Stephanie Alman is the national director of career services at Upwardly Global, where she oversees programs that support refugee and immigrant professionals as they enter the U.S. workforce. Throughout her career, she has developed initiatives focused on economic inclusion to build a more resilient, sustainable, and equitable future, working across the nonprofit, government, and corporate sectors to realize this mission.

She has advised and consulted for international nonprofit organizations in Sri Lanka, Greece, and Morocco. While living in New York City, she launched national programs to empower women entrepreneurs through the Tory Burch Foundation and led global initiatives addressing the economic inclusion of resettled refugees and asylees at WeWork.

A Floridian-turned-New Yorker, Alman is inspired by the energy and diversity of New York City.

Kevin began organizing in Missoula in 1995 with Montana People’s Action. From 1996 to 2000, he served as the founding Lead Organizer of the Idaho Community Action Network (ICAN), where he coached ICAN leaders to secure the adoption of Idaho’s Children’s Health Insurance Program and Idaho’s first charity care agreement with Boise’s largest hospital for uninsured and underinsured families in Ada County. In 2000, Kevin worked for the Northwest Federation of Community Organizations, where he led projects aimed at dismantling racial barriers faced by families accessing public assistance programs.

From 2001 to 2004, Kevin was a national field organizer with the National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support (NCJIS), leading national efforts to protect vital cash assistance programs. In 2007, Kevin became a senior organizer with the Center for Community Change, where he oversaw several issue campaigns related to healthcare access, retirement security, and worker justice.

In 2011, Kevin founded and incubated the Manufactured Home Owner Project at the Center for Community Change, which became an independent organization called MHAction in 2016. After successfully guiding MHAction’s resident leadership teams to secure policy wins in multiple states and nationally—protecting the affordability of manufactured housing communities—Kevin established a strong staff team and raised a sustainable organizational budget. He also recruited and ushered in a women-led, co-director team to lead the organization.

In October 2023, Kevin founded the nonprofit consulting firm SILO Ventures, specializing in assisting organizations in running effective issue campaigns. While at SILO Ventures, Kevin has been helping lead the Ellis Island Initiative, a statewide coalition of New York’s leading labor, business, faith, and advocacy organizations aimed at transforming the state’s approach to integrating migrant families into communities.

Kevin lives in New Paltz, New York, with his partner, Teresa, and their two sons, Finnbar and Cormac.

Mohamed Thiam is originally from Senegal (in West Africa) and is a New York resident in the city of Syracuse. He graduated from Syracuse University with a master of arts in Pan-African studies. He also holds a bachelor’s degree in African, British, and American literature and civilizations from Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal. His areas of focus include Pan-African studies, global migration policies, international relations, international politics and economics, and the political economy of developing countries.

Mohamed is a dedicated and passionate CNY community advocate and organizer—and a former ONA job coach at Interfaith Works of Central New York. In these roles, he actively works to revitalize workforce development in the state of New York by fostering strong partnerships with government agencies, non-governmental organizations, corporate businesses, local leaders, and other stakeholders. His mission is to advocate for equal opportunities and promote economic empowerment and social inclusion for immigrants, New Americans, asylees, and all underrepresented communities across our region.

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.

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.

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.

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.