IPC Staff

Guillermo Cantor, Senior Policy Analyst

Guillermo Cantor is the Senior Policy Analyst at the Immigration Policy Center, where he leads the Center’s research efforts. He also currently teaches courses on immigration and introductory sociology at Georgetown University. He has authored several publications on immigrant incorporation in the United States and Argentina. Prior to joining the American Immigration Council, Mr. Cantor served as an investigator on issues related to immigration at Argentina’s National Council for Scientific and Technical Research and as a professor at the National University of Rosario and the National University of Entre Ríos. Throughout his career, Mr. Cantor received multiple distinctions including a Fulbright Fellowship, the Urban Institute's Emerging Scholar Award, and the International Development Research Center's Research Award. Mr. Cantor holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Wendy Feliz, Communications Director
202-507-7500 ext.7524
WSefsaf@immcouncil.org

Wendy Feliz Sefsaf is the Communications Director at the American Immigration Council. Previously, she worked as a consultant for New America Media, a multi-lingual, multi-ethnic news service and as a communications officer at the Open Society Institute’s DC policy office, where she helped shape their communications and media strategy. She is currently an adjunct professor at American University and Johns Hopkins University where she teaches a course in advocacy communications. Wendy holds a B.A. in Liberal Arts from the New School University and an M.A. in Public Communication from American University.

Walter Ewing, Senior Researcher

Walter Ewing, Ph.D., is the Senior Researcher at the Immigration Policy Center. He has authored or co-authored numerous reports, fact sheets, and opinion pieces for the IPC and has published articles in the Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy, Stanford Law and Policy Review, and Immigration Law Today. Before joining the IPC, he was an Immigration Policy Analyst at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Program Director of the National Citizenship Network at Immigration and Refugee Services of America. Mr. Ewing received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate School in 1997 and his B.A. in Sociology and Anthropology from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1987.

Mary Giovagnoli, Director

Mary Giovagnoli is the Director of the Immigration Policy Center. Prior to IPC, Mary served as Senior Director of Policy for the National Immigration Forum and practiced law as an attorney with the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security—serving first as a trial attorney and associate general counsel with the INS, and, following the creation of DHS, as an associate chief counsel for United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. Mary specialized in asylum and refugee law, focusing on the impact of general immigration laws on asylees. In 2005, Mary became the senior advisor to the Director of Congressional Relations at USCIS. She was also awarded a Congressional Fellowship from USCIS to serve for a year in Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s office where she worked on comprehensive immigration reform and refugee issues. Mary attended Drake University, graduating summa cum laude with a major in speech communication. She received a master’s degree in rhetoric and completed additional graduate coursework in rhetoric at the University of Wisconsin, before receiving a J.D. from the University of Wisconsin Law School. She spent more than ten years teaching public speaking, argumentation and debate, and parliamentary procedure while pursuing her education.

Amy Grenier, Administrative & Research Assistant

Amy Grenier is the Administrative and Research Assistant at the Immigration Policy Center.  Amy has a B.A. in History from Hollins University and an M.A. in Migration Studies from the University of Sussex, where she wrote her thesis on federalism, immigration, and state level activism in the United States.  She also studied briefly at Ho Chi Minh International University, where a course on the Vietnamese diaspora piqued her interest in immigrant communities in the United States.  Previously, she interned for the U.S. Committee on Refugees and Immigrants, served as a volunteer coordinator for a refugee charity in the United Kingdom, and worked as a legal secretary for a regulatory law firm. 

Matt Hershberger, Online Communications Associate
202-507-7500 ext. 7509
MHershberger@immcouncil.org

Matt Hershberger is an Online Communications Associate at the American Immigration Council. Matt has a B.A. in Journalism from Penn State University, and an M.Sc. in Human Rights from the London School of Economics, where he wrote his thesis on the treatment of the children of undocumented immigrants in the American media. He briefly interned as a human rights opinion columnist at the English-language China Daily in Beijing, and has worked as a law clerk, internet marketer, and produce salesman in his hometown, Cincinnati. He is an experienced blogger, traveler, and activist. He helps the Council with its blogging, social networking, and general internet presence.

Benjamin E. Johnson, Executive Director

Benjamin Johnson is the Executive Director of the American Immigration Council in Washington, D.C. He has studied and worked in the immigration field for more than 15 years. He has written extensively on immigration law and policy and has presented testimony on immigration issues before the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. From 2003 to 2007, he served as the founding Director of the Council’s Immigration Policy Center which is one of the four programs housed at the American Immigration Council and also includes the Legal Action Center, International Exchange Center and Community Education Center. A native of Arizona, Johnson has managed several state-wide political campaigns in that state and also spent six years as the co-founder and legal Director of the Immigration Outreach Center, a legal clinic serving low-income immigrant communities in Phoenix. He earned a J.D. from the University of San Diego School of Law and studied International and Comparative Law at Kings College in London.

Matthew Kolodziej, Legislative Fellow

Matthew Kolodziej is a Legislative Fellow at the Immigration Policy Center and has worked in the field of immigration since 2004. Prior to joining IPC he was an associate attorney at Duane Morris LLP, an international law firm with a respected immigration practice, where he was responsible for handling business immigration cases for investors, technology companies, hospitals, financial institutions, think tanks, and non-profits. He also has extensive experience with deportation defense, criminal waivers, asylum, and litigation before the immigration courts and the courts of appeals. He has a J.D. from George Washington University Law School, a M.A. in Spanish translation from the University Complutense of Madrid, and a B.A. in French Literature from Sarah Lawrence College.

Paul McDaniel, Immigrant Entrepreneur and Innovation Fellow

Paul McDaniel is the Immigrant Entrepreneur and Innovation Fellow at the Immigration Policy Center. Previously, he served as Project Researcher in the Center for Citizenship and Immigrant Communities at Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC). Prior to his work at CLINIC, Paul was a Researcher at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where he worked on several community-based research projects with the Department of Family Medicine at Carolinas Medical Center, Levine Museum of the New South, Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools, Crossroads Charlotte, Latin American Coalition, and Community Building Initiative. He has worked on reports and presentations about immigrant entrepreneurship, immigrant settlement and integration in new immigrant gateways and destinations, immigrant access to education and healthcare, and community receptivity. Paul recently completed his Ph.D. dissertation in Geography and Urban Regional Analysis from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and holds an M.S. in Geography from the University of Tennessee, an M.A. in Educational Leadership from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and a B.S. in Geography from Samford University.

Amanda Peterson Beadle, Research and Communications Associate

Amanda Peterson Beadle is a research and communications associate at the American Immigration Council. Before joining AIC, she was a reporter/blogger at ThinkProgress.org, focusing on immigration and women’s health, and Amanda has worked as a legislative aide in the Maryland House of Delegates. She received her B.A. in journalism and Spanish from the University of Alabama, where she was editor-in-chief of the campus newspaper The Crimson White and graduated with honors. In college, she interned at the Scripps Howard Foundation Wire, the Press-Register (Mobile, Alabama), and the Ludington Daily News.