Increasing the ability of people to move and work where they want is important for a range of societal goals, including:
Talent Mobility Fund is funded by a number of generous donors. We are looking for additional individual donors or institutions to join the Fund.
Are you a potential donor interested in learning more about the Fund? Schedule time with our team here.
Developing an AI-Powered Eligibility Checker for O-1A Visa Status
Leveraging Technology to Accelerate the Preparation of O-1A, EB-1A and EB-2 NIW Petitions
Adding a Global Perspective to Teams at U.S. AI Firms Using the Research Scholar Visa
Studying USCIS Implementation of International STEM Talent Policy Guidance to Identify Case Preparation Barriers
Amy Nice—Co-Director
Amy has worked on immigration law and policy issues for over 35 years. Most recently, she was the Biden administration’s lead on STEM immigration policy, where she led key reforms to attract and retain global STEM talent by strengthening multiple employment-based and research-related pathways. Amy served in the Office of General Counsel in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and was executive director of immigration policy for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Before moving to policy work in 2010, Amy practiced immigration law at Dickstein Shapiro in DC, where she developed broad-based business immigration expertise.
Doug Rand—Co-Director
Doug is a startup founder, immigration expert, and policymaker, who trained as an evolutionary biologist. He served as Senior Advisor to the Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services from 2021–2025 and as Assistant Director for Entrepreneurship in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from 2010–2017. He has also been a Senior Fellow at the Federation of American Scientists and an advisor to the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence. As an entrepreneur, he was the co-founder and president of Boundless, and the co-founder and CEO of Playscripts, Inc.
Jason Wendle–Head of Global Mobility
Jason is a Managing Director at the Global Development Incubator with over 20 years of experience designing and building social ventures. His portfolio at GDI includes some of the world’s pioneers of an emerging field tackling global inequality by helping people move for opportunity. Since 2020, he has been working to define and shape this field, convinced that the migration opportunity is the most neglected area of global development funding relative to its impact. He has worked on both philanthropic and impact investment funds. For example, he designed a grant funding mechanism to deploy $75M to combat human trafficking — which itself is driven by lack of access to good mobility options.
Diane Rish–Deputy Director and U.S. STEM Immigration Manager
Diane is an attorney with 15 years of experience in U.S. immigration law and policy. Most recently, she served as Senior Manager of Immigration at Salesforce, a cloud-based software company. Previously, she served as Associate Director of Government Relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) where she advocated on behalf of AILA and its 15,000+ immigration attorney members for immigration-related policy, regulatory and legislative reforms before Congress, the White House and federal agencies. Diane began her legal career in private practice where she developed expertise in employment-based immigration, with a focus on the semiconductor and advanced technology industries.
The team is supported by a team of advisors, including:
▪ Parth Ahya, Chief of Staff, Renaissance Philanthropy
▪ Jeff Alstott, Senior Information Scientist, RAND Corporation and Professor of Policy Analysis, Pardee RAND Graduate School
▪ Fanta Aw, PhD, Executive Director and CEO of NAFSA
▪ Lawrence S. Bacow, President Emeritus, Harvard University
▪ Amanda Baran, former Chief of the Office of Policy & Strategy at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for the Biden administration
▪ Michael Clemens, Professor in the Department of Economics at George Mason University
▪ Helen Dempster, Deputy Director for Center for Global Development's Migration, Displacement, and Humanitarian Policy directorate
▪ Johann Harnoss, BCG Henderson Fellow for Global Migration, and the Co-Founder and CEO of Imagine Foundation
▪ William Kerr, Professor at Harvard Business School and the co-director of Harvard's Managing the Future of Work Project
▪ Lant Pritchett, Development Economist
▪ Leo Rafael Reif, President Emeritus, MIT
▪ Rajat Suri, Co-Founder, Lima, Presto, Lyft
▪ Julia Willemyns, Founding Co-Director, Centre for British Progress
▪ Lisa Zeiger, Head of People, ClassDojo, Former-Head of Mobility, Stripe
Talent Mobility Fund aims to increase the use of existing, legal immigration pathways to the U.S. and other OECD countries. These include routes that:
▪ Enable global experts to contribute their skills in science, technology, healthcare, and other critical sectors through work authorization channels designed for highly qualified professionals.
▪ Facilitate skilled worker mobility across regions such as Europe and Japan, where reforms are creating more accessible opportunities for employers and workers, including recognition of foreign qualifications, language training, and vocational programs.
▪ Open education-to-career pathways that allow students from the Global South to pursue higher education or apprenticeship programs, often followed by opportunities to transition into the workforce.
▪Support early-career researchers and innovators by connecting them with industry and academic placements that strengthen both host institutions and global talent pipelines.
By focusing on raising awareness, reducing barriers to entry, and building tools that improve navigation of these systems, we aim to ensure that existing mobility opportunities are more widely understood and more equitably accessed.
The Talent Mobility Fund is grateful to kickoff with support from a number of donors. We are looking for additional individual donors or institutions to join the Fund. Please contact our Deputy Director & U.S. STEM Immigration Manager, Diane Rish, to learn more about opportunities to contribute.
The grants review and selection process will be managed by Amy Nice and Jason Wendle, with input from an advisory committee made up of domain area experts. All our grants are judged on the basis of a rubric. We use rubrics specific to our two tracks—the U.S. STEM Immigration and the Global Mobility track—depending on which track prospective grants aim to target. However, both rubrics evaluate proposals on the basis of four criteria:
You can email our Deputy Director & U.S. STEM Immigration Manager, Diane Rish, with any questions. You can apply for funding here.
