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David Lubell is the founder of Welcoming America and has been Executive Director since October of 2009. David is former Executive Director and founder of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC). TIRRC is now considered a model for emerging immigrant’s rights coalitions forming across the U.S., and was named “Advocacy Affiliate of the Year” in 2008 by the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the largest Latino civil rights organization in the U.S. While at TIRRC, David helped found Welcoming Tennessee, the model for all subsequent Welcoming projects. Before TIRRC, David was Advocacy and Organizing Director of Latino Memphis, a non-profit in Memphis, where he helped lead a successful organizing campaign to increase access to healthcare for Memphis’ growing LEP (Limited English Proficient) population.

David received a Masters in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where he was a Reynolds Social Entrepreneurship Fellow. David also has a B.A. in history from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, and received a Certificate in non-profit management from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. David is a recipient of the Draper Richards Kaplan Social Entrepreneurship Fellowship, as well as the Cornerstone Social Justice award from Jewish Funds for Social Justice and the Community Change-Champion Award from the Center for Community Change. He is currently an Ashoka Fellow and was named one of Univision’s top ten social entrepreneurs in the Americas. David is based in Atlanta, GA.

As the Deputy Director, Rachel Peric works alongside the Executive Director to ensure the success of programs and operations, and to engage individuals and organizations around the country who share Welcoming America’s passion for building understanding and positive interactions between US and foreign born individuals. Prior to Welcoming America, she served as Executive Director of the Montgomery Coalition for Adult English Literacy (MCAEL), a capacity building and advocacy organization supporting adult ESOL and literacy programs in suburban Washington, DC.

Her career includes work spanning a number of social and community building issues at the local and international level, including serving as a regional director with the United Way of the National Capital Area and managing international development programs with a private consulting firm, Management Systems International (MSI). The granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, Rachel also serves on the board of Art and Remembrance, a nonprofit devoted to using the power of personal narrative in various forms of art to illuminate the effects of war and intolerance.

Rachel holds a BA in International Studies from Johns Hopkins University and a Masters in Public Management from the University of Maryland.

Jared Feuer is the Chief Operating Officer for Welcoming America. Prior to joining Welcoming, Jared was the Deputy Director of Membership Mobilizations at Amnesty International USA where he built and managed the operations and organizing work of AIUSA’s field offices. Jared also served as the Southern Regional Director of Amnesty where he led campaigns on issues including preventing sexual violence against Native American women in Oklahoma, housing rights of Hurricane Katrina survivors and the death penalty case of Troy Davis. Prior to joining Amnesty, Jared worked for the American Civil Liberties Union where he built their national online advocacy program and opened a local office in Long Island that worked on immigrant rights in a very charged environment.

Jared holds a BA from Brandeis University, a Masters degree in English from Georgetown University that focused on marginalized voices, and an MBA from the Georgia Institute of Technology with a specialization in business operations.

Keiron Bone Dormegnie is the Membership & Events Director for Welcoming America. He has spent over 15 years in educational and artistic administration for programs focused on youth of diverse national, ethnic, and socio-economic origins. These organizations include U.C. Berkeley’s Center for Underrepresented Engineering Students, Oakland’s Savage Jazz Dance Company, and Atlanta’s National Black Arts Festival.

Keiron is a graduate from Swarthmore College, Stanford University, and the Universite d’Aix-Marseille, with a M.A. in Administration of Cultural Institutions. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia and is passionate about art as a motor for personal and community transformation.

Susan Downs-Karkos is the Director of Strategic Partnerships at Welcoming America, where she works with organizations and communities in engaging mainstream Americans in immigrant integration efforts and in promoting a positive community climate for newcomers and established residents alike. She also leads the Receiving Communities Initiative and the provision of ongoing coaching, training and technical assistance to new and existing community partners, with a particular emphasis on the nation’s refugee network.

Prior to her work with Welcoming America, Susan served as Director of Integration Strategies at the Spring Institute for Intercultural Learning, where she managed programs for foreign trained health professionals and health literacy. Susan also served for more than a decade at The Colorado Trust, a grantmaking foundation. As a senior program officer, she designed and managed the Supporting Immigrant and Refugee Families Initiative, an $18 million effort that strengthened immigrant-serving organizations and engaged immigrants and members of receiving communities in local immigrant integration efforts. She is a former national board co-chair of Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees and is a member of the selection committee for the Migration Policy Institute’s E Pluribus Unum prize. She is the author of the Receiving Communities Toolkit and has spoken widely about the importance of immigrant integration and strategies for promoting it. Susan holds a BA in psychology from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine.