Meet our Executive Committee
Mohammed Naeem
Senior Manager for Strategy & Partnerships, American Immigration Council
Chair, USRAB Executive Committee
Mohammed Naeem is a Senior Manager for Strategy and Partnerships at the American Immigration Council – where he leads narrative change, attitudinal research, and grantmaking portfolios on the Center for Inclusion and Belonging [CIB] team. Previously, Mohammed worked at More in Common, where he managed U.S. initiatives and partnerships. Mohammed is an alumna of Stony Brook University and lives in Queens, NY.
Nejra Sumic
National Field Manager, We Are All America
Deputy Chair, USRAB Executive Committee
Nejra Sumic is a former Refugee who was forced to flee from her home country of Bosnia and Herzegovina. After surviving through a civil war, Nejra and her family were granted asylum as refugees in the United States. Nejra received her Master’s in Public Administration at Western International University. She has over 10 years of advocacy and grassroots organizing experience. In her current role, she is the National Field Manager of the We Are All America National Campaign and the Arizona Delegate for Refugee Congress, where she helps advocate for refugees and immigrants. Nejra is the co-author of the book “Divine Love” and sits on various national and local boards. She is most passionate about human rights, because everyone deserves the right to seek safety and refuge.
Elizabeth Ferris
Research Professor, Institute for the Study of International Migration
Elizabeth Ferris is Research Professor and Director of the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University. In 2016, she also served as Senior Advisor to the UN General Assembly’s Summit for Refugees and Migrants in New York and from 2020-21 as an expert advisor to the UN Secretary-General's High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement. . Prior to joining Georgetown, she was a Senior Fellow and co-director of the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement and spent 20 years working in the field of humanitarian assistance, most recently in Geneva, Switzerland at the World Council of Churches. She has written extensively on humanitarian issues, including Consequences of Chaos: Syria’s Humanitarian Crisis and the Failure to Protect, with Kemal Kirsici (Brookings Institution Press, 2016). Her latest book – Refugees, Migration and Global Governance: Negotiating the Global Compacts (with Katharine Donato) was published by Routledge in July 2019. She received her BA degree from Duke University and her MA and PhD degrees from the University of Florida.
John Slocum
Executive Director, Refugee Council USA (RCUSA)
John Slocum was appointed Executive Director of RCUSA in March 2022, after serving as Interim Executive Director since January 2021. John previously served as co-coordinator of the Repository of Documentation Relating to Disappearances in Mexico (RDDM) and as an independent consultant to foundations and nonprofits, providing strategic planning and executive recruitment services in the fields of migration, refugees, and human rights. From 1997 to 2016, he worked for the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, where he served as program director for grantmaking initiatives on global migration, the Central America-Mexico-U.S. migration corridor, and U.S. immigration policy. John also directed MacArthur’s Higher Education Initiative in Russia and its Research and Writing grants competition. He is a member of the advisory board for Justice in Motion, and a past board member of Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees. John has a PhD in political science from the University of Chicago, taught at the University of Oklahoma, and has published articles and commentary on migration, philanthropy, and Russia.
Nili Sarit Yossinger
Executive Director, Refugee Congress
Nili Sarit Yossinger is the inaugural Executive Director for Refugee Congress, overseeing operations, and implementing communications, funding, capacity-building, advocacy, and partnerships strategies that fulfill the organization’s mission of ensuring that there are always refugees at the table as equal partners.
Prior to her work with Refugee Congress, Nili was a Research Project Manager at the Institute for the Study of International Migration (ISIM) and the Senior Vice President’s Office for Research at Georgetown University, where her multi stakeholder projects included complex humanitarian emergencies; the intersections of forced migration, food security and environmental degradation in the Horn of Africa and Persian Gulf regions; and the use of open source data in predicting food supply chain shocks.
Most recently, Nili co-authored Integration Outcomes for Forcibly Displaced Persons (FDPs) A Holistic Co-Design Approach, a report from Refugee Congress, Refugee Council USA, and ECDC, that evaluates and proposes improved metrics for measuring integration, from the perspectives of forcibly displaced people.
Nili previously worked with the Capital Area Food Bank, the UN Refugee Agency in Washington, D.C., and Human Rights First. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies from Loyola University Chicago and a Master of Arts in German and European Studies from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, along with a Certificate in Refugees and Humanitarian Emergencies from ISIM. She currently serves as an Advisor for Concordia, an organization that builds and sustains cross-sector partnerships for social impact, and is a longtime volunteer on the senior staff of American Model United Nations.
News + Resources
The US Mission in Geneva: “A Focus on the Voice of Refugees.”
US Department of State, “Remarks at the Annual Tripartite Consultations on Resettlement.”
Resources from Refugees Seeking Equal Access at the Table.
Refugee Advocacy Lab: “10 Best Practices for Engaging with Refugee Leaders.”