Moderator
Dr. David J. Skorton is the 13th Secretary of the Smithsonian. Skorton, a board-certified cardiologist, previously was the president of Cornell University, a position he held from July 2006. He was also a professor in the Departments of Medicine and Pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City and in Cornell’s Department of Biomedical Engineering at the College of Engineering. An ardent and nationally recognized supporter of the arts and humanities, Skorton has called for a national dialogue to emphasize the importance of funding for these disciplines.
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Ali Noorani is the executive director of the National Immigration Forum, an advocacy organization promoting the value of immigrants and immigration. Growing up in California as the son of Pakistani immigrants, Ali quickly learned how to forge alliances among people of wide-ranging backgrounds, a skill that has served him well as one of the nation’s most innovative coalition builders. Prior to joining the Forum, Ali was executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, and he has served in leadership roles within public health and environmental organizations. In 2015, Ali was named a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He holds a Master’s in Public Health from Boston University and is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. READ MORE
Ana Quintana is a policy analyst covering Latin America and the Western Hemisphere at The Heritage Foundation. She leads the foundation’s efforts in U.S. policy toward Latin America and has authored numerous policy studies, Her work has been cited in media venues such as The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Bloomberg Business, and The Guardian. She has been a commentator on media outlets like Fox News, MSNBC, and Al Jazeera. Quintana holds a M.A. in global security studies and a B.A. in political science, both from Florida International University. She is originally from Miami, and her parents are political refugees from Cuba. READ MORE
Jeremy Robbins is the executive director at New American Economy, a bipartisan coalition of more than 500 CEOs and mayors making the economic case for immigration reform. Jeremy previously worked as a policy advisor and special counsel in the Office of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a judicial law clerk to the Honorable Robert Sack of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and as a litigation associate at WilmerHale in Boston where, along with working on general corporate litigation matters, he was part of the firm’s team representing six Bosnian men detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights. Jeremy received a J.D. from Yale Law School and a B.A. in political science from Brown University. READ MORE
Beth Werlin is the executive director of the American immigration Council. The Council, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, is a powerful voice in promoting laws, policies, and attitudes that honor our proud history as a nation of immigrants. Over her career, she has worked to protect the rights of non-citizens and to ensure that the immigration agencies are held accountable for violations of the law. She has represented plaintiffs and amicus curiae in immigration litigation in the federal courts and before the Board of Immigration Appeals and is the author of numerous practice advisories. She was NAPIL (Equal Justice Works) fellow and before that was a judicial law clerk at the immigration court in Boston. Beth earned her J.D. from Boston College Law School and her B.A. from Tufts University. READ MORE