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.
Amy Nice—Co-Director and Head of U.S. STEM Immigration
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, developing four new agency actions that impact the O-1, EB-1, J-1, and National Interest Waiver (NIW). 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.
Jason Wendle–Co-Director and 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, U.S. STEM Immigration
Diane is a U.S. immigration attorney with more than 14 years of experience in the field of U.S. immigration law and policy. Most recently, she served as Senior Manager of Immigration (Policy, Strategy and Analysis) at Salesforce, a cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco. 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 at Ogletree Deakins where she developed expertise in business immigration, with a focus on the semiconductor and advanced technology industries.
Alizah Merali–Deputy Director, Global Mobility
Alizah is a Manager at the GDI, where she works with entrepreneurs to build and scale social ventures that improve outcomes for low-income populations. Her focus is in the childcare and global mobility sectors. Formerly, she was a strategy consultant, where she advised executives across North America and Europe on crafting business transformation strategies grounded in behavioral economics.
The team will be supported by a team of advisors, including:
Talent Mobility Fund aims to increase the use of existing, legal immigration pathways to the U.S. and other OECD countries. These include but are not limited to:
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 Head of Operations, Diane, 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 Operations lead, Diane, with any questions. You can apply for funding here.