to pursue an MA in digital humanities at The CUNY Graduate Center. Her work is centered on translating complex datasets into policy recommendations, combining academic knowledge with practical applications.

Esmeralda Sánchez Salazar is a postdoctoral fellow in sociology and criminology and an affiliate of the Population Research Institute at Penn State. In fall 2025, she will join William & Mary as an assistant professor of sociology. Her research examines how institutions—educational, familial, religious, and governmental—intersect to shape racial and ethnic stratification in higher education, science, and the labor market. She uses mixed methods to explore immigrant outcomes in college and employment, racial-ethnic inequalities in science education, and disparities in postsecondary attainment among English learners. Her work is supported by the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation (National Academies), and others.

A first-generation college graduate from an immigrant neighborhood in Dallas, Dr. Sánchez Salazar is committed to research that informs policy and expands access to higher education for underrepresented students. She earned her PhD in sociology from Rice University, an MS from UT Dallas, and a BA from SMU.

Margaret Shrager (she/her) is the director of adult education at Prince George’s Community College. She has over a decade of experience in adult education and is passionate about serving her diverse students. In addition to her work with adult education, she is a voting member of the Prince George’s County Workforce Board, sits on one of her college’s diversity committees, is a Title IX advisor, provides LGBTQ+ trainings, and is a member of the MD Community College Pride Alliance.

Professor Robert Courtney Smith (Marxe School, Baruch College; Sociology Department, Program in Social Welfare, Graduate Center, CUNY) wrote Mexican New York: Transnational Worlds of New Immigrants (California, 2006), which won ASA’s 2008 Distinguished Book Award, three ASA section awards, and a CUNY Presidential award. His new book, Dreams Achieved and Denied: Mexican Intergenerational Mobility, was released in September 2024 by the Russell Sage Foundation, via the American Sociological Association’s Rose Series. Drawing on two decades of research, it analyzes what mechanisms promoted (and blocked) impressive intergenerational mobility among children of Mexican immigrants in New York, which is much higher than in other studies in other places. Smith is currently writing another book This Is Still America! Immigration, Voting Rights, and Contested Immigrant Political Incorporation, which analyzes how discrimination against Hispanic voters resulted in a Voting Rights Act lawsuit in Port Chester, and how adopting cumulative voting promoted greater Hispanic political participation and representation there. He has begun writing up two long-term fieldwork projects, one on the impacts of having, lacking, or gaining legal status or DACA, and the other on the impacts of the pandemic on immigrants in New York City and upstate New York.

Smith’s research and work seeks strategic sites for cutting edge research and for intervention to improve wellbeing and fight injustice and inequality. He has cofounded and served on the board of a Mexican community serving nonprofit, led a capacity building program at Baruch College’s Marxe School, and does deportation defense. He was the lead author on a 2019 amicus to the Supreme Court in the DACA case, and was an expert in a case resulting in a $20 million dollar settlement for DACA recipients from Wells Fargo. He teaches at CUNY (Marxe School, Baruch College and Sociology Department, and Political Science Department, the Graduate Center). In 2024, he received the 2024 American Sociological Association Distinguished Career Award for the Practice of Sociology.

Jacob Thomas (PhD, UCLA, MA University of Chicago, BA, UC Berkeley) is an assistant professor in the Sociology Department of Corvinus University of Budapest and a research fellow at Princeton University’s Center for Migration and Development. His mixed-methods research addresses the questions of why more people do not migrate or travel internationally, migrant selectivity, the limited ability of states to control migration, and how migratory opportunities are stratified along various intersecting dimensions. He has published research in Theory and Society, International Migration, the European Journal of Sociology, International Migration Review, and the International Journal of Sociology, among others, and his forthcoming book Denial, Deterrence, and Disenchantment: Why Many Never Immigrate is under contract and forthcoming in 2025 with Cambridge University Press.

Hazel Velasco Palacios is a PhD candidate in rural sociology and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Penn State University. Her research examines how structural and symbolic violence shape healthcare access for Latina/o immigrant farmworker families in Pennsylvania’s dairy and mushroom industries. Using an ethnographic approach, Hazel documents how legal status, labor conditions, and gendered expectations intersect to create barriers to care, while also highlighting the community-driven strategies families employ to navigate these exclusions. She is committed to engaged scholarship that bridges academic research with grassroots advocacy, collaborating with organizations such as Mighty Writers El Futuro Kennett.

Marsha Webster, EdD is an experienced multilingual educator and program director with over 20 years of experience in foreign language education, curriculum development, and youth leadership. She specializes in culturally responsive instruction, educational program design, and English and Spanish translation. Dr. Webster has held leadership roles in both academic and community settings, including directing the Summer Youth Employment Program at CUNY’s Medgar Evers College. Her work has significantly impacted student engagement, literacy outcomes, and access to inclusive education. She holds a Doctorate in Higher Education and Adult Learning and is an active member of several professional language and teaching organizations.

Joana Winningham has a passion for helping those with language barriers gain access to equitable and upward mobility in the workforce. Being multilingual and the daughter of first generation immigrants from Portugal, she knows firsthand how language barriers have a profound impact on being able to access services. As the New Americans Initiative Coordinator for the Maryland Department of Labor’s Division of Workforce Development and Adult Learning, Joana co-leads Maryland’s Skilled Immigrant Task Force, which collaborates across organizations to advance workforce system accessibility and career opportunities for the internationally trained professionals.