Photo: Employment (Photo: Jeremy Sternberg, cropped.) CC BY-NC 2.0.

Though the academic job market is in crisis, rewarding employment opportunities for migration scholars can be found beyond the academic world. This panel, organized by the Center for the Study of International Migration, seeks to cull insights from academically trained migration sccholars who have sought to use their expertise in government and in the non-profit, and think tank worlds. Featuring Grant Gordon, the former Senior Director of Innovation Strategy at the International Rescue Committee, Randy Capps, Director for U.S. Programs at the Migration Policy Institute, and Emma Bissonette, a Supervisory HR Specialist with the Department of Homeland Security’s US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency, the panel will discuss the range of pathways, opportunities, and options available to migration scholars thinking of moving beyond the world of colleges and universities. The discussion will be moderated by Roger Waldinger, CSIM director.

Panelists:
Emma Bissonette is a Supervisory HR Specialist with the Department of Homeland Security’s US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency. She has worked in HR, with a focus in recruiting and staffing, in both the private and public sector for the last decade. She returned to USCIS in 2014 and currently supervises a team of HR Specialists that oversee the agency’s Refugee, Asylum and International Operations (RAIO) directorate. In recent years, HR and RAIO have partnered to recruit a historic surge in Asylum Officers (nationally) and to relocate overseas employees throughout the agency’s international offices. Emma lives in Vermont with her husband and they are (im)patiently awaiting the arrival of their first child!

Randy Capps is Director of Research for U.S. Programs at the Migration Policy Institute. His areas of expertise include immigration trends, the unauthorized population, immigrants in the U.S. labor force, the children of immigrants and their well-being, and immigrant health-care and public benefits access and use. Dr. Capps, a demographer, has published widely on immigrant integration at the state and local level, including profiles of immigrant populations in Arkansas, Connecticut, and Maryland, as well as Los Angeles, Washington, DC, Louisville, KY, and Napa County, CA. He also has examined the impact of the detention and deportation of immigrant parents on children.

Grant Gordon is the former Senior Director of Innovation Strategy at the International Rescue Committee, where he oversaw the organization’s innovation portfolio and supported a team of 45 staff to develop breakthrough solutions for humanitarian response. Prior to joining the IRC, Grant worked across the UN system at the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, the UN Office of Humanitarian Coordination, as well as for a set of humanitarian NGOs. Grant has extensive experience building new products and services in conflict zones and fragile settings, including the Syria response region, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Somalia and Haiti.

Moderator:
Roger Waldinger is the Distinguished Professor and Director of the UCLA Center for the Study of International Migration

Register to attend here.

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